Marketing your startup or small business has never been easier. Here are a few basic tips for business owners who want to DIY market and most effectively use all of the amazing tools that are available out there to make marketing a snap for pretty much anybody. 

Create a Content Marketing Strategy 

If you are still trying to get a grasp of where to begin when marketing a startup or small business, this is a good place to start. Creating original content that is relevant to your business, and also manages to highlight your best attributes (whatever that may be, relative to your service or product) is essential to a good marketing campaign. Finding the most effective channels to present your original content to the public is the second challenge that has to be met, and even though this takes some time and patience to start to see results, it is one of the most effective marketing strategies to build upon for a small business. 

Utilize Social Media

Services such as Hootsuite will streamline your social networking campaigns across several platforms for a nominal fee, which might be worth the extra expense to owners who have a lack of time or personnel to adequately market to all of the major platforms that most customers will expect a company to have a presence of some sort in. Facebook has fairly extravagant marketing options (and 2.74 Billion active users, as of 2021), and depending on how much money you want to spend, it can be effective at getting your brand out there, but neglecting to spend time getting your brand on YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and others is a real waste of potentially excellent marketing avenues. 

Top Ten Best Social Networking Platforms for Marketing for 2021* 

(*Including apps, plus honorable mention; metrics courtesy of Statista)

1. Facebook: the grand-daddy (which, one could suppose, makes MySpace the great-grand-daddy)

2. YouTube: finally learning to use that film editing software might be worth your time after all

3. WhatsApp: owned by Facebook, this cross-platform app offers centralized messaging plus voice-over-IP services 

4. Facebook Messenger: so effective it is listed separately from its parent company

5. Instagram: yet another platformed that was absorbed by Facebook; the original selfie factory — allows easy cross platform integration with Facebook ads

6. WeChat: popular Chinese social media platform with messaging and mobile payment features; nicknamed “China’s app for everything”

7. TikTok: even after receiving some negative press in the red states after being purchased by a China-based corporation, TikTok remans at

8. QQ: popular Chinese free messaging app with over a billion users; features free language translation and the ability to add on friend accounts from other platforms

9. Douyin: TikTok’s Chinese brand

10. Sina Weibo: free Chinese microblogging site

Honorable mention: Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat, Kuaishou (aka “Kwai”), and Telegram (a cloud-based, free, open-source messaging app that is cross-platform).

Explore Alternatives to Digital Marketing

After Covid kept the world in lockdown in 2020 and into 2021, leaving the masses stuck at home with only their screens to keep them entertained, there is an anticipated backlash to online and digital ads in this crucial time of post-Covid advertising. Try exploring alternative or older methods of advertising, like grassroots methods, print ads, or radio ads. Thinking outside of the box is the best way to approach this idea, finding innovative methods to get the bug that is your brand into the ears of people you want to be your clients. 

One great way to market outside of social networking platforms is text marketing. Offering small incentives to have customers sign up for text-based advertising notifications can help you to accumulate a database of your customers for use in promotions, sales events, and many other great incentives that will keep your most loyal customers happy, and make new loyal customers who can be reached by the ubiquitous smartphone that seems to be nearly bioengineered as an extension of many people’s arms, 24/7. 

Another surprising advertising form that is on an upward trend post-Covid is direct mail marketing. As people have been spending more time at home, there has been an upward swing in the effectiveness of this ancient marketing method. Who knows how long it will hold out, but it allows for some creative ideas to be transformed into the kinds of advertising you can hold in your hands. Free product samples, promotional items with branded advertising, and other things that have been a big hit in decades past will appeal to the nostalgic side of older adults, and perhaps charm those who are too young to remember when this kind of advertising was a staple of business.

Have a Presence on LinkedIn

If your business relies heavily upon the direct interaction of salesmen with your prospects on various social media platforms, LinkedIn is a platform that you don’t want to neglect to have a presence on. Although advertising with LinkedIn is a little steep compared to other platforms, consider how many real players in the business have abandoned Facebook, but rely upon LinkedIn to network their business presence. This has made LinkedIn an increasingly popular place for businesses to conduct social selling. 

Consider Alternative Ways to Finance Your Marketing Department

Business owners sometimes neglect to budget enough for effective marketing campaigns, and often when cash flow is extra tight, marketing efforts might be one of the first things to get thrown out the window in order to keep the ship afloat. 

The need for marketing can’t be overstated in a number of businesses, so it might be wiser to take out a small loan to gain the equity you need to build your brand and accelerate sales. If you are cash poor and need to promote in order to build up sales, there are services like Gourmet Growth out there that offer small loans that can be obtained faster than traditional loans, and whose function is to provide equity to small businesses and startups to help them grow, even if funds are tight at key moments. 

Influencers are More Useful Than Ever

Brand advocates such as internet influencers and celebrity spokespeople are trending as an important and useful marketing method. Although this kind of marketing is as old as marketing itself, it is more useful than ever in 2021, and time spent on building up brand advocates for your startup is time spent wisely. Wooing your target market with the thumbs up from people they like and trust is a great way to build a business, as much today as it always has been. 

Instagram Reels Are Gaining Popularity

Instagram Reels, launched in August of 2020, is a video clip function through IG that allows users to create 15-second videos, with multi-clip capabilities, and (of course) audiovisual effects that are user friendly. The no attention span length video clip has been a consistent winner in the post-internet age again and again, and Instagram Reels is no different, as it gains popularity with advertisers and the public alike in 2021. 

There are a few tips to get your business’s name out there in 2021. It can be intimidating to the uninitiated, but since you love your brand more than anyone else ever will, the best choice of head of marketing for a small business or startup is the owner, and luckily it is easier than ever to accomplish a great deal with little or no knowledge about marketing or its affiliated skillset. Get out there and start pimping out your brand.