4 Marketing Methods for Start-Up Businesses

I know you didn't get into business to work for free or at cost - that's not what I'm getting
at. The aim of this tip is to get some word of mouth going - if you do a fantastic job at
an affordable price (you might even do a free job for a friend or family member) then people
won't be able to help but talk to other people about how good you are, which is how those
wonderful things called "referrals" are generated. Word of mouth advertising generates the
highest quality leads/customers out there, as they weren't "sold" on how good you are but
recommended to them by a trusted friend. It's possible to operate a business entirely on
referrals - rare, but possible.

Getting a website built can cost as little as $300 or as much as $100 000 - it depends on what you need it to do, and who builds it. A services based business probably doesn't need to spend more than $2500. The second part of this equation - Pay Per Click Marketing - targets people searching on search engines like Google or Yahoo, with your ad displaying on the right hand side of a search engine results page, and
sometimes on top in the yellow strip. Every time your ad gets clicked on, you pay the search engine some money - that can be anywhere from 1c to $100, but most of the time you'll pay about $1 a click. The great thing about Pay Per Click Marketing is that you can create your campaign in a couple hours and be up and running pretty much immediately - and if you find it working great and you're booked out, you can pause it. Tracking results is also very easy, and you can attribute enquiries down to the ad clicked on or the keyword entered into the search engine. The ROI is often fantastic and you don't a minimum advertising budget.

Assuming that you're not a complete newbie to your industry, you should have some contacts and connections that compliments rather than directly competes with you, which will allow you to set up some sort of alliance. You can either find somebody that does what you do but services a different region, or you can set something up with a company that's related to your industry - an example of that would be a car dealership and a car insurance company. The most common setups are reciprical relationships, with both companies passing on leads. Alternatively, one of you pays the other a spotters fee. In any case, leads are easily converted (as you are a recommendation) and the relationship may grow into something more down the line.

Despite what a lot of people say about the Yellow Pages, their online directory is still a good investment - it might not drive a whole bunch of traffic to your website, but the traffic you get is very high quality. An added bonus is that (unless the book) Yellow Pages Online is completely trackable - just install a free website analytics package called Google Analytics, and you'll be able to see exactly what the Yellow Pages has sent you.

So that's that, 4 ways to get your business some leads in the door.
If you're thinking about getting into business, or you already are and need some finance,
talk to your perth business finance brokers today.