20.06.2022
2014

Top 7 Quick Marketing Tips for New Businesses

Nikola Gemeš
content writer
Reading time: ~7 min

Have you just started your business? Then our tips will be very useful for you!

Content:
1. Become your Best Customer
2. Poach Users of a Competing Service
3. Launch a Viral Instructional Video
4. Use Your Product for a Social Cause
5. Bribe New Customers
6. Connect With Another Brand
7. Content, Content, Content
8. Wrapping Up

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Unless you’ve been so lucky to score a large investment to fund your startup, I bet you don’t have a great deal of cash to spend on marketing for your fledgling business. 

And there’s your problem. You spend so much time building your great product or service and then you can’t sell it because no one knows about it.

What you need are quick sales-boosting marketing tactics to get your new business airborne. 

Become your Best Customer

If your marketing strategy relies on user input, chances are that your site is struggling with too little user-generated content

So what is older, the chicken or the egg? It doesn’t matter because in this case, your small user base generates little content, which discourages more users from joining. 

Just like that beer joint with one old geezer sitting at the bar. No one wants to go in there. 

It’s time to break that wheel. 

For example, Quora founder Adam D'Angelo became one of the biggest users of the platform. 

He invested time to answer a ton of questions in the early days. His well-articulated and knowledgeable responses lead to more in-depth responses from the users themselves. 

In return, this eventually set the stage and expectations of quality content that the site is known for today. 

Poach Users of a Competing Service

What’s the easiest way to identify users you know will love your product? Just target those who are already using a similar product, but not getting a bang for their buck. 

When Airbnb appeared, they had serious competition on the block. 

They could not afford to make any wrong moves, so they decided to reach out to audiences they knew would be happy with their service. 

To attract new users, they ran an email marketing campaign focusing on people who posted their places to stay on Craigslist. 

And do you know what the best part was? These emails appeared to be from a friendly Craigslist user who stumbled upon the site and wanted to let others know about it. 

Using simple stealth email campaigns. Airbnb grew to become a leading online marketplace for homestays and vacation rentals. 

Launch a Viral Instructional Video

A hilarious explainer video is bound to generate landslide traffic while encouraging more people to buy your product. This tactic was used by dozens of wet-fur startups in the past and can work for you, too.

Just look at what Dollar Shave Club did.

Launch a Viral Instructional Video


Sometimes it pays to push the limits with your message. Of course, this can be a double-edged sword – or should I say razor. 

When you swear and use strong language in your viral, you risk alienating large chunks of your audience. 

But Dollar Shave Club understood who they were speaking to and used humor to go viral with their video and strike success. The company was later bought by Unilever for $1 billion!

Use Your Product for a Social Cause

This means that customers can interact with your physical product in a way that helps a greater cause. 

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Take a brilliant example of how beer company Ambev used the Rio de Janeiro carnival to launch a campaign that allowed drinkers to pay for a train ticket home with an empty beer can.  

As a result, over 1,000 people per hour scanned their empty beer cans’ QR codes to use public transit. This not only motivated revelers not to get behind the wheel but also helped a recycling NGO to whom all those cans went. 

Traffic through beer turnstiles was 86% higher than conventional turnstiles, while drunk driving offenses also went down by 43%. 

You may not be a beer company nor have the muscle to partner with the Rio carnival organizers, but think of local events and social initiatives. In addition, you can also show customers how they need to use different SaaS tools if you're in the B2B industry or share some instructions on how your product can save the situation.

Bribe New Customers

You are likely already spending money to acquire new users. But what if that money goes directly to users instead of being spent on ads and marketing costs?

Yes, I’m talking about giving that money directly to each new customer. 

At least that’s what PayPal did – not when they were well-off but when they were just a startup. 

PayPal offered $10 to new customers and $10 to existing customers for every referral. 


PayPal offered $10 to new customers and $10 to existing customers for every referral. 

It was certainly not the cheapest way to attract new costumes, but it was highly effective. 

While this shouldn’t be your only business model, consider spending a portion of your marketing budget on direct user acquisition. Also, provide your customer's different ways to communicate with you easily. Get a toll-free number and let them to contact with you without any charges.

Connect With Another Brand

If your startup is too small to attract a huge audience by itself, consider partnering with another larger company. This way you can share a much bigger group of loyal fans. 

Ever wondered how Android KitKat got its name?

Before releasing the  Android 4.4, the company representatives got in touch with Nestle, who owns the Kit Kat brand, and struck a deal for collaboration between the two companies. 

Before releasing the  Android 4.4, Google representatives got in touch with Nestle


In promotional efforts that followed, KitKat bars in the shape of the Android robot logo were produced, while Hershey (under license) ran a contest with the prize of Nexus 7 tablets. 

Android was able to reach out to new consumers, and in turn, KitKat consumers learned about the phones on tables running the latest mobile OS.

Content, Content, Content

Finally, this should be your golden rule of startup marketing that should accompany every other on this list. 

It’s as simple as it gets – find out how to create a social media campaign and post content on your blog or social media, long, or short. Just make sure that people know you exist. If your new business doesn't have an accompanying blog, it's essential you implement that idea and start blogging today, with an easy and seamless integration.  

Let’s look at the numbers:

  • 4.62 billion people use social media;
  • Your 12-year-old sister uses social media;
  • Your 70-year-old grandma uses social media.

And you bet all kinds of CEOs, investors, founders, and marketers use social media strategy, too. 

Elon Musk began to tweet long before anyone heard about Tesla. Name another electric car.  You can try using ActualTech Media content services. Their content development team has helped more than 100 clients, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Nutanix, and VMware.  

Wrapping Up

Don’t get me wrong, but chances are your initial marketing efforts will fail. Now don’t let that discourage you. The game of marketing is all about refining your methods so you can decide what works best for you, your product, and your audience. 

When you’ve tested all these tactics, go back and evaluate each step of your campaign. It will let you determine where you can make improvements. 

Anyone can do it by the book. What separates those who succeed and those who fail is persistence. 

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