New business- how to build up your name...pay an agency to help!?

[LadyLouOf2]

So I am thinking of starting a new business. I will need to build a following and interest in my products via Instagram and Facebook. But I'm scared of launching a new account with initially 0 followers. Even just a few hundred looks a bit naff. And don't get me started how I go about making it all pretty and colour coordinated.

I looked into digital marketing agencies and how they could help build my brand, design my website etc. But they've quoted anything from £1.5k to £5k.
What did you do? Design your own website? How did you quickly build up a following and interest, did you play for google ads etc to accelerate interest? Any tips would be great x

I'd advise doing some research & training in marketing. Google have Google Digital Garage - a platform with free training courses in digital marketing tailored mostly to small/new businesses. Each module is only 20ish minutes long & gives you a good overview & ideas. Then you can research further if you're interested. It covers everything from websites, social media, local advertising, SEO, online advertising, key words, email marketing, analytics etc.
Mailchimp is a great free email resource.
Hootsuite can be used to schedule & monitor social media post/accounts.
Wordpress is also good for building your own website.

Don't pay an agency, whatever you do.

Build a website on something like wix / go daddy and make use of all the tools and guides, they're there to help you optimise as much as possible. Wherever there's an 'SEO' button, click it, and fill in all the page details. It makes a difference!

Utilising keywords is handy. You can get a keyword analysis on moz.com for free.

Link all your socials to the site and update regularly. If you can blog, that's ideal too.

Have a read up on YouTube optimisation if you're planning on making videos.

As mentioned, CANVA is a dream for graphics. If you upgrade to the pro version (£99 a year) you get access to all their images, and can white out backgrounds, which is really handy for product shots.

Facebook/Instagram advertising is easy, and very intuitive. Set your budget small and play with it. Make sure you fiddle with the audience reaches though, or you'll burn through £.

Go pro for Google ad words, they're a ballache. But stick with socials first, whilst you find your feet. Until your site is established and working for you re SEO, it's pointless wasting money there anyway.

There are loads of free guides and so much info online about how to build a following. I'm in the early stages of planning my business and I will be focusing on LinkedIn and Instagram because that's where my target market (students) are. Whereas FB use among them is in sharp decline.
Google likes fresh content so I will aim to publish two high quality, well written blog articles a week.
Other than that. Joining in convos online to get noticed etc, searching relevant hashtags and build a following.
I echo what the others say about Canva, easy to use and I would say especially important your social media looks fantastic given what you are selling.

Make research. There are a lot of free/semi-free services for website development (wix, weebly, shopify...).

You can do it yourself with your website unless you are very lazy. But if you do not want to do it yourself, there are SEO companies that train you or your company (if any). After training, you will be able to improve the SEO of your company or whatever it is. I think it's a rational waste of money. When I needed to understand SEO, websitestrategies.com.au/full-seo-audit/ helped me. They trained my employees. Now they can provide this kind of service themselves. I can say with complete confidence that it is worth its money.