4 marketing strategies to boost your business

Large companies continue to rely on traditional media because their consumer population includes a good number of people and they also have a large budget. However, for start-ups or small businesses, it is rarely affordable to advertise in large media. That's why we mention the four marketing strategies you can use to present your business to the world:

     1.- Non-scalable marketing.

This type of marketing is based on presenting the product to your first customers in person so that through feedback you know firsthand the pros and cons of your service, and so you can adapt it to the demands of the market. "When your product is good enough, this face-to-face marketing will become word-of-mouth," says Edmundo Montaño, Co-Founder of Carmudi Mexico. Paul Graham talks about this type of strategy on his website: paulgraham.com.

     2.- Trend marketing.

Nowadays it is vitally important to keep up to date with what is happening in the world. The trends or topics of the moment can be useful in our business to promote our products, obtain profits and even generate advertising at no cost.

This happened with Airbnb, which was on the verge of collapse. However, they took advantage of the U.S. elections and created 1000 cereal boxes with the figures of the contenders, creating the "Obama O's" and "Captain McCain". With this, not only did they appear on national television for free, but the funds raised helped the company to survive the following months and grow exponentially. 

    3.- Experience marketing.

When you have the necessary funds, and you want to develop innovative marketing strategies, create new and exciting experiences to captivate your customers. One of the brands that did it is Uber Icecream, which offered users of their mobile application the opportunity to order their favorite flavor of ice cream to be delivered immediately to their home without having to pay cash.

     4.- Online Marketing.

This is the new frontier of commerce worldwide. In Latin America for example, 48% of the population has access to the Internet, this is reflected in the main countries of the region such as Chile with 70%, Argentina 67%, Colombia 54%, and Brazil and Mexico with 53%, according to studies by Lamudi. This is where OM (Online Marketing) comes in, which works as a bridge between the start-up or small business and the target audience, in an immediate, measurable, and low-cost way. Its main strategies and tools are:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): search engine optimization to improve the visibility of a website in the organic results of search engines such as Google. This is achieved through the use of keywords as well as the creation of relevant, useful, and attractive content for the customer. 
• Social Media: plays an important role in positioning the brand, generating sales, and maintaining constant contact with the customer. One of the most important is Facebook with 1.32 billion users worldwide. It is the very nature of this social network, which allows creative advertising campaigns with a carefully segmented audience and generally at a low cost.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): This is a form of Internet marketing that promotes websites by increasing their visibility on search engines.  This is done by paying for the placement of search engine ads (PPC). It also provides the possibility of segmenting different audiences, identifying the search source (computers or mobile devices), and selecting keywords to boost results.

As you can see, marketing is fundamental in these times for the success of any business, and sales strategies for small businesses do not have to be large campaigns, it is enough to have the objectives well established, determine the audiences, know their needs well to be able to offer them a solution and the main key is to do it differently.