Ever heard the expression “you have to spend some money to make some money?” This is one of those instances. And if you spend some money the right way, you can potentially earn your company the proper investment and funding. When thinking of advertising, it usually is to sell goods or services, but you can also use it to sell yourself—because if you are trying to raise capital or get seed money from venture capitalists, that’s essentially what you are doing.
Using Social & LinkedIn in Particular to Succeed as a Start Up
There are advantages to all forms of online advertising. There are certain factors that come into play when deciding whether or not to implement social media advertising into your overall strategy, but overall, to just completely leave it out, would be a mistake.
One of the most useful social platforms for getting funds for your startup is LinkedIn. Most investors have LinkedIn profiles and they are very active on this platform. The best way to take advantage of this is by purchasing ads and targeting them based on these factors:
- The fact that they promote that they are Venture Capitalists or investors on their profiles.
- Their position or seniority for the company that they work for.
- How many years they have been in the industry.
- The investment groups that are in and participate in on LinkedIn.
Using these as your targeting factors, you can hone in on people with influence and the ability to make decisions when it comes to deciding who or what to financially back.
Search Engine Marketing
People always want to find the next best way to invest their money, and if they can cut out the middle man—meaning they look for themselves on the internet—they will do so. This is where you will make your impression. Using search engine optimization, you can target those looking to invest their money by targeting specific keywords that they are searching for using keyword research and targeting low cost terms based on competition and search volume.
Google AdWords
Google in particular is the powerhouse of search. This means that when venture capitalists are searching for terms that could get your ad in their face, Google Ads is the way to achieve that goal. There are certain aspects of advertising that you can’t get from Bing, so if you want Banner Ad Campaigns or Call Only Campaigns, you’ll need to rely on Google for these, as other search engines, such as Bing doesn’t offer these features for you to connect with investors.
Bing AdCenter
If you desire a cheaper Cost Per Clicks (CPC) and Cost Per Acquisitions (CPA), you may want to make Bing part of your marketing strategy to attract investors for your startup. Finding seed money doesn’t have to feel like “sinking good money after bad” while you wait for an investor, so keep cost low by diversifying your advertising across different SEM platforms. Also, many investors that are older than 50 use Bing disproportionately, making Bing even more attractive.
You Never Know Where Your Venture Capitalist May Be
Isn’t that the real problem? You don’t really know where you may find the investor wanting to give you your startup money, so as a company, you have to use a strategy that employs all the major platforms to reach potential investors.
