Leverage Social Media for Local Marketing

Local business, most of whose clientèle would have come from "word-of-mouth" marketing have turned to social media to enable customers to spread the word about their business. Key word is "Enable", you have to encourage other customers to tell your business success story.

Local business are turned to Facebook for marketing their business in a big way, according to MerchantCircle up to 70% of small business leverage facebook for local marketing. To improve you ability to connect with your customers:

1. Encourage your offline customers to "like" you on facebook to get more information about your business. If you are a golf instructor you can share links, tips & tricks etc to your fan base.
2. Marketing is truly "local" - you have to connect with your local audience. Facebook page tied to local events and catering to a local demand and effectively beat a national brand with a generic message catering to a wide audience.
3. Twitter can be leveraged to offer on-the-fly sales - empty restaurant, bar etc. tweet a special discount which expires in the next hour.
4. Twitter your pre-scheduled events, new products, product teasers etc.and target your twitter and facebook updates to your local market.
5. Joint twitter marketing - combine your local ecosystem in your marketing. For example a local grocery store, with the local farms and local transportation company can do joint marketing for locally produced groceries.



About the Author: Along with a well published blogger (regularly featured on Alltop, Entrepreneur Community Online etc) Pooja specializes in developing marketing strategies for startups. You can follow me on Twitter and you can email questions at pooja {at} blueknee {dot} com. You can also join the Linkedin group "Marketing for Startups" at http://linkd.in/ihNJmR.

Startup Marketing - Should your prime focus from SMM be revenue generating or driving engagement?

Startup's best use of social media marketing should be around driving engagement - let people get to know your product and why they should be interested in the product.

Prior to the launch the startup marketing efforts should be focused on  leveraging  social media to get a feel of which ideas resonate with the potential customers.

After launch SMM should be leveraged in creating and increaseing awareness of the product, getting feedback of the product and providing support. I would caution in not streching your self to thin on too many channels, select which social media you are going to to use (and for what) and stick to it.

Focus on the conversation rate (actual replies and comments) and the applause rate (+1's, RTs and Likes etc)

IFTTT is a great example of how they leverage twitter to initially provide support and Quora on getting ideas for product development.

Revenue will follow with the right level of engagement and awareness in the market, consider SMM as a means to create that engagement and awareness.

How does this compare with your use of SMM today?

About the Author: Along with a well published blogger (regularly featured on Alltop, Entrepreneur Community Online etc) Pooja specializes in developing marketing strategies for startups. You can follow me on Twitter and you can email questions at pooja {at} blueknee {dot} com. You can also join the Linkedin group "Marketing for Startups" at http://linkd.in/ihNJmR.

Monetize your content based site

How you monetize a website depends on why you build the site? For example if your site is aimed at a target market that appreciates high quality content, adding google ads might not be the best or effective monetization strategy. 


The monetization strategy should be determined based on the target market, competitive landscape and your future plans for developing the site.

Different ways to monetize any site:

• Have a free part of the site and have a separate subscription based content part of the site
• Keep it free for visitors, charge providers to be added to your site (annual fee, or $x for y posts)
• Sell "stuff" aimed at the target market, ie., use your content to draw visitors and have applications, books, things that users would want to pay for.
• Study your outlinks to figure out affiliate marketing opportunities
• Ads based revenue

How have you monetized your site? 


About the Author: Along with a well published blogger (regularly featured on Alltop, Entrepreneur Community Online etc) Pooja specializes in developing marketing strategies for startups. You can follow me on Twitter and you can email questions at pooja {at} blueknee {dot} com. You can also join the Linkedin group "Marketing for Startups" at http://linkd.in/ihNJmR.

How well does your product fit the market?

Product Market fit

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market,” according to Marc Andreessen, to whom the term is often attributed.

Few indications that you have a product fit:
1. While you are demonstrating to the customer they indicate that this solves their pain point.
2. You get calls from folks, along the line.." I was referred to you by XYZ because your product does.."
3. Customer who have been beta testing your product wants to purchase licenses..
4. Customers are asking for features which are clearly bells-whistles (ie., your core product feature set is solid..)
 There are some key metrics that you can measure to indicate how good your product/market fit is:

• Usage: Larger amounts of data being created inside the product and longer times for users logged into the system
• Return Visitors: Increased returning visitors to the site
• Unique Sign-ups: Growing number of sign-ups/conversion
• Increase sales activity (number of inbound calls, number of organic leads etc)
• Lower Sales cycle (if the product fits the market, customers will buy relatively easily)

How well does your product fit the market? How do you know this, please respond with your comments.


About the Author: Along with a well published blogger (regularly featured on Alltop, Entrepreneur Community Online etc) Pooja specializes in developing marketing strategies for startups. You can follow me on Twitter and you can email questions at pooja {at} blueknee {dot} com. You can also join the Linkedin group "Marketing for Startups" at http://linkd.in/ihNJmR.

When should a startup start a marketing plan?

The marketing plan for a startup should be developed as early as possible. When a startup has an idea, the first step should be validating the pain point and the willingness to find customer who have this pain point.

That should be the start of your marketing plan, key elements of the plan at this stage would include:

- A sign-up web page which enables users to sign-up for a beta (as well promote the idea on social media, for example LaunchRock)

- Particpate in relevant social media (LinkedIn, Twitter etc) to participate in discussions related to the pain point you are solving (you do not have to disclose your solution, you are better understanding of the pain point and the persona of the customer, build relationship with the customer)

- Sign up to the different beta directories, like betali.st etc

The marketing plan should include the budget, goals and timelines you want to achieve in this phase (pre-beta). The marketing plan is a living plan and evolves when you release your beta, as you launch the product etc. Your goals, budget etc. would change as the startup evolves.

When did you inititate the marketing plan for your startup? Do you think you would do it differently the next time?

About the Author: Along with a well published blogger (regularly featured on Alltop, Entrepreneur Community Online etc) Pooja specializes in developing marketing strategies for startups. You can follow me on Twitter and you can email questions at pooja {at} blueknee {dot} com. You can also join the Linkedin group "Marketing for Startups" at http://linkd.in/ihNJmR.