In this article, we will discuss some unique ways you can adopt to promote your business and increase your sales:
Host A Contest
If you need accelerated startup growth, consider running a competition. While we often view contests as an artificial way to gain new users, it’s still a successful strategy used by some of the most successful businesses in the last decade. Youtube has grown to become the world’s largest video-sharing site, offering a free iPod Nano every day to users who upload videos and invite friends.
If you want to grow your startup quickly, this is a great way to go. The difference is that contests are much easier to run with tools available that didn’t exist when YouTube first launched. Among today’s social networks, Facebook is one of the best places to host a competition that will accelerate the growth of your project.
Give Away Free T-Shirts
It may seem too simple to be true, but giving away free t-shirts is a great way to increase your brand awareness. Like the stickers that helped turn Reddit into a huge website, t-shirts will be associated with your brand and people will start recognizing it. For a bunch of T-shirts, use a company like Startup Threads.
You can then use these t-shirts as gifts for customers and users, or even as promotional items. If you want, you can even give away these t-shirts just for people to wear and serve as free publicity for your startup. You can even distribute your business T-shirts on global platforms. For example, while attending a CMO conference or any other such event, you can give T-shorts to the audience.
Win Over Users Of A Competing Product
How to determine which users will like your product? The answer can be very simple: look out for people who are currently using a similar product but not getting good results. When did Airbnb start? They had several competitors in the same line of business.
In order to win a large number of new customers, they decided to reach out to people who could benefit from their product. To get new users, they ran an email campaign targeting people who left their addresses to use Craigslist.
These emails were purportedly from a friendly Craigslist user sharing information about the new site with them. This email pattern was used by Airbnb, and it has given Airbnb the growth and recognition it has today.
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Association With Another Brand
If your startup is too small to attract a large audience on its own, you can create a large customer base simply by partnering with another company larger than yours. With the release of Android 4.4, Android developers partnered with confectionery company KitKat.
An Android promotion with KitKat helped bring in new customers through their collaboration. In turn, KitKat customers learned about phones and tablets. Even if you can’t partner with a company as big as KitKat, look for ways to create a strategic partnership that will help your brand become more visible in the marketplace.
Use Your Product For Social Good
If you are looking for some creative solution that will bring success to your brand, consider using the product itself for social good. How does it work? So that customers can interact with your physical product and benefit from it in a different way.
Beer company Ambev used this strategy in Brazil, allowing shoppers to scan cans to get a free train ride. This action had two goals – to reduce the amount of garbage, and also to encourage people to use public transport more often. Not to mention, it caused a big splash in the news and gave the company visibility.
