What are the steps to Promote and advertise my Business and reach clients?

[michele]

I launched my Business int he UK London , in Private functions and catering.

What exactly do I have to do in order to reach potential customers? Do you know any specific Company/agency which i should rely on to promote my business and advertise it in a massive way?

What social media should I use? what people should I look for to hire in order to develop and exand my business?

Most of all, If i organize Weddings , how do I get customers? How do i reach people? What are the best ways in order to start making money?


Please help me, thank you

[Crystal vhiony]

There are actually endless possibility and strategy to promote your business in your location. If you only want to promote you business in UK, there is this thing that we call Local SEO. You can start building local citations in your place so people can easily notice you the moment they look up something on web like "functions and catering London". Or you can also start optimizing your website for good. I believe that there is no easy way to get found in a snap of a finger but you can stay at the top of the search engine results pages for long-term results.

You can go looking for SEO company which offers complete and strategic SEO packages. For example, http://www.seoexpertpage.com/ offers on-site and off-site optimization, local SEO, content creation and optimization, social media campaign, and more. Every business has a different need and the things you should be doing is something tailored for your business' unique needs.

[John Ashtone]

What experience in this area do you have?

If none then you have an uphill struggle, most people who start businesses have some contacts within the trade to start with, and work from there.

What catering experience do you have, or what places or companies were you going to use, if you don't have these lined up already I suggest you go back to basics and write out a plan of action.

List the people you will need to call on, then do some googling and check out 192 and Yell, get a list of places and venues that are suitable for you to handle (so not the O2 arena lol) small venues, phone these up and ask what run in times you need, My Mum is having a birthday ~do~ in April and she booked the venue back in September.

Next Weddings are okay, but most are planned at least a year in advance, so you will have a long time to wait for cash, organising small venues for local small companies or birthday parties might be a good thing to look at.

What does your website say you handle, you do have a website don't you?

How much have you budgeted for a website, if you haven't, then you haven't done a business plan, which I suggest you do, your bank will supply you with some software to do this, this ids the link for HSBC, but all the major bnaks do business planning software.

http://www.business.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/start...iness-plan

I have found HSBC to be the better of a mixed bunch, when it comes to business banking, and I have found also that the longer you are with them the better they treat you.

Don't pay a fortune for a website, but also don't try doing it for free, because having other peoples adverts (and that is what happens with doing a website for free) detracts from the purpose of your site.

I used a web design called Weebly to set up mine, but I have now transferred to Wordpress for more versatility, however i would recomend Weebly to start with as the results are very professional, but you are limited to six pages, which in your case should be more than adequte.
http://www.weebly.com/

It is probably best to have a diferent web hosting company.
http://top10best.webhosting.co.uk/

For what it is worth I am with Just host that I find quite good.

I am not that good on social media, Faceache I find not very good, but Twitter works well.

If you want to get an advertising agency you need a small one to start out with, because the large agencies cost a fortune.

Beware I have just googled small local ad agenices in london, and BBH was the second on the list lol, Bogle Bartle and Hegarty (I am sure they choose odd names then decide to build an agency around the names) are one of the largest nad best ad agencies in the World?

And the first on the list was another global comapny.

I will let you search for a small agency, but this list might help
http://www.freeindex.co.uk/categories/ad..._agencies/

[robert m]

B4 launching any business you really need a business plan - it sounds as tho' you have just missed this stage/ There are loads of places to get business advice so do a google search and find some and they will help you prepare a practical business plan that will cover all these issues.