I have recently launched my global consulting company (May 2014), as well as launching a one day event/expo for young entrepreneurs (Feb 2015). I am facing similar challenges regarding the exposure and creating awareness.
I have decided to give my website a face lift, work with a company to push emails out, and also attend 5-10 networking meetings per week in the metro area where I live. I have joined several local business associations, networking groups, and post very targeted industry information on social media. The data base that I have built is just short of 1,000 contacts. These contacts are all accurate. I usually generate 15-20 strong contacts per meeting. I have an open rate of 37% on my email campaigns and the web site has generated over 198,000 impressions in 6 week. Not a lot for the more established industry gurus and sites, but I am pleased with it.
I really work hard on the community connections. This has worked well. Now, after about 8 weeks of activities, my project is known in the metro area. All of my sales and 5 domestic and 4 international start-up clients are a direct result of these activities.
You might want to consider presenting in local Meetup meetings. We have a Tech Village here in Atlanta and the networking meeting draws about 400 people. I am very selective and prepare each and every of the networking meetings one or two days in advance.
I know that it is time consuming and not everybody believes in face-to-face networking like that. It works for me.
Call me if you have additional questions about networking and my results.
