In the UK and elsewhere, the pandemic hit businesses hard. Thousands closed, and millions of workers lost their jobs. According to the Financial Times, working mothers were hit the hardest.
A study conducted by the Financial Times revealed that many stay-at-home working mothers had to leave their jobs. They were left no choice as childcare and chores took most of their time while working at home. In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics, women are 47.5% more likely to do more work at home compared to men. Fathers, meanwhile, mostly resorted to reducing their workloads to maintain family income. To help make ends meet, many stay-at-home moms have started their own home-based business, you included.
The Challenge of Starting a Home-based Business
You spent months turning your business idea into a reality. You’re now embarking on a new journey of introducing it to the public.
Unlike startup businesses that seasoned investors back, new home-based businesses have to introduce their brand to the world from scratch. The average consumer is bombarded by advertisements and marketing messages. This emphasizes the need to make a solid first impression.
To make good first impressions, you have to use different methods to market your brand. This article aims to help you in this endeavor. Find out below what marketing strategies you should use to make a lasting impression on your prospective customers.
1. Be on Social Media
Social media has become a necessary marketing tool for businesses, especially for those on a budget. All platforms provide a way even for small businesses to promote their products and services, free of charge.
Social media is one of the best marketing tools around, not just because it’s mostly free. It’s a great way to reach and engage with your prospective clients, which offers many opportunities to promote your brand.
For established businesses, focusing on social media platforms that work for them is a common practice. But since your business is a new one, you should explore all platforms. You need to get information about which platforms are mostly used by your target market. Only then can you concentrate your marketing efforts on specific platforms.
After some time, when you’ve gained enough following and customers, you can leverage social media ads to reach a wider audience.
2. Be a Sponsor
Sponsorship has been proven as an effective method of marketing a brand, just like large companies do when their names appear on sports uniforms and race cars. But because your business is new, sponsorship is a great way to start marketing your brand locally—within your community.
You can step up to sponsor any event in your community. Sponsorship can be used in any environment, whether for sports, children’s outreach, senior night out, or any other public function. People can easily see and hear your name, and this can create hype about your brand.
3. Use Video Promos
Videos are highly effective at influencing and engaging an audience. For an emerging brand like yours, they can help get your brand’s message to your target market. If done correctly, you can captivate people and increase awareness of your brand.
You can easily create videos using various video-creation software. However, if you want professional-looking videos, consider hiring an expert. For example, if you are selling football jerseys, you can hire a sports video director to help you create a professional video ad for a successful business launch.
4. Purchase Advertising Spaces
Most startup home-based businesses steer clear of purchasing ad spaces because of financial reasons. However, you can tailor your ads according to your budget. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money on initial ad spaces.
Just like with social media platforms, you need to explore different ad spaces to learn which ones get the most exposure and allow your business to gain more leads.
Ad spaces can be either digital or in print. This will also depend on your budget. For print, you can have your ads in newspapers and magazines. You can buy ad spaces through Google Ads, social media platforms, and websites for digital ads.
Explore All Means
You can also create a high-impact press release, set up an interview with a local personality, start a blog, and send promotional emails. However, all of this can be without any effect if you don’t create engaging content. For all of your marketing strategies, you need to develop attractive and captivating copy to gain your audience’s attention, if only for just a few seconds. Those seconds will count immensely in the end, anyway.
However, remember that no single set of strategies can make a business successful at making a lasting and good first impression. You have to explore all possible means and analyze which works best for your business. However, you can start with the strategies mentioned in this article. Good luck!
