How to Start

In today’s world, efficient marketing channels are available. There is absolutely no way that a business owner should not be using the current marketing channels to grow their business. Most entrepreneurs are stuck with one question about building & growing their businesses, i.e., How to Start.

In this post, I’ll break down the steps on How to Start Growing a Business using Effective Marketing Channels. Let’s start.

Introducing P.A.T System – People, Attention, Trust

PEOPLE

The first thing entrepreneurs need to get down to is to figure out who your target audience is? Who you want to serve?

It’s easy than it sounds to create a user persona for your product service. You only need four types of information:

• Demographic:
  • If B2C Industry: Age, Gender, Marital Status, Income, Education. E.g., My product is for college going students age 17-21 who can afford a smartphone.
  • If B2B Industry, number of employees, type of business, revenue. E.g., My product is for teams who use CRM’s for sales and have a million dollar plus in revenue.
• Geographic:
  • Country – City, Population, Climate, Transportation. E.g., We sell umbrellas, and we need to be in the areas that have heavy rainfall.
  • Important – Don’t Sell Ice to an Eskimo.
• Psychographic:
  • Social Class, Values, Beliefs, Personality, Lifestyle, Thought Process, etc.
  • E.g., We target users who want their daily essentials at discounted prices.
• Behavioral:
  • Purchase Patterns, Price Sensitivity, Daily Working Culture, etc.
  • E.g., We target users who hold around 5-10 meetings per day and have to take notes of each of these meetings.

Here’s one snapshot of all:

Now, go ahead and create this persona for your business. Post that, let’s move to step 2:

ATTENTION

Once you know who your user persona is, the very next question is how to get his attention so that you can tell him/her about your product/service.
In this noisy world, it’s hard to get the attention of anyone. Let alone make someone stick to your message for minutes.

Figure out where the attention of the user is?

• Are they reading blogs? Or they listen to podcasts?
• Are they interested in Facebook or LinkedIn? If both, which one do they use at what time?
• Do they travel in their car & listen to the radio? Or they use public transport & see the billboards on the way?
• Do they use mobile more or desktop?

Here’s what attention looks like in real life:

Now, go ahead and create a list of platforms where your user’s attention is and rank them based on the most attention platform to the least attention platforms.

TRUST

Till now, we know:

1. Who is our target customer?
2. Where is his attention?

Now, the crucial piece is to create content/marketing materials to make the user get connected to our brand.
Create content pieces that move the needle for your customer.

If you’re trying to target user who does excel work all day long – how about writing a piece of content that shares – 15 excel hacks every excel user should know.

Or

If your user is most interested in human resource work, how about starting a podcast about human resource employees, their challenges, strategies for them to improve in their work.

Don’t you think you’ll able to reach them more quickly & more effectively?

Moreover, there is no hard sell in this. It’s all pure value addition upfront and then educating them about your product/service. And keeping it open to them about it – if they need further help, they might go for your product/service.

It takes a lot of time & considerable efforts to build trust. You have to be consistent, deliver value upfront, and most importantly – once you gain the confidence of the user, never misuse that trust.

The best analogy I can give you for trust is that of a Mother & her child.

Treat your clients, readers in the purest form & with the most genuine intentions for their success.

If you can do this – there is no force to stop them from using your products & services because they know, you are genuinely helping them – not selling them.

Once you have all the above details, you are ready to begin marketing to your audience & letting them know about your brand.

I am sure by now you have absolute clarity on how to start growing your business.

A lot of entrepreneurs after this process need more clarity on how much money should they spend on marketing. They know their users are entrepreneurs (people), attention is on Facebook, and they have to create long-form content to attract them (trust).

But, how much money should they spend on building content & distribution to reach their audience?

To simplify this, I’ve written a blog post about how to decide your organization’s marketing budget. Go ahead & read this and you will have more clarity to determine the marketing budget.

Feel free to share your thoughts about this article in the comments.

If you own a business and need marketing help, you might want to consider working with me.