Starting a business in 2023 is not the same as it once was.
Nowadays you can start a home-based business and scale yourself up in virtually no time, without even having to leave your home.
That being said, marketing your business doesn’t come without investment, you do need to ensure that you have a budget behind whichever strategy you wish to proceed with.
This post will take you through some modern ways to market your home-based business, without even having to leave your home.
Be active on social media platforms
Never underestimate the power of social media. If you know your niche and have a target audience in mind, more often than not they’re accessible via some sort of social media channel.
Think: Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter & Linkedin. You can post pics, stories, reels or regular format posts telling stories, and climb your way to notoriety with just a bit of consistency, so long as you stick to the branding that you initially start out with.
If you’re a brand targeting a more youthful audience, you’d likely benefit most from the likes of Instagram and Tiktok (no pun intended).
If you’re a more corporate brand trying to earn more credibility in your strategy, you’d be better off utilising Linkedin and Twitter platforms, it all depends on the type of voice you’re trying to portray.
An artsy angle calls for a platform more suited to visuals, videography and photography, whilst a more corporate approach will see efforts better off on Linkedin and Twitter, where brand updates are posted more often.
That’s not to say you can’t use all of the above, however, it is important to understand your audience first and where they hang out, before investing your time into curating content for these platforms.
With the right strategy, you can build a loyal following that can eventually translate to paying customers, so long as you maintain consistency and prioritise user engagement above all.
Run a PR campaign
Sometimes we can all use a little boost. Say you have a website that sells products and services and you’re already working on SEO. A great way to get yourself out there is to utilise already-established websites, with a loyal, regularly returning audience, to help give you a push in the right direction.
Getting yourself ranking for the right key terms can be very expensive and time consuming. If you’re an up-and-coming brand that no one’s heard of, it can prove hard to convince complete strangers to initially trust and consider you – that’s where intelligent PR comes in.
Leveraging the right blogs, publications and news websites for a PR campaign can be a powerful tool for attracting the right audience to your brand, and website, whilst also providing your site with additional benefits.
There are many generic blogs such as the likes of MSN, that have a lot of regular traffic that you can pitch your press release to for a price, depending on your budget, you may be better off exploring your options beforehand.
Some of these benefits include improved website authority (which can help boost your off-page SEO factors), as well as expanding your exposure to a niche-relevant audience.
Start a podcast
A podcast can be a great way of expanding your audience base, and build initial trust by providing value to your target audience, outside of the products you offer.
Podcasts can be recorded easily and you don’t need to be an audio wiz to put it all together, you can even outsource podcast mixing and mastering and focus on the promotion of it!
Starting a podcast isn’t easy, however, it’s not as black and white as speaking on a mic and posting the result, there’s factors to every successful podcast.
Starting with a solid topic niche, a great podcast keeps users engaged, provides interesting insights, and keeps them hungry for more.
If you do have a solid podcast idea in mind, then go for it. You can then focus on other aspects such as a catchy jingle, your promotion channels, and whether or not you want to add a visual element to your podcast.
That being said, a podcast can be a powerful tool contributing to your overall marketing strategy, if done correctly.
Just make sure you’ve got a long-term plan in place before investing in the creation of a podcast, as the very best podcasts do take production value into account, and that’s not always cheap!
Get yourself some influencers
So you’ve put the time and effort into building a social media presence, how can you leverage this further?
Well, you can pay someone who’s got more experience in the game of social media, with way more followers.
What may sound initially silly, can actually be a great way to boost your social presence and trust with your target audience. Imagine you’ve got a makeup brand and you get one of the top influencers in the UK to promote your product!
It wouldn’t be the first time that brands have seen overnight success with a well-placed influencer marketing campaign, but again, it isn’t cheap.
And if you don’t have much of an existing presence already, it isn’t worth doing.
Social media strategy and influencer marketing can go hand in hand with the right approach, just make sure you have the budget to maintain it when the time comes, as for most small businesses, monetary constraint can be a common issue.
How to grow your business in 2023
Modern problems call for modern solutions, the same applies for running a business. If you utilise social media, and plan well thought-out PR campaigns, you’re halfway there.
If you’ve deeper pockets then you can leverage influencer marketing and potentially start a podcast, though this route isn’t for everyone, and all business needs.
Like all marketing strategies, ensure that you’ve weighed out the pros and cons of each, and whether they apply to you, then you’re bound for success so long as you plan with due diligence.
This is the case especially if you’re a start-up!
Good luck.