Image by: David Martin
By Giovanni Fields

When it comes to your business, technology can prove to be your best friend when getting word out there about your company. Sure you can walk downtown, approach everybody you see and sink into great detail about the products you have to offer, but why even bother when you can just sit in the comfort of your own home and do the same thing online?

The fact is when starting out, things may be tough and you will likely find that customers are few and far between. But with any major business comes the strenuous hard work which allows you to get to the point of success.

Hard work sounds tough, i know, but luckily for you there are ways to lessen the strain you put on yourself and your marketing campaign. One effective method that has been popularized over the years is using your customers to take up marketing duties and share some of the burden with you. So if you’re curious as to exactly how you can make this seemingly enormous feat a possibility, here are a few ways you can use technology and customers to popularize your business.

#1) Social Media

Social Media is probably the most common tool that businesses utilize when trying to popularize their products. It’s free, it’s easy to use and it’s booming with users, some sites even surpassing millions. The latter mentioned is reason enough to consider using this type of marketing, but one thing many entrepreneurs fail to realize is the competitive aspect that comes along with this.

When starting on a certain site, there will likely be thousands of other businesses similar to yours trying desperately to ambush their audiences with promotions, sales and specials. It’s important that before starting up that LinkedIn or Tumblr account that you head in with a cogent game-plan as to how you will distinguish yourself from the competition and attract the attention of your niche audience.

Before you can rely on these other users to spread word of the sheer amazingness of your product, you’re going to have to captivate them. This can be done by not only exposing a quality product that is needed in the market, but also exposing a personality that is likeable, distinct and intriguing. You may be boring and analytical in real life, but keep in mind that if you display this on the web, customers will likely not even bother considering your product, as browsers would be more likely to give their money to someone who looks like they have a quality personality along with that product.

If you are in fact boring, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with artificially contriving an ideal personality over the web. Just look at it as a marketing tactic…

#2) Blogging

Blogging is probably the most effective way to connect with your audience. They will not only see pictures and updates, but longer and more detailed reasons (i.e. regular posts) as to why they need to consider your product over others. By making these detailed posts, you will be given a chance to build a following of readers that overtime should equate to customers, and, if your lucky, other bloggers who share the knowledge you are spreading.

There are many techniques to getting customers or other bloggers to become your personal promoters. A common thing bloggers do is to make guest posts that allow your or another’s content to be distributed over a wider range of people. This is effective because if you do happen to have quality content that is invaluable to those in your market, you will be maximizing your crowd and increasing the traffic to your blog–therefore getting more customers than you would have had you not attracted those new readers. Other effective means of drawing traffic is leaving comments on other blogs (thoughtful ones, not robotic), liking other blogs and inviting your social media friends for a quick read.

#3) Website

An integral part of every company’s progress is the construction of a simple, effective and easy to navigate website. A website is not only a template for your customers to have direct access to the details of your product and the product itself, but will often times–especially if your business is run online–will be the face of your company. If a browser sees your blog or social media site and actually enjoys your personality and can relate to your product, the next thing they are likely going to do is click the link to your site.

And what will they do if it’s plain, clunky and difficult to understand? Leave, probably. This is why it’s important to make sure it is aesthetically appealing and easy enough for them to have a clear cut way to purchase your product without anything unnecessary that may obstruct a potential sale.

#4) Podcast

Are you one of the few individuals who have the vocal skills, drive and influence to run your own podcast? If so, doing this will probably be extremely beneficial to your business, as you will be showing your audience that your expertise and dedication to your product is boundless. Dedication in itself won’t bring in traffic, but something that will accrue from managing a podcast over a long period of time is fans (or regular listeners if you like).

It is well known that people have big mouths and love discussing things they enjoy. If one of these things just happens to be a podcast you put countless hours, energy and time into, then you can bed those fans are going to be reprogrammed into something along the lines of word-of-mouth-minions who have a purpose of nothing more than to spread knowledge about your business. Okay, maybe it won’t be their only purpose in life, but if your communicative skills are bomb, then it might rank high on their priority list.

Have you successfully implemented any of the aforementioned ways above to have customers babble on and on about how amazing your product is? Feel free to share with us below in the comments section!