We love helping people with their big ideas. It’s in our tag line, after all. But often the best ideas end up on the cutting room floor because marketing and advertising opportunities can be overwhelming and costly. Turning a big idea into a successful business doesn’t have to be expensive, though. Sometimes it just requires ingenuity, creativity and tried-and-true methods like these:
1. Get to know your audience/customer.
More than likely, the audience you’re trying to reach doesn’t include everyone so avoid investing time and money on platforms that reach a general audience. Spend time understanding where your audience gets information and ideas. AgBoost created a tool for livestock producers to breed genetically superior animals. It doesn’t make sense to market their software to everyone. Finding websites where ranchers visit, influencers they listen to, social media sites they use, publications they read and trade shows they attend are critical to spending scarce marketing dollars.
2. Don’t use jargon and overwhelming amounts of information.
SynaptaCode understands that “updating training hardware requires physical updates to the training module,” but it might be confusing to other people – even their target audience of corporate executives looking for better training software. Even when it’s explained correctly, it might be too technical. SynaptaCode does a good job on their website using clear, concise language that speaks to target audiences with varying technical backgrounds.
3. Don’t over-invest in collateral materials.
Slick brochures, unique business cards and pens to hand out at trade shows may each come with a small price tag, but collectively, they can add up and knock the wind out of any startup budget. Look for low-cost ways to meet and talk to your target audiences. Speaking engagements, trade shows, social media and focused networking events are often less costly and can be more impactful.
4. Recycle content.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every message you publish. If you have good content for a website, think about how you can repurpose it to create several social media posts, blogs, e-newsletter topics, even news stories. Take a lesson From Seed to Spoon, a gardening app that was born from an OKC urban garden and is now one of the most downloaded gardening apps and has a partnership with one of the oldest seed companies in the nation. They post photos and videos from their events on their social media accounts, remind followers of planting times and write in-depth blogs about how to properly plant. All of this information can also be found of their website and app. They even use these topics to pitch stories about the app to print, radio and television media. Their masterful content recycling turns their handful of topics into a content-churning machine.
You’ve got a big idea and a great story. You just have to figure out how to tell it, where to tell it and whom to tell it to. If you need help getting the word out, Anglin PR can help.