Ninety percent of all startup or new businesses fail within the first two years, according to the Small Business Administration.

What are the reasons for the common business failures of startups and how to avoid them?

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The main reason behind this is the lack of marketing and promotion, especially efforts by the owners which are required to promote the business to the target audience. Another is by using the wrong methods for its promotion.

Hence, the guide and tips on how to plan your promotional campaign, as follows:

1). Identify Your Target Audience.  This is the most important thing you should take care of while promoting your business. Identify the audience which would be interested in buying your product depending upon the location, gender, age etc.

Once you have identified your target customers, it is important to advertise about your product on places online or offline where they can be found. For example, in the Forum or community online or offline or in social networking sites.

2). Establish yourself as a Brand.  Everybody likes to buy Branded Products. Hence try to establish yourself as a  brand. Wear T-shirts imprinted with your brand and encourage your employees also to wear your company t-shirts while going to client meetings etc.

Create a Professional Website and Participate with your audience in various social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

3). Educate your Clients. The more you educate your customers, the more will they buy from you.  Your promotional campaign should not only contain a sales pitch but it should also answer the common questions and problems which your customers are facing.

Your promotional campaigns should tell them about the advantages of buying from you.

4). Freebies and Giveaways.  Everybody loves getting things for free. Try giving out your services or products on trial basis for free so that you can get a chance to convert them to customers in the future.  Also you can distribute some promotional items which your potential clients use a lot.

For example, if you are selling computers, you can create custom flash drives printed with your logo and distribute them among your customers. So every time a person would use that flash drive he would think about your brand.

4). Local Directories and Magazines: – If you provide services in a specific area then you can get your business added in to various local directories like Yellow Pages, local magazines and newspapers.

Since most of the people these days use search engines to find any information, you can add yourself to online local listings, Google Local Results, Yahoo Local Business Directory. Most of these directories are free and can get you good number of customers each month.

5). SEO and Online Promotion:- SEO is the process which helps to increase your website visibility in various search engines. Since most of the people prefer to buy online these days and use search engines to find products you cannot ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your site. Also you can use paid advertising methods like Google Adwords to advertise about your website online.

In summary, even though each business is different and needs a customized promotional campaign, yet the foregoing guide and tips would definitely help you to plan an effective promotional campaign for your startup business.

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The guest writer Gagandeep Singh is working as Internet Marketing Executive for Fortepromo, http://www.fortepromo.com which according to him, manufactures high quality promotional products for various businesses.