How to Get Started With Marketing as a New Business in Kansas City

Scott Sjoberg

Scott Sjoberg About The Author

Apr 30, 2021 1:15:00 PM

 

How to Get Started with Marketing as a New Business in Kansas City

When your business is new, no one knows what your business is or how it can solve its problems. When you're establishing your new business, you need a solid marketing foundation to attract leads, spread your message, and gain traction as quickly as possible. Dedicated customers are the best way to grow your business so your revenue can start to outstrip your expenses. Follow these four tips for starting to advertise new businesses in Kansas City. These recommendations will help you kickstart your first campaign and build a strong foundation for future campaigns.

Advertise Early (But Not Too Early)

The purpose of your business's first marketing campaign is to build anticipation. You want to have clients eagerly waiting for your doors to open so you can start making sales as soon as possible. This means launching your first ads and marketing material before your business starts.

What Time Is the Right Time to Start Marketing?

Advertise early when marketing in Kansas City

A good rule of thumb is to start your marketing campaign a month before your doors open. Direct mail, local ads, and good signage let consumers know that your store will open soon. You can send promotional materials, such as coupons, to nearby shoppers to kickstart your business growth and turn your opening day into an event. The more familiar your target market is with your brand, the better — especially if you can start building that relationship before you have to pay for daily overhead like rent, employees, and insurance. But don't start too early: you risk losing your audience's attention or spending too much of your marketing budget on leads who are already interested and waiting.

If your business is already open, there's no better time than right now to start advertising. Focus on materials that get customers in the door or on your site.

Learn more about brand strategy!

Determine Your Advertising Goals

Each of your marketing campaigns should fulfill a specific purpose. For example, you could:

  • Focus on building leads with promotional offers and freebies
  • Secure larger jobs or carts with discounts and buy-one-get-one offers
  • Increase brand awareness with informational campaigns
  • Promote a single product or service based on seasonal appeal

Once you identify the goal of your next (or first!) campaign, you can better align all of your messaging. Your call-to-action can directly relate to the purpose. Your marketing materials can also share details about a specific product, highlight a particular promotion, or meet the needs of a particular customer persona. 

Good planning makes your whole campaign more purposeful and reduces the risk of overspending or poor lead conversion. You can also more easily measure if your campaign is succeeding or needs more fine-tuning. While it's important to start marketing your new business quickly, it's just as important to plan your goals and creative material.

Learn Who Your Customers Are

Know who your customers are when marketing in Kansas CityYour target market shouldn't be "everyone." You risk diffusing your brand and not being able to serve your customers' needs, as well as a competitor who focuses on one specific niche or customer group. Instead, identify your target market.

Research consumers in the Kansas City area to build 'buyer personas:' detailed profiles of your ideal customer, including information such as problems your products can solve, their preferred media and entertainment, their budgets, and more. 

For example, a local landscaping business might target homeowners that make approximately $80,000 a year and need essential lawn maintenance; this is a very different market than homeowners with $500,000+ incomes with more extensive and more detailed properties.

Once you've researched your market and created buyer personas for your business, you can:

  • Direct your marketing materials toward them with messages that address their needs and even paid advertisements on the entertainment platforms and channels they prefer.
  • Segment your audience to create different campaigns for different groups.
  • Analyze your marketing results with a more detailed approach.
  • Test messages to more efficiently convert new customers of different buyer persona types
  • Save money on your marketing campaigns by making sure different messages reach the right audiences. 

Track Your Advertising Success

All of your marketing campaigns should include a process for measuring their success. With online paid ad campaigns, you can break down traffic sources to see how many new customers reached you by clicking on your ads. Alternatively, you can give your mail and email subscribers a coupon code and track how many purchases used that code. By building analytics into your marketing efforts, you can assess how beneficial different campaigns are for growing your business. You can also see how many interactions a customer has with your brand before they make a purchase and how far-reaching your campaigns can be before the ROI starts to diminish.

Tracking does more than let you measure your campaigns after the fact. You can also test different messages, promotional offers, and other details to see which factors make or break a sale. Use A/B testing to test different ad variations to different portions of the same audience and see which version is the most effective.

Learn more about measuring your ROI

Advertising Your New Business Is Essential

When you have a new business and start a marketing campaign, sooner is almost always better than later. But instead of rushing to send your first ad, take the time to determine your goals, find the right audience, and make sure you can measure your campaign’s effectiveness. 

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Topics: Kansas City Market​