Starting a new business can be exciting but equally overwhelming. How do you set yourself apart? Why should the audience connect with your vision instead of an already established business? The answer to these questions is simple- an effective startup marketing strategy.

From your point of view, the product you have created may surpass that of your competitors. However, in reality, your product doesn’t hold much weight unless and until you work on selling it properly. Just because you know your product doesn’t mean everyone else will be on board with the same mindset. But marketing does exactly that—it makes the audience aware of your product and your vision so they eventually want to buy it.

You need a plan to help you identify your key demographics, marketing channels that work for you, help you gain an edge over your competitors, and other necessary aspects. In this blog, I will discuss how you can devise such a plan and your options to make your startup successful.

Develop a strategy

The first and foremost thing you need to do is create a strategy. Start with setting up goals for the initial phase of your business. This way, you will have a clear direction in mind and can align the tasks accordingly. Additionally, you will have something concrete to get all the employees on the same page. Shooting in the dark may give you several lucky chances, but a plan is always the way to go forward in the long run.

By figuring out the numbers you need to achieve to get on a good run for your money, you can also see which channels to emphasize. You’ll know where to spend the most money and what to prioritize. This brings us to the matter of budget.

As you might have already figured out, setting up a budget for marketing is critical. While it’s very likely that you may need to put less or more money into specific channels when things get going, moving forward without a budget could get you in the ditch. Making adjustments along the way is bound to happen, but you’ll have a basic idea of how much you are spending and how to create a budget plan in the future.

Understand your audience and see where you fit in the market

Before you even think about marketing your product, you must have a clear and concise idea of your audience. It is so important because if you understand your key demographics, you will be able to target them correctly.

For instance, is your product for teenage kids? Or does it cater to the needs of a SaaS company? You see, the messaging for both these scenarios will vary extensively. Therefore, if you don’t know to whom you are selling your product, there’s no way you can build effective marketing campaigns. And it’s all about the messaging, folks!

Studies show that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support

Another thing you have to pay attention to is the market and the industry. Get an accurate sense of your competitors’ performance and tactics to target their audience base. And before, know what the competition is like- are you up against a saturated market, or does it have scope for you to make your place in it? Are most of your competitors established, or are you competing with other startups? These questions are essential to consider and will help you learn where your focus should be.

Content creation

Now, this is an important one. You need your website to be an educational and informative content hub. Believe me when I say that prospects highly value good content. Although not everyone who comes to your blog will convert into a client, that won’t be because of the inefficiency of this channel.

Use search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword tools like Ahrefs to ensure you write about suitable topics. See what kind of content your competitors are churning out and why that content is ranking. It’ll be some time before your blogs start ranking organically. However, you can use paid ads or social media until then. Remember that quality content that is easy to understand should be created.

Channels like blogs also help you build a subscriber list. You can engage these visitors through a weekly or fortnightly newsletter, and if they show further intent, you can target them with marketing nurture emails.

Besides blogs, you can create gated content like eBooks, guides, white papers, and industry reports. This will help you get information about visitors, after which you can start nurturing them. When you have established a name in the industry, webinars and podcasts are great channels to grow your engagement further with your audience. These channels help you create thought-leadership content, which can strengthen your position in your niche.

Companies create a broad range of different videos. 42% mostly use live action video, 33% primarily use animated videos and 15% mainly use screen recorded videos.

Content distribution

Once you have created meaningful content, you must ensure it reaches the right people. This can be done in several ways:

• Use social media: Platforms like LinkedIn are great for spreading your content. Create compelling posts about your recent blogs or upcoming events to keep your audience updated.

• Paid ads: While creating resources like guides or whitepapers sounds interesting, it might be hard to distribute them. One solution is to run paid ads to promote such content. Have clear and compelling messages on your creatives that let people know how a particular resource could be valuable for them.

• Focus on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Once you create a blog channel, you leverage it to increase submission rates for your other resources. CRO-based optimizations can help you do this. Focus on interlinking your blogs and resources, building backlinks, and using forms between blog content to promote resources. You can also leverage a sidebar or a top sticker to run creatives for newsletters or resources.

