How to be seen from day one?

[bigt41gopeay]

I was trying to find a technique that would be not costly and would be effective. Its hard to find one that would work for UK and rest of Europe.
What would be the best advice you could give to someone that starting up they business to get themselves out there and be seen?

 

[fisicx]

Advertising is a popular and effective way of getting your name out there.

 

[bigt41gopeay]

what you think is the most efective way of doing it?

 

[BeOriginalUK]

what's your business?

 

[Simply Business]

PPC may be the fastest way to get first customers for your business. There are some important benefits of search engine advertising: you can measure exactly your return on investment is and you can stop and re-start your campaign any time you want.

If you operate a local business, you can target specific cities or countries. Your first PPC clients will likely refer more customers and help you build your brand quickly. Here is a link to Google AdWords Guide that may be very helpful for start.

Good luck!

 

[bigt41gopeay]

is Healthy nutritional products

 

[fisicx]

In which case you need deep pockets. Competition is fierce and it's going to cost you a lot of money to bee seen.

 

[Ben Palmer-Wilson]

The biggest and most effective way of getting noticed outside of your local area? The internet.

A website, some SEO, a solid service or product, and some great copy, and you're a winner. Obviously, it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the basics.

1.) A website.

You need an online presence. Something people can access you with. Whether they're window shopping, finding out more about you, or want to contact you, this is where they'll do it. Get one as soon as you can. It's the first step.

2.) SEO.

You need to begin targeting your customers. SEO or an ad campaign are the ways to this. I'm not an expert on either, but I know SEO better, so I'll recommend it. Get your site ranked high for your keywords and niche, and you'll have a flood of traffic.

3.) A great product/service.

This one's a no-brainer. If what you're selling is tosh, then how can you ever expect people to buy from you, re-buy from you, or recommend you to their partners, friends and family? Simple - they won't.

So ensure what you're selling is WORTHY.

4.) Copy.

Now, not to toot my own horn, but copy's a big thing. It's what sets you apart from everyone else and allows you to toot YOUR horn to potential customers (done professionally, of course). A good writer will make sure the people coming from the SEO techniques will stick around to find out how good your product/service is.



There you go. Work on these four areas first, and get a name for yourself.


Hope this helped!



Ben

 

[BeOriginalUK]

is Healthy nutritional products

As Ben has said. All good stuff. Once you're there then perhaps approach food stores / independents with a view to supplying them (on a sale or return if your BB dates are long). You'll need a mail-out budget and you'll need to follow-up by phone to secure an order or arrange a meeting with them to get your order. Obviously you'll need to supply at a wholesale price to them, so I guess the first port of call would be to work out your margins.

 

[bigt41gopeay]

thanks. I dont know how much help is google adwords are never really used it in past.

 

[webgeek]

If you've got something completely new, unique, revolutionary, then go down the PR route. A good PR firm will get you more exposure than you can shake a stick at.

If you've got deep pockets, then advertising on pay per click networks like Google and Facebook will do the trick.

If you're in a highly competitive sector and don't have deep pockets, then are not going to be able to make a global splash and elbow your way into the markets.

The plan with the most likelihood of success is a medium to long term approach based on a combination of SEO and becoming highly visible in the popular niche sites frequented by your target prospect market. It will cost thousands and take many hours of your time, but will work, eventually.

Take a moment to reflect on the question and ramifications....

If someone could suddenly take a significant share of any health niche, on a shoestring, then everyone would have done it. There's just no way to instantly control something this highly contested without splashing 6 or 7 figures up front, minimum.

 

[Stephanie @SwiShthinking]

Hi,

Ben's right, and he's listed the components of your communications plan.
Content is what will get you known. People love pictures and videos.they also like seeing what happens behind the scene so take pictures of your products and videos of how they're produced or people using them. You can use a smart phone or basic camera.

You need to have:
A Facebook page
A YouTube channel (free and very easy to set up).

Also start writing a blog about the products and the lifestyle that comes with them. Wordpress is a very good platform for your site and blog.

All these are easy and free to set up. You will find tutorial videos on YouTube.
Google take you through the process too. But remember that once you have good content, people will find you.

Good luck
Stephanie

 

[webgeek]

Social media is great for raising awareness, but poor at turning eyeballs into Pounds Sterling.

I consider social the icing on the cake, but would never consider looking at social for the mainstay of my business. It just doesn't convert well enough.

 

[Stephanie @SwiShthinking]

Isn't it all about using all the tools we have at our disposal and then understand their purpose and role?
You advised PR and SEO, I don't know anyone who doesn't optimise their search, social search can take you a long way and there's no pr without digital pr, which is social media.
SEO won't work without good content either.

So it's about the right mix rather than one option or the other. You can have a ball and a goal but take out your defence and the opposite team will score

 

[webgeek]

No, it's not about using everything at our disposal. Have you ever seen the one man bands? They have a cymbal on their backside, a tambourine on their nose, a harmonica, bass drum, etc, etc. Needless to say, Beyonce won't be feeling threatened by their quality of music!

As I've pointed out in the blog post, "Go Deep", you'll be more effective by doing one thing really well instead of 100 things poorly.

If you can focus at doing one thing really well, you stand the greatest chance of success. After gaining traction with one, then leverage it and branch out to others.

Think about it really. Why does a brain surgeon get paid more than an Ear Nose and Throat doctor? Why does the Mercedes Benz dealer get paid more than Joe's Garage?

Specialists earn more because they're better at what they do (or should be anyway).

The same is true with advertising.

Try uploading 100 crappy YouTube videos. You'll get 27 views, 3 horrible comments, and won't want to ever return. Then try uploading 1 good one. You might get thousands, or hundreds of thousands of views, and hundreds of comments.

There's a lot of companies making millions with SEO and without social media. There's only a handful making millions using social without organic SEO. They're anomalies, not something to strive for....

 

[Stephanie @SwiShthinking]

Ha...the old specialist/generalist debate. I thought that was long gone, some things do stick.

Easy to name people who've taken the digital toolbox approach on a shoe string and built global businesses, from lovehoney to nakedwines, Tom's, Innocent drink (oops, don't they even use their community to develop products, and weren't they picked up by a giant multinational? Delamere dairy are on their way to success and use social and videos to get exposure the list is long, all open minded quircky small businesses with minimum capital (if any) starting out in their lounge.

We could go on forever but I guess we have work to do?

 

[webgeek]

Ha...the old specialist/generalist debate. I thought that was long gone, some things do stick.

Easy to name people who've taken the digital toolbox approach on a shoe string and built global businesses, from lovehoney to nakedwines, Tom's, Innocent drink (oops, don't they even use their community to develop products, and weren't they picked up by a giant multinational? Delamere dairy are on their way to success and use social and videos to get exposure the list is long, all open minded quircky small businesses with minimum capital (if any) starting out in their lounge.

We could go on forever but I guess we have work to do?

If your work involves trying to CONvince people that social outperforms SEO from an ROI perspective, or that they should be diluting themselves by trying to do everything at once, then yes, you've got a mountain to move...

Just because a company used social as part of their game plan doesn't mean it was their top revenue driver. For every 1 company that drives most of their revenue from social, there's 1000 that drive most from organic search (or maybe 10,000 or 100,000).

Business owners have enough to do with running their business. They don't need to be trying every page from a 1,000 ways to market your business book. If they embraced just 1, and did it exceedingly well, they'd have the best chance of making a go of it.

 

[bigt41gopeay]

Just wanted to say thank you to Paul Stewart Director Profit Masters Ltd
I spoke to him for a hour and he gave me a lot of great ideas and helped me a lot.
If your business is struggling i would recommend him strongly.