How to promote your business? 4 unusual places to advertise a startup

After closing the first stages of the company’s development, during which the entrepreneur mainly focuses on building the business from scratch, it is time to present a new brand to the world. Since a startup is usually associated with innovation, the marketing campaign promoting it should also use the potential of unconventional solutions. The contemporary market is constantly flooded with typical ads created using traditional strategies. How to stand out from the crowd and introduce modern promotional tools? Read on to find out more.

How to promote your business? – table of contents:

1. Marketing in the 21st century
2. Dribbble
3. LinkedIn
4. AppSumo
5. Behance
6. Summary

Marketing in the 21st century

Numerous changes taking place in the market have made it necessary to properly adapt individual marketing strategies to prevailing consumer preferences. Rather than aggressively attack potential customers, new forms of advertising focus on attracting their attention and getting them interested in a particular product. More and more campaigns are therefore based on concise messages rich in desirable content.

Introducing such solutions as push advertising, greatly improves communication between a fledgling business and its potential customers. Short and engaging messages displayed in the right places let you avoid problems associated with increasing consumer irritation, which most often results from being surrounded by mismatched ads. In today’s market, therefore, we can see a shift towards content marketing based on more personalized and thoughtful messages.

Striving for success, companies should also use the potential of technology in their campaigns. Marketing automation, apart from facilitating real-time contact with customers, also helps to present offers closely tailored to the recipients’ individual preferences and needs. At the same time, the use of a variety of channels creates an image of the company as conscious and committed to building strong relationships with customers.

Here are some amazing tools that, even with a little effort, help businesses, including startups, to create an effective marketing strategy.

Dribbble

Dribbble can be described as a kind of social network created to meet designers’ needs and help them do their job. This platform gives access to a variety of projects, providing inspiration to users from all over the world. At the same time, Dribbble focuses on building an engaged and well-connected community. Therefore, it is not so easy to become a member.

Full access to the portal is granted only through special invitations from other users, each of whom has a limited number of them. The number of invitations per person depends on the quality of their work and overall activity on their profile. Such a policy results in a high quality of published materials, as only those who have received an official invitation can post their work on the portal.

However, apart from being a source of design inspiration, Dribbble is now becoming an extremely helpful tool for creating a marketing strategy or building a positive image. Works published on the platform become a valuable portfolio for companies, which allows them to reach wider audiences. Collected in one place, the projects create a showcase of the business, especially helping startups that have not yet been recognized in the market.

Dribbble therefore allows you to gain an additional communication channel, helpful not only in building relationships with customers, but also with potential business partners. In addition, thanks to the materials published on the portal, the credibility of the brand increases, which positively affects its reach. A large number of followers becomes an indicator of the quality of offered services.

Dribbble can also be seen as a great sales channel as it facilitates the acquisition of new orders. A skillful presentation of your work can attract interested customers from all over the world, who without much effort, with a few clicks, have a chance to check out what exactly a company offers.

LinkedIn

Another tool that helps strengthen a company’s positive image on a large scale is LinkedIn, a social media platform that continues to gain popularity. Since the site is used by more than 660 million users every day, LinkedIn is beginning to be seen as a valuable communication channel to strengthen brand recognition in the market.

Over the past few years, the portal, founded in 2002, has significantly expanded its reach to now become one of the most recognized social networks for professionals. Analyzing the structure of LinkedIn, it can be concluded that most of its users decide to create an account in order to find a job, establish business contacts or advertise the offered services and products.

As a result, LinkedIn has become a database of more than 19 million company profiles from all over the world. So it’s not surprising that nowadays the portal is more and more frequently used for purely marketing purposes. Business profiles on LinkedIn allow you to successfully advertise the brand. LinkedIn, by promoting various forms of networking between professionals, makes communication much easier.

Thus, the platform serves as a showcase for individual companies. It is there that potential employees, customers or even investors can find relevant information. The shared content and the created network allow you to attract the visitors’ attention from the very first moment. Such a solution is eagerly used by representatives of businesses operating in B2B sectors who introduce LinkedIn into their content marketing strategy. As a result, they acquire new customers without incurring additional costs, which turns out to be particularly important for new brands.

LinkedIn streamlines the process of searching for companies, and thereby promotes building valuable business relationships. What is more, you can get or give endorsements on LinkedIn.

Anyone with an account on the portal can endorse another user on the basis of their skills or achievements. In this way, LinkedIn lets you build networks of professionals with similar interests, helping to identify key talent for individual companies.

AppSumo

The site offers a variety of digital products and services to support companies operating in various market sectors in their development. The rich offer provides access to various types of options, tools, including marketing ones, or programs to streamline all business activities.

Products offered at a lower price become an extremely useful solution, especially for fledgling startups, to which every penny counts. In addition, it is also possible to use a 7-day trial period to check whether a certain product will really meet our expectations.

There are two ways of using AppSumo. On the one hand, companies that produce and sell digital products have a chance to give huge discounts through this site. In this way, they attract new buyers who, when deciding to purchase items at an attractive price, have an opportunity to learn more about the brand. As a result, their positive experience has an influence on expanding a group of regular clients.

AppSumo sends information about available offers to thousands of its users, which instantly increases sales. Users can subscribe to receive notifications about new discounts to their email. This solution helps them keep their ear to the ground as some retailers offer a limited number of discounts that disappear quickly. Therefore, it is important to make a purchase as soon as possible.

However, apart from rather obvious advantages of using this service by companies that specialize in selling digital products, AppSumo also supports organizations on the other side of the transaction in their marketing efforts. Easy access to various digital solutions and programs that are sold at an attractive price, helps businesses from various sectors acquire useful marketing tools.

Behance

Behance is a free platform from Adobe that was created to support creative professionals, helping them generate real profits.

Users of the service create accounts, through which they then share their portfolios with the public. Viewers can browse other works, comment on them or leave likes. In this way, apart from promoting their own work, people with an account on Behance also get a chance to draw valuable inspiration from other artists.

Behance is a helpful tool for all creative businesses. The service helps to aesthetically present all the completed projects, instantly showing potential clients the style of a particular creator. We can say that the platform gives the traditional portfolio a whole new dimension. Behance users create it by combining various forms, such as graphics, text, sounds, video chats and even live broadcasts.

In this way, budding creative startups can stand out in the market by the very form of presenting their work, which positively affects the perception of the entire brand. Outstanding works with the highest number of views and likes go to the “Best of Behance” section, which especially attracts the attention of potential clients or people interested in starting creative collaboration.

It’s also worth mentioning the premium account offered by the platform. Thanks to this option, artists get a chance to share their work and special projects only with subscribers. A monthly fee is set by artists, and a partially restricted access to their best works often builds an intriguing aura of uniqueness around them.

Summary

A constantly changing market forces entrepreneurs to have a flexible approach to business.The new realities have made it clear that the traditional marketing strategies used so far are no longer sufficient. Companies, especially those just entering the dynamic market, should take a broader perspective when building advertising campaigns and use out-of-the-box tools.

Read also: How to foster a startup culture?

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