Expert Q&A for How to Grow a Startup Business

Make sure you keep all of your contact information up to date on your website so you're easier to reach.

Stay active on social media and interact with your customers to start online discussions and make connections.

Start with two marketing channels to really figure out what works for your business. That might mean your organization is focused on using Instagram to build a community and paying for Google AdWords to get more immediate results. That way, you're not overextending yourself, and you're putting in enough time to figure out what works for your business on either of those marketing opportunities.

My advice is to focus on an organic marketing opportunity and a paid marketing opportunity. Organic is something like social media or SEO, where you don't necessarily have to pay to get active on this channel. It still costs time and resources to maintain, but there's no initial cost. You're getting started on an organic channel. But it's not an overnight thing. It takes time to build an audience on Instagram, to build traction in the search results on Google. So the downside is, it takes a long time. But in the end, if you do get success there, you have more ownership of the results. Whereas a paid marketing opportunity like Google AdWords requires a budget. So that's the downside for ads. You need money. But, once you turn on the ad, it's live right then and there, so you can actually get results short term for your marketing, which is great. That's why it's a good idea to do a combination of both.