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Financial Barriers to Entrepreneurship: Marketing Your Business

At Pocketed, we strive to make achieving entrepreneurial success a reality for all who want it. But there are always challenges that will come with starting a business. That’s why we’ve created a multi-part series about financial barriers to entrepreneurship and the best ways to overcome them!

This is part 3 of the series, so go check out part 1 on abandoning your career and part 2 on building your team if you haven’t already.

This addition to the series will explore marketing! Marketing your product is an extremely important step in building your reputation as a small business. But unfortunately, hiring a marketing team or going through an agency comes with hefty price tags. Here are some of our best tips for marketing as a beginner business:

Word of Mouth

It might sound obvious, but word of mouth can be a great starting point for getting the word out about your business. Whenever you have the opportunity, make sure to bring it up. Especially if you have an interesting entrepreneur journey, people will want to listen and share your story.

(sell, sell, sell 😉)

But word of mouth can only take you so far. If you have a small social or professional circle, this tip might not be as easy as it will be for someone with a deep network. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of other ways to self-market your business or product and get the word out there!

Social Media

Luckily, in the digital age, we have social media! Social media is an excellent way to market your product to a broad audience. Set up social media accounts on all of the popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) for your business and then share those accounts to your personal platforms whenever possible. Encourage your friends and family to share your pages too to get the word out to multiple circles.

Update your business accounts as much as you can. This can be challenging, especially if you’re still juggling a full-time job. If it’s in your budget, it might be good to invest in a social media scheduler like Publer or Buffer so you can schedule all of your posts when you have time and not have to worry about them after that.

It’s also important to have a personal LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is the place for small business owners. It’s like Instagram for workaholics (just kidding)! Start building your connections and talking about your business and product on your LinkedIn page. This is a necessary step in taking full advantage of marketing on social media.

Media Contacts

Another way to get the word out about your business is to contact the media with your pitch. Prepare a short pitch about your business, but don’t be afraid to adjust it depending on where you’re reaching out to.

Look for publications or podcasts that talk about topics related to your business idea. If you see something trending in the media that you think your business relates to, take advantage of the trends and reach out with the trending angle incorporated into your pitch.

You might not hear back from a lot of the companies you email and that’s okay. Even just one big break in the media can boost your reputation hugely.

Grants

If you thought we weren’t going to mention grants, you’d be wrong. Because grants can absolutely help you in the marketing department.

Some grants will offer money towards marketing materials and promotion, but these are limited.

What we recommend you do is apply for a non-competitive hiring grant (these can cover up to 100% of salary expenses) and start to build a team of qualified marketing professionals! No you have the support and expertise you need to go to market!

There are so many ways to utilize grants and beat the financial barriers that lie ahead.

The easiest way to start taking advantage of the grant funding ecosystem is to create your Pocketed account today!

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