How To Market Your Business From Scratch

Marketing a brand-new business can feel like building a sand castle on the beach knowing the tide is coming in. Will your strategy withstand the elements and fortify your business or leave you with a sad pile of sand?

I’ll never forget an evening in San Diego when I was taking a walk on the beach with a friend. We came across a little sand castle village that someone clearly didn’t want to get knocked down. It had been fortified in several ways to prevent destruction. Palm leaves and other plant debris had been built up like a fence around the sand city, and a mote was dug around it to catch the tide when it came in. 

Despite the builder’s best intentions, they didn’t work. There was a large footprint in the middle of the village and the mote was giving way to the powerful salt water waves. 

Don’t let your business get trampled and washed away because of a poor marketing strategy and execution. Anchoring your activities on a solid foundation (NOT shifting sand!) and utilizing  marketing resources that make sense for your business model is the best place to start.

How do I market my business from scratch?

The blank slate in front of you can be scary and overwhelming. Where do you begin marketing your business when there are so many options to choose from, and so many opportunities to mess it up?

I encourage my clients to think about their marketing strategy as an exciting opportunity to experiment. With the right foundational tools, you’ll know you are headed in the right direction, but have some wiggle room along the way to adapt and flex to real-world scenarios and learnings. 

First, establish data-driven customer personas as your north star. Everything you do should look to your personas and be tailored to their motivations, inspirations, challenges, goals, and pain points. 

Second, conduct competitive analysis and market research. You need to know everything you can about your competitors: how they are communicating with their customers, what they are doing and not doing in terms of marketing activities, what customers are saying about them, etc. This will help you formulate a plan to embrace your unique selling proposition and stand out in the marketplace.

Next, craft brand voice guidelines that will authentically and genuinely anchor all of your messaging to your customers. These guidelines will help you establish a consistent brand presence, strengthening your position and relationships with your audience.

Finally, set up customer journeys to map out every touchpoint your target audience will have with your business, from the time they first hear about you through when they decide to become a paying customer. Charting this map allows you to think strategically about when, where, and what messages you communicate. It also provides a clear method for tracking data points along the path and embracing data-driven decisions into your strategy. For example, if one message point isn’t converting and people are taking an expected detour off your map, you can work to guide them back by adjusting your strategy. 

From there, all marketing decisions should be made by looking back at these foundational marketing resources. All marketing activities are an experiment waiting to be tested and tried!

How to market without a budget.

All of the important elements of a marketing strategy listed above can be established without a huge budget. 

Crafted Voice offers affordable, on-demand resources to help businesses owners just beginning their entrepreneurial journey create a high quality, effective marketing strategy without expensive agency costs.

Get started with our “Your North Star: Building Customer Personas” on-demand course. Then, book a Strategic Communications Business Coaching session for expert guidance and data-driven insights, personalized to your business needs. 

How can I market my own business?

If you’ve read the above tips and are still hoping for creative ways to market your business, sign up for a free download of 45 ideas that you can leverage to reach your target audience without the boring go-to marketing activity: “post it on social media.” You can also read more creative marketing tips on our blog, How Do I Market Creatively?

How do I get my business noticed on social media?

Here are a few insights into “how can social media help a business grow”:

• If you choose the right social media platform (as dictated by your customer persona), it can get your messages in front of the right people – your target audience.
• If you craft messages that resonate, it can build brand awareness while elevating your relationships with current and potential customers.

If you are looking for creative ways to promote your business on social media, doing a deep dive into your competition to learn what they are doing is the best place to start. What’s working for them? Take note and determine how to put your unique brand voice on what’s resonating with your target audience. Of course, no one likes a copycat so use those examples as a guide, not a template to copy.