1. Utilize University Students
There are two main ways to use the student pool that sits on the doorstep of most businesses.
-1. Student Ambassadors
Students are always looking to get unique experience to put on their resume. Ambassadors are not employees but serve as representation for your company or brand. If you live in a city with a university presence, then you can immediately use students to spread word in your community. People use multiple ways to reward students, whether it’s just the ‘privilege’ of being an ambassador or a commission scheme, the choice is yours. I’ve used strategies like this with many startups, but also when working as a marketing or communications manager.
-2. Internships
Unlike student ambassadors, student internships are typically paid positions. With Internships, students are usually filling in for a particular role in order to learn the ropes within a company. While I may disagree with what most companies pay their interns, it’s a good excuse to get young, innovative and creative minds on board for a fraction of the cost of typical employment.
2. Blogger Outreach
Using bloggers achieves two things, one; you can get targeted traffic from popular communities in your niche. More targeted traffic = more conversions, and two; you can increase the ranking of your website on search engines.
In order to make this method effective, think clearly about who your target audience is and what kind of blogs they would read. For example, if you’re in the food industry, are there any food or health blogs out there that you could collaborate with. Using local bloggers works even better and are usually more open to long term relationships (think cost).
Nutrition? Business? Food? Fashion? There’s blogs and reputable authors for pretty much every niche you can think of. I run quite a few of my own and regularly work with brands.
There is a paradigm shift occurring in the way we consume information. Today self publishing is just as powerful as mainstream media. So much so that individual bloggers can have more people a click away than entire newspapers without any cost to reach them.
All you need to do is find blogs that match your target demographic and send them an email to guest post for them, or even send them a free sample of your product for review. You’ll get targeted traffic and if you’ve got a website, then a strong backlink to your site that improves search engine rank.
One trick that many start-ups use is this: find bloggers that would be willing to host a giveaway of your product by entering into a competition. To enter, they need to supply their email, of which they can opt-in to receive updates from the company (yours) sponsoring the giveaway.
Overnight, your email list is filled with people interested in your product.
3. Social Media Targeting
If you’ve got even the most basic social media presence, then social media targeting is on the cards.
If you run a beauty salon, you can create Facebook ads that target anyone who’s female, aged between 18-30 in a 10 mile radius from you shop. You can even get incredibly creative with it, if you offer wedding packages, why not target anyone who’s recently been engaged?
This form of demographic targeting really has revolutionized online advertising and is not being used by enough businesses.
4. Trade Shows
It might come as a shock to some people in digital marketing but occasionally you have to actually meet and interact with people!
Trade shows are everywhere, and are usually not too expensive (note usually). Having a room full of people you can build relationships with and also promote yourself to customers is a rare opportunity and should be jumped on when you’re a start-up.
See if you can discover any industry related conferences that you could exhibit your brand at. If that’s not possible, why not go along as an attendee with the intention of networking, with a handful of your product (if applicable) and a ton of business cards.
5. Public Speaking
Why not give a presentation about your start-up? There are so many people that are actually interested in both the lives of entrepreneurs and the companies they form. From trade shows and similar conferences, to Universities and other businesses, there are so many places to get in front of people and talk about the things that matter to you.