PR Start-up: Marketing your business

Published in Influence - 07 July 2022

By Mike Evans and Elizabeth Maclean, Herdwick Communications.

Knowing who you are and what you do as a business is vital. This is how you define your business model and plan, the cornerstones of your start-up. Now that the company is live, you need to realise your business plan and those all-important clients.

Marketing your business is critical. You may think that you can use your extensive network to bring in business, and you will, but it runs deeper than that.  As a start-up, you must demonstrate your credibility and capability.

Before starting anything, you need to define your messaging. This is foundational in your marketing. Your elevator pitch can’t be “erm, well…”.  Start by bringing your strengths and experience to the fore. Then by marrying them with your corporate values, you can create what you do and how you will do it.  It is a process that will give you consistency and fluidity across all your communications.

A key touchpoint where your communications will manifest is your website. Don’t be daunted; it is pretty simple to build and host yourself. There are many tools available to support you and, through the help of countless YouTube videos, you can self-teach. Professionals can help at a cost; you will need to balance your capabilities versus your start-up budget. Learning the principles behind search engine optimisation and copywriting for the web are fundamental communication skills practitioners should know. Now is the time to understand them.

Setting a content calendar for your marketing activities will see your launch efforts being rolled out promptly. Break them down by channel and message. In the first few months, it is fundamentally about making your current network know what you are doing, extending your network and keeping your audience engaged through relevant content.

Choose the social media channels that reach your audience and develop content that engages and creates shares. Short videos and podcasts are great to get your message out, but what you are looking to achieve is a two-way dialogue. Driving traffic to your website has to be another objective. Building a subscriber database that you periodically communicate with will support this objective, especially if you add compelling content to your site. 

Traditional paid communications will deliver awareness, but be careful. Know what you want to achieve, know what success looks like and measure it. Some things won’t work and some will. It is knowing the difference that matters. Being bold is good. Sponsoring a conference or holding an event may drain your budget, but with the right audience, it will help you punch above your weight, building that all-important credibility. It also helps to be a little retro by printing paper business cards and a corporate brochure. People like something tangible to hold.

Storing all your client and prospect contact information and interactions into a customer relationship management tool will help you keep up with your tasks and know your customer better. Develop the process behind it early in your business start-up. Soon you will be too busy working with your clients.

On a final point, document what you’ve done and share it. Writing this article has offered the indulgence of examining our start-up and has helped us formulate the next steps.  Sharing what we do, one practitioner to another makes us all a little bit better.