In initially forming your business, you might have decided to hold off pouring a lot of your time and attention into marketing for the time being. However, this could be a surprisingly costly mistake; in fact, much research you have already carried out could feed directly into your marketing efforts.

You might fear that learning how to market like a master could require extensive time and resources you simply don’t have – but that doesn’t strictly have to be the case if you follow these tips.

Weigh up your competition

Your company’s brand can be instrumental to its marketing success. The brand should effectively summarize what your business is about – but, before you can craft a brand capable of doing this, you should be thoroughly aware of rival companies’ brands, advises Startups.co.uk.

If those competing brands are similar in image, color scheme or values, you could create more differentiation with the same aspects of your own brand.

Consider – and build around – your company’s USP

If you have gone as far as starting a business in the first place, you were probably driven by having a business idea that significantly differs from what was already on the market. You could call this idea your unique selling point – or, for short, USP.

Whatever your own company’s USP, endeavor to define it and build the brand around it. Through doing this, you can help yourself to put a particularly unique spin on your firm’s marketing.

Don’t slack with the quality of your customer service

You might think that customer service isn’t strictly a marketing concern, since you may be trying to use marketing as a means of attracting people to experience that customer service in the first place.

However, customer service can actually serve as a surprisingly effective marketing tool in itself. This is because, if you deliver consistently good service, this will positively affect the company’s reputation – and, therefore, its brand, which can be affected by much more than just visual imagery.

Hence, if a competitor is currently providing service better than yours, endeavor to close that gap. Your customers will certainly appreciate it, and many should forgive you for occasional slip-ups if you quickly and suitably rectify the situation.

If a blunder is serious enough to cause injury to a member of the public, you might need to pay them compensation. You can help yourself fund such a payout if you have public liability insurance, a cost-effective policy for which could be provided by the UK-based broker Be Wiser Business Insurance.

Consider placing advertorials in relevant publications

If there are certain magazines, newspapers or journals which your target customers are particularly fond of reading, you could investigate the possibility of having advertorials in those publications.

An advertorial can look very much like a newsworthy article, but seamlessly integrate details that help to promote a particular company or something it offers. According to research mentioned by Bytestart.co.uk, advertorials attract more readers and responses than standard advertisements.

Don’t overlook the usefulness of video marketing

You might have previously ruled out video marketing on the basis that your business couldn’t possibly have sufficient expertise or funding to effectively use it… surely?

You could be hugely mistaken on that point. As pointed out in thisForbes article, you could attract plenty of clicks and comments even just on videos that you post on YouTube. Furthermore, innovative methods of producing video advertising have recently been introduced.

It could be well worth you researching those methods, as almost 90% of visitors will stay for longer on a website with video than a competing site lacking footage.