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So, you decided to start a new business and landed on this blog. Welcome! But now you’re thinking, “where do I even start when it comes to Marketing my new company?” It can be overwhelming for new business owners to figure out what needs to be done first and in what order. To help you get started, we’ve put together a list of the Top 5 Steps to take when marketing your new business.

Step 1 – Create Your Brand

You probably have a name for your company already. Or maybe you don’t. Either way, you should build out your brand first. A brand identity covers everything from creating a company name, designing a logo, choosing color pallets, and selecting fonts, to establishing core values, product and services messaging, and the overall personality of your business. It’s about creating your story for the company and shaping how customers view and relate to your business.

Creating a brand is where advertising agencies are worth the investment. Agencies are experienced at creating brands and using proven processes to help tell your story. While it may seem simple on the surface, creating a powerful brand and logo is one of the most challenging tasks in marketing. While your brand identity should be simple enough to stand-alone, it also must be sophisticated enough to convey the entire identity of your business quickly, easily, and unmistakably.

Because your brand identity directly affects relationships with customers, partnering with an advertising agency to give you the best possible outcome for the way you’re positioned in the marketplace is perhaps the most important investment you can make when starting a new business.

Agency Tip: Meet with different agencies to understand how they work and ask them to share examples of their brand identity work for other companies. It’s also wise to ask for estimates on how the process will work so that you know what to expect in each phase of the project.

Step 2 – Build Out Your Website

Once your brand identity has been created, it’s time to build out your storefront. Sure, maybe you aren’t retailing products and services online, but every business needs a website presence. Storefront is the term we use to describe what your business looks like in an online environment. It is where prospective customers typically go first go to get to know your company and your products and services.

Building a website isn’t an easy task. Because it’s the online view of your entire brand identity for the world to see, you want to make sure you put your best foot forward. You have one shot to grab a customer when they land on your website, so the impression they get when they land there is critical.

One option is to use website builders like Wix, Square Space, Go Daddy and more. They offer generic templates with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing platform. Some are more intuitive than others. If you are a creative person and enjoy learning new things, it’s possible this DIY route can work for you.

But if you want a website that uniquely positions your company and its brand personality rather than a cookie-cutter template, it’s best to partner with a firm who has experience in building websites. Generally, businesses will hire an advertising agency who can do your brand identity and website in a bundled approach. Using one creative agency for this work helps ensure overall brand and website cohesiveness.

Agency Tip: Building out a new website can be costly. Keep in mind when starting a business, you don’t initially need a robust, expensive website. Sometimes it’s best to start with a simple one-page vertical scroll site until you have grown enough to invest in a more detailed, expanded site.

Step 3 – Establish a Google Business Account

If your business has a physical address, it’s important to make sure you claim that business address by creating a Google Business Account. Your Google Business Account alerts search engines to your business location, hours of operation, products, services, and customer reviews, all which are all critical to customers finding your business online.

Anyone searching for a business like yours will see listings in search results that are closest in proximity to where they are searching from online. A Google Business account is a simple and easy way to pick up new customers

Agency Tip: A Google business listing is something you can manage on your own or engage an agency to help with. The trick is to make sure you’re constantly uploading new photos, updating information, and gathering customer reviews for your listing. The more Google sees activity on your business listing, the higher you will rank in searches.

Step 4 – Create Relevant Social Media Profiles

New businesses should always be thinking about which social media channels are most relevant to the products and services they provide. Depending on whether your business is a B2B (Business to Business) company or a B2C (Business to Consumer) company, some social media channels work better than others.

Having a presence on social media channels gives you multiple ways to be creative with your marketing tactics. The most important thing is to understand the audiences in each of the social media channels. What works on Facebook and Instagram, may not work at all on LinkedIn or X. Social media channels have their own identities, so you must know how to engage with each audience in each particular channel.

Agency Tip: When you engage an advertising agency to handle your brand identity, be sure to get their thoughts on how they would recommend using social media channels to tell your story. It will give you a roadmap as to what and how to post in those channels, especially if you plan to manage social media on your own.

Step 5 – Use Digital Advertising to Build Engagement

Once you have your brand, website, business listing and social media channels ready, you’ll want to look at using digital advertising to drive new traffic to your site. When you first build a website, it takes a while for Google search engines to start ranking your site. Many factors go into site rankings, and it won’t happen overnight.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to do search advertising and possibly display advertising to drive traffic to your new site upon launch. There are many ways to target potential customers effectively, and this is an area where an advertising agency can lend valuable support.

Advertising agencies have deep knowledge on how Google ad platforms work, and they know how to effectively target ads, so you don’t waste money on an audience who isn’t interested in what you have to offer. Digital advertising is one of our biggest strengths at Leverage3 Marketing Group because we use a proprietary methodology that is deep in science and experience.

Agency Tip: You don’t need a huge budget to see digital advertising results. Talk to your agency about what you are trying to achieve and the dollars you have set aside for marketing, and they will help you manage your budget as effectively as possible.

Want to Get Started with an Agency?

At Leverage3, we enjoy working with startups and new business ventures because it’s a blank canvas from which to create; we take great pride in making sure our clients are enthusiastic about their new brand and, more importantly, that it’s a brand identity that resonates with their customers. Contact us to learn more about how we work and to get started.