If only a powerful service or product were the only element to affect your success, you’d have a much easier job on your hands to make your brand known. The reality is much harsher, as every business has to find a way to stand out in the constantly growing sea of startups, let alone stay at the very top of their game. The sheer fact that 90% of startups fail is enough to inspire even the most confident of business owners to take their marketing more seriously – because in addition to branding, how you market your startup will make or break your entire effort to succeed. Read these marketing essentials to help your startup.
Determine your budget
While you already know that you need to invest money in order to make some, you cannot make cash appear out of nowhere with sheer willpower. That is why it’s crucial that you have a clear view of how much you can afford to spend on your marketing tactics and then allocate your funds according to your priorities.
Even more importantly, as you move forward with your marketing, monitoring your ROI is a must so that you can weed out the less profitable tactics and invest more in those that actually deliver.
Research your audience
How can a brand bring profit if you don’t market it to the right people? Even with the best of funds at your disposal and an awesome strategy, you need to understand your potential customers before you start disseminating your story.
You should learn about your audience, see what the best times are to post online, where they spend time, how they buy, and their preferred ways of communication. All of those will affect your final marketing strategy, and it’s vital that you keep doing your research throughout every marketing campaign.
Get and stay personal
As incredible as the online world may be, connecting with your potential customers in person brings much more emotional value to your brand. When you set up an event to present your startup, and you give out the promotional items such as flash drives, mugs, hats, or umbrellas with your brand, they will be much more inclined to get attached to your company and stay loyal in the future.
Every now and then, organizing an online contest for your audience to win such an item will also allow you to use that as an opportunity to market your brand – in exchange for likes, shares, and the most creative comments, giving out free samples or trial usage of your services can actually be highly profitable down the line.
Ensure brand consistency
Nothing brings more confusion to your startup marketing than an inconsistent brand presentation. It leads to an incomplete image of your company and doesn’t serve as a solid foundation to build a strong reputation. However, with a brand book to rely on, for press releases, every online post, as well as printed material and advertisements, you can rest assured that your brand preserves its image and its voice no matter the outlet.
From every email that is written on your company’s behalf, all the way to every slogan on your website, it’s important that you don’t send out mixed signals to your audience.
Provide value through content
While we’re on the subject of consistency, you should use all of your marketing wits to make sure you give value every step of the way. Pushy sales tactics that aim only to sell a product and not build bonds have been abandoned for the sake of a more customer-centric approach.
It doesn’t matter where your brand should be, whether it’s on social media, email, or in a brick-and-mortar store, you need to constantly update your presence with valuable industry insights. Blogs, tutorials, guides, you name it, all of it should serve to educate your readership in exchange for loyalty – and sales will come as a natural result.
Build relationships
Furthermore, modern marketing strategies need to rely not only on your own efforts but on what those who actually believe in your brand can do to spread the word. Social media influencers are a perfect example of growing relationships between brands and people, whether they are celebrities or not, for the purpose of improving brand awareness as well as engagement.
Make the most of your online ambassadors by letting them build your reputation in exchange for perks and freebies, as well as an honesty-based long-term relationship.