82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts

Email marketing

Email marketing is practically the backbone of your business. Your business will likely take a severe hit if you cannot implement a highly effective email marketing strategy. As discussed, you can build a great email list through blogs and resources. These people have shown interest in the industry, so now you have a reason to target them further.

Investing in marketing automation software that will provide you with all the necessary insights for developing a solid email marketing strategy would be a good idea. Automation is critical for correctly targeting the audience, so don’t overlook it.

A marketing automation software will allow you to personalize the content, integrate CRM insights, and help you automate campaigns to effectively move leads down the funnel.

Leverage social media marketing.

Social media is an easy way to reach audiences quickly. Because social media platforms are constantly growing, it is imperative to leverage their popularity to build a business.

How you use social media platforms will depend on your business type and the product you are selling. A B2C business could benefit immensely from an Instagram account or a Facebook page. On the other hand, in the case of a B2B business, you should primarily focus on running ads on social media channels.

Most importantly, it would be best to determine which social media channels will benefit you the most. You should know which platform will be better for promoting what. Take LinkedIn, for instance. It is a good channel to keep people in the industry updated. Similarly, Twitter could be a way to attract new leads. The type of audience you are dealing with also plays a significant role here.

Once you decide on the previous part, ensure that you are familiar with all the tactics needed to increase the reach- the time range when you should be posting or the frequency of your posts.

Run paid ads

I have already touched upon the matter. However, you should know that running paid ads could give you quick results, which is not the case with other content forms. Ads are a way to let people know that you exist, and they could leverage your service if needed.

You can leverage different forms of advertising to target different audience segments. Leveraging different paid ad strategies to maximize the return would be best. For example, running ads on social media could bring you a new set of audiences. You can nurture these prospects and turn them into leads. Facebook advertising is huge these days, and following best practices can be a great way to reach people. Other than Facebook advertising, you can go for Google ads and Google Adwords.

Google ads can be beneficial if the search query related to your product ranks high. With Google Adwords, you can purchase inventory on websites linked to your industry and run ads there. For instance, running ads for food products and dog toys on a website focusing on animal foster care would be a good idea.

Several other advertising options exist, including Twitter advertising, Google retargeting, and Reddit advertising, which you can investigate if you think such platforms could help your business.

Build a digital PR strategy.

After your content ranks organically, you can invest in digital PR for branding. Press releases about your products or services, virtual events (fireside chats), and thought leadership content go a long way toward establishing the brand name.

You will get backlinks for your website through such events, which will further ensure increased traffic to your website. As more people start to know about your product, you’ll see that your social media presence and content rankings are improving significantly.

As your business starts taking flight, you can also participate in industry award programs. This could be a great way to establish a global presence. Have a PR strategist who can deal with journalists, has a great network, and keeps track of industry-related events.

97% of B2B customers cited testimonials and peer recommendations as the most reliable type of content.

Additional points to consider:

• If you don’t focus on creating SEO-optimized content, ranking blogs won’t be easy, which could seriously affect the lead-generation process.
• Remember A/B testing when leveraging email marketing and paid ads. You never know which iteration will work best for your business.
• Focus highly on segmenting your audience for better results.
• Connecting with customers on social media could improve your online presence and help establish your brand.
• You should use client testimonials and user-generated content to influence prospects or leads.
• Once you have enough clients, a referral program could help bring more customers.
• If you can offer a free product trial, I’d say go for it. It will help build trust among leads and clients.

In closing

As daunting as starting a new business may be, you have many tools to ensure you don’t fade into the background. It’s all about the strategies you use and how you use them. A successful venture would require using many strategy in collaboration with each other.

Lastly, focus on building a solid message and constantly experiment to find the best channels for you.

Sources

• Oberlo: Video Marketing Statistics
• wyzowl: Video Marketing Statistics
• Livestream: Video Strategy Marketing Statistics
• thismoment: content marketing customer reviews