So you have a business but feel the scale of the established companies around you. Here are somethings that might help you take a little of their market;

SEO:

This is going to be a tough one. If going down this route dont think of ‘organic’ as free clicks as you’ll need some serious investment if you’re up against established businesses that likely put serious funds here along with their age in the space.

Don’t write off SEO but unless you have serious chops and budget dont put any reliance into winning big here. Think of it as establishing the platform for later growth and development some years down the track.

To get best immediate gains you should research for what the big guys are going for, and more importantly what they are not. Often you will find they are focusing on the key volume terms and as the new guy on the block you can settle to bring in volume from the less fought terms initally.

Paid Traffic:

You can come in here strong but to do in scale you will likely pay through the nose so your no.1 objective here is going to be conversion. Don’t over invest in paid til you know you have an efficient customer funnel and will make good use of the traffic. Then depending on your budget, build slowly or take what I call a shotgun approach, hit large numbers of channels and targeting criteria all at once, then pull back to what is profitable. This requires a bigger upfront spend and will take you to a volume much faster.

If you are entering a competitive and profitable sector you can easily pay $20+ per click to be in the game. So you need solid relevancy to keep price down and conversion will make or break your business model. Make sure you know what you are doing as if dropping $30 on a click you dont want to throw too much of that away. So get someone good at Adwords/Facebook etc, and dont expect to ‘learn on the job’ with your start-up college mate type deal. If the account manager is better than typical they will find aligned pockets that bring in convertors that dont cost as much as the more competitive high converting KW’s… if you can get relevance.

Affiliate:

If you look to open your business to other affiliates this can be hugely successful for the right products (not all products suit this), but be very careful. There are some snake oil sellers in this category that are extremely good at faking success. Affiliate can be a leading acquisition channel when done right but you need to keep the upper hand and deal with the right people.

Retention:

This is a key area for any business that expects repat custom. Have you systems set up early as you dont want to drop a load on ads then realise you should have grabbed their emails and re-purchase dates type thing. This can be your low cost money maker. Really think about the data points you want to preserve and use later. Treat these people well, and dont let someone squeeze another email in this month for a bit more money. Add value in every communication from their point of view and if that doesn’t convert people so be it, these are your long term value points you should build over time

Social:

This will be a core part of your audience and ability to define yourself if done well and brand building. Make sure you connect with people and listen, not tell them what you want them to hear. All the usual. If your bootstrapping, this is where many new business will connect and take market share from the big guys.

If you have any questions, get in touch, we love challenges and problems.