Launching a New Business? Start by Taking These Marketing Steps

Many entrepreneurial individuals are taking the current wave of layoffs and furloughs as their cue to finally pull the trigger on starting their own businesses. Having made the leap myself back in the day, I understand how intimidating and confusing it can seem. Fortunately, you'll find plenty of sound advice from your fellow entrepreneurs, your local Small Business Association branch, chambers of commerce, and of course the wealth of websites and available books that tackle the subject.

While you're filling your brain with all that information, you need to start putting your marketing game plan together as well. Here are some key steps you'll want to take sooner rather than later.

Examine the Marketplace

Who needs what you do, and what form does that need most commonly take? When you answer this question in detail, you gain a clear picture of your target market. If your business will serve a local marketplace, you need to find out everything you can about the particular quirks of consumers of business clients in this particular neck of the woods. If you're going for a national market, you need to narrow down your ideal purchasers as sharply as possible, from their individual demographics to their preferred social media platforms. This collected data gives you an imaginary buyer persona to whom you can sell.

Study the Competition

Who are your direct competitors, and what are they doing to market themselves to your target audience? Do your homework on these businesses by visiting their websites, viewing their social media activity, and digging up whatever press releases or ads they've been putting out to promote themselves. Of course you can't just copy them, since there's no point in looking and sounding just like everyone else. But ask yourself why your competitors made the choices that they made, how well those choices will likely work, and whether you see any key areas where their marketing falls down or their offerings don't completely meet specific needs -- needs that you can fulfill more completely.

Prepare Your Value, Vision, and Mission Statements

What does your company stand for, what does it value, and what is its mission in the marketplace? The answers to these questions will clarify your marketing vision for both you and your customers. For instance, your company values may include honesty, integrity, cultural diversity and/or customer service. Your mission might be to help your customers manage their money, protect their property, or enjoy a higher quality of life. Your vision might be to serve your local area as the premiere provider of your industry's products or services. Once you've crafted these statements to suit your business, you can then make sure the messages permeate your marketing content.

Invest in Talent

Start looking around right now for the key marketing talents your fledgling business will need to make itself known. If (like so many small startups) you have limited resources, you might cherry-pick individual freelance copywriters, graphic designers, branding consultants, SEO experts, and other professionals. If you want a ready-made team, check out small "boutique" marketing firms that serve cost-conscious entrepreneurs as well as larger companies. Make sure to head whatever team you select with a marketing coordinator who can bring all the pieces of the puzzle together effectively.

Develop Your Brand

Now that you're on top of your market, your competition, your vision, and your marketing team, you can build a cohesive, memorable brand. Think of your brand as your company's voice or personality, the "best version of you" that you present to the world. A comprehensive branding strategy will include a vivid, evocative logo, a color scheme that conveys the exact tone and mood you want to express, and other visual elements that provide a consistent picture of your company throughout all your marketing channels. It also includes strategic use of written content that melds tone, style, and information into a clear, distinctive voice.

Starting a new business, and then marketing that business, takes a lot of thought, work, and planning. If you could use some help putting your written marketing content together, contact me and let's talk about it!

Are You Using the Wrong Freelance Copywriter? Here's How You Can Tell

"Freelancers are flakes." How many times have you heard that warning from colleagues who got burned by a project that ended up costing twice the anticipated amount, took a year instead of a week to complete or just ground to a halt mid-job? 

People sometimes cut freelancers a weird amount of slack that they wouldn't give their own employees, especially the ones who perform creative work: "Oh, those right-brain eccentric artists, they march to a different drum and we're just lucky they come down to Earth once in a while to help us regular folks." But freelancers aren't flakes, or at least they don't have to be. The successful ones take their freelancing seriously and run it as a business instead of a lark. They tend to stand out, if only by outlasting the dilettantes. Unfortunately, the serious ones still suffer from the flakiness of the less-serious ones who give the profession an apparent case of terminal dandruff. 

Watch out for these red flags when dealing with a freelance copywriter:

The unknown price tag. Beware the freelancer who refuses to give you a firm quote for a job before starting work. For many of us who charge flat per-project rates for most of our jobs, this issue never comes up. But even if your freelancer bills by the hour, you should still insist on a realistic estimate of what you'll pay, even if that estimate falls into a range. a freelancer who has no clue what a job will cost probably has no clue how to go about it efficiently either.

Excuses, excuses. There's always a good reason not to get a project done on time, and some freelancers want to make sure you hear all of them. "Sorry this is a month late, but my dog came down with mange and my kid's having attitude problems and I had to get my tires rotated and the recent spell of bad weather has deprived me of Vitamin D and...." Some of these excuses may even be legitimate. But even if there's always a reason the work is always late or sub-par, the end result is still late or sub-par work.

"My way or the highway." Ideally, your freelance copywriter knows a great deal about how to achieve the results your business wants and needs -- possibly more than you do, in fact. It's great when you find an expert who can give you a fresh perspective on your marketing content. On the other hand, you don't want a know-it-all who insists on an approach that simply doesn't feel right to you. Ultimately the client is the boss, for better or for worse. If your freelancer doesn't understand that, go find another one who does.

So what should you look for in a freelancer? A portfolio of strong samples, a solid track record, recommendations from satisfied clients and clear ground rules. Always ask about the freelancer's billing and work processes, turnaround times and availability. If they're booked solid, they should tell you so. (Of course being booked solid counts as another a promising sign, and even if you may have to wait a bit, the freelancer should be able to tell you about the next available opening.) 

Get hard numbers and hard deadlines, and hold your writer to them. The good ones will make every possible effort to deliver as promised. As for the flakes -- well, you don't put up with dandruff, do you?