Leading your target customers to your product can be the most frustrating aspect of starting up a new business. Though there are thousands of articles, books, videos, seminars, and other teaching tools available that claim to be the answer to your marketing woes, the reality is that whatever route you choose you will need two things — time and money. Having more of one can make up for less of the other, but the sum total must give your startup a shot at success. Money buys you ad space, buys you market information, and buys you tools to create awesome marketing messages. Time buys you…well, time! No matter how you plan to promote your business, it takes time to build your brand and customer base.

There are five basic promotional elements in marketing, and here your web presence is considered the sixth. Though internet marketing technically falls under several of the other elements, it is so important for every business to be on the web, and the way you promote your website is so important, it should be considered a separate element altogether. The other five promotional methods are advertising, sales promotions (like coupons and specials), direct marketing, personal selling, and public relations. The best mix for your business depends on a number of factors, including the best way to reach your specific market. Whatever mix you decide to try, every element will take time to develop. Research shows that consumers need to be exposed to a brand five to nine times before they buy. It is more effective if they see the marketing message through different mediums, as opposed to seeing the same ad five times.

Print advertisements generally have a pretty long lead time, except perhaps for your local newspaper. For most magazines, it takes around three months from submitting your ad copy to seeing it distributed in print. The cost of print ads ranges from a few hundred dollars for a local or small specialty periodical to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a full page in a national magazine. Sales promotions can be developed relatively quickly, but you need time to get the word out in order for them to be effective. The cost is limited to whatever you offer, plus the cost of advertising the promotion. Direct marketing requires a target to market to…meaning either you need time to build your customer database or you must buy a list and hope it works. The cost of building your own list is, for all intents and purposes, time more than money. Mailing lists or email blasts vary widely in cost per name, but the results of these efforts have been declining in recent years. One reason is their overuse — 90% of all emails are spam (read advertisements).

Personal selling requires that you find the leads, pursue them, and close the deal, an effort that can take weeks to months, depending on what you are selling. The costs of personal selling vary depending on your methods and size of the area you serve. Employees of a retail store fall under personal selling, as do jetsetters who take meetings coast-to-coast, so the amount of cash required to close a sale completely depends on your method. Every business should include public relations in their marketing mix, but it also takes time and a little luck for those efforts to pay off. A significant portion of your public relations efforts can be completed for no money, just a little time, though there are services available that can get the word out to more sources for a reasonable fee.

A web presence is an absolute necessity for any new business. However, merely uploading a web site to the internet will not suffice. Posting a website without marketing it is like placing your ad copy in a bottle and setting it afloat on the sea, if nobody sees it, it might as well not exist! Promoting your website should be incorporated into every element of your marketing mix. The web address should be included on all printed materials, including business cards, letterhead, and print ads. In addition, it is important to implement search engine optimization methods so that sites like Google and Bing can find your site when people search for your keywords. This is even important for local brick-and-mortar businesses — searching the web is quickly replacing searching the Yellow Pages, and when your potential customers search for “pizza Las Vegas” online you want to be sure your name shows up. Between the software and services you need to launch your website, plan to spend at least $250 over the first year. Building traffic to your site will take time, and can be enhanced through other paid marketing efforts.

Effective marketing requires two things — time and money. While more of one can make up for less of the other to some extent, these two factors are the basic needs for any startup marketing plan. There is a common but irrational belief among first-time entrepreneurs that once you open for business, you can sit back and wait for customers to come to you. This misconception is exacerbated by ads for MLMs and other startup scams that claim you will see immediate income by simply buying in to their product. In reality, any and every product requires marketing to sell, and effective marketing takes time and money to be successful.

K. MacKillop, a serial entrepreneur with a J.D. from Duke University, is co-founder of LaunchX LLC and authors a small business startup blog. The LaunchX System, a five Unit series of step-by-step business startup procedures, key business software, and marketing reference books, is designed to assist entrepreneurs in developing a business idea into a successful company. Visit LaunchX.com and get on the road to business startup today.

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