How to Promote Your Startup: Free Ways

If you already run business and you offer an awesome product, you are obviously waiting for customers to come knocking to your door. It is unlikely that you get a lot of orders from the very beginning that is why good self-promotion is really important. There are eight popular and free ways to promote your startup and attract customers to your door:

1. Create a profile of your target customer. To achieve your aim you should determine the type of customer you need. For instance, if you know that your customer is a householder, an application developer or a huge industrial company, you are sure to make your business more effective.
2. Make an attractive and quality website. Your landing pages should answer the question “why should a customer deal with you?”, your design should catch the eye of every visitor, your articles should be optimized for necessary keywords to improve your website’s ranking in the search results on a regular basis.
3. Create your profile on social media sites. You can create an account or a community on Facebook, MySpace or some other websites. It is known that many people spend plenty of time in social media, so you can also be active there to engage more customers. You can share news about your product and you can deal with possible negative feedbacks if they appear.
4. Ask customers to review your service. You can post about your business and your product everywhere it is possible, you can make guest posts, you can post messages on thematic forums, etc., (make your messages look like the posts from average users and insert your brand name or a link into the post if it is in the context of the subject). You can ask your potential customers to write a feedback without any obligation to buy your product. If they have time and interest they are likely to share their impressions with others.
5. Find interested people. If you develop a technical product or applications, try to find those who are interested in getting the latest and best things. Make a landing page dedicated to such type of target customers and offer them to test your application in a beta version. Ask them to write a feedback if they notice some bugs and fix the problem to make your product better.
6. Contact the leaders in your sphere. Try to make personal connections with leading companies that have reached success in the same sphere as yours. The aim is to get experience from those who are blogging, tweeting, and spreading information about the same kind of products that you also offer.
7. Encourage the referrals. People will tell their friends about your product more actively if you offer some kind of discount or any other reward for their referrals. The encouragement may look like a gift from the company or like an extra free service for those made a recommendation to a friend.
8. Make a compelling infographic or an exclusive ad spot. People like to share funny and original ads or infographics and this type of promotion can be really beneficial for your startup.