Must-Have Marketing Ammo Before You Launch Your Business

You’re pumped! Your business plan has been approved. You have a name for your business and you’ve done your market research to have a clear idea of who you’ll target your business to. You have before you a clean slate and a budget set for your marketing efforts…so what’s first?

The beauty of setting up your business from scratch is that you have the potential to do things right from the get-go. As a marketer, here’s my advice on where you should put your marketing dollars when launching your business:

1. Logo

Your logo, if creatively executed, will carry you through to the end. The first impression of your brand will often be when your customer interacts with your logo. Your logo can express professionalism, your target demographic market, your company culture, your industry and that’s just for starters. Your logo helps to build brand equity so it’s crucial that you have a logo that you are proud to have representing your products or service.

2. Business Cards

As a new business, you will be meeting,greeting and networking at every opportunity. Equip yourself with a high quality business card. Make it unique: creative artwork, punchy use of colour, rounded corners or strategic die cuts will all enhance your business card and will stand out when you present your card at your next event. No lie, my business card gets a comment every time I hand one over because the colour and shape is unique and is often the first subject of conversation.

3. Website

Needless to say, the website is probably the most valuable tool in your marketing ammo belt. Your website is your brochure; your website is your inbound marketing magnet. You may not be able to spend a lot of money in the beginning for all the marketing initiatives available via the web but start small and start ‘professional’. By professional I mean hire a web design company that has proven experience in creating websites and will help you to optimize it and (when you’re ready) implement your social media, email marketing and other inbound marketing strategies.

4. Sales Collateral

Yes we live in a world where technology overshadows everything but there is still a need for good printed material. When you visit your client, leave behind a ‘swanky’ brochure that fully describes your company, products and services, features and benefits and all that good stuff that makes you better than your competition in one compact piece of literature, making sure that it also includes your location, website and email address. If possible avoid using too much stock photography in your collateral. If you’ve hired a full-service marketing company, they should be able to arrange photography for use in your brochure and website. Also avoid using your own staff in your photographs; click on this link to read why it’s a big no-no. Your brochure can do double duty; as a way to generate leads make it available on your website; invite your users to give you their name and email address and email them the brochure. This way you can create that valuable database for future email marketing at the same time. Good sales collateral is great ammunition!

5. Presentations

Once you have a brochure, get your marketing company to re-package the information onto either a Powerpoint or Prezi. Presentations are no longer just for the boardroom…you can embed them into your website or make them available to download. Make them engaging and interesting to garner the attention you deserve to stump your competition.

6. Corporate Identity

Use your logo and established brand identity and fuse it throughout all the materials you’ll use to interact with anyone outside your company. RFPs, letterhead, invoices…even email signatures should reflect your brand identity.

7. Social Media

Get started with your social media presence early. Start a LinkedIn company page, sign on for a Facebook, Twitter and Google+ account. It takes time to grow your network so the earlier you start the better and that’s why I’m including it in this list.

So there you have it, seven items that are the essential marketing ammo when launching your business. As you grow, you will definitely need to explore a full inbound internet marketing strategy. You will also need more creative for supplementary outbound marketing strategies as well but this list should get you off to a great start.

If you would like help in getting your professional marketing ammo ready as you get set to bombard your target market in the most creative, effective way possible, drop us a line at VRUM Marketing- Toronto Marketing Company.