3 Actionable Marketing Strategies For Start-Up's In 2021
When talking about business strategy for start-ups, marketing should be one of the top priorities. Therefore, setting up a sound startup marketing strategy should be your priority if your company is still in its early stages. While having those funds you just raised is fantastic, if you don't get in front of your potential clients and customers sooner rather than later, your start-up won't last long.
This article will give you 3 actionable marketing strategies for start-up business in 2021 that will help you attract an audience and put your company on the map, so keep reading.
Tip #1: Define Your Marketing Goals Before Investing Resources
While there are things that every company needs to have, such as a website, and also things that most companies should have, such as a blog, that doesn't mean you should automatically start pouring out content from day one.
Sure, having articles on your blog is better than not having them at all. But, if you don't do your homework and define your marketing goals early, you will waste resources wandering around, losing both time and money.
Even worse, if you don't define your goals, you will have issues determining what brought the new clients/customers. If you don't know exactly what worked and what didn't, you will have a hard time optimizing your strategy, business goals, all which will lead to more wasted resources.
Therefore, it is imperative that you set up your marketing goals before you start investing resources, as it will make the process much smoother, and you will be able to optimize more easily on the go.
Define Your Buyer Personas
Before diving deep into marketing, you should define who the person you want as your customer is. Defining buyer personas will help you zero in your marketing efforts on one goal, which will lead to better-spent resources, and results that are easy to track.
Just make sure to be very specific when defining the target audience. If it is too broad, it will still lead to wasted resources. Therefore "seniors" is far too broad in most cases. Try to think about the gender, age group, location, personality, wealth status, shopping behaviour, social environment, education.
The goal here is to create a marketing strategy that will speak directly to that customer's avatar. When they find your product or service and read your blog, you want them to say "YES, FINALLY!" which isn't going to happen that often if you try to speak to everyone on the planet at the same time.
Define What Success Looks Like
Your marketing campaign should be result-oriented, which is why you want to set clear goals and define a number that will serve as a target. If you surpass that number, you reached the goal. But, if you failed even to come close to the number, something isn't right.
● For most new companies and start-ups, increasing the number of customers is the most common goal. Therefore, the result of your marketing efforts should be measurable by the increased number of customers you attracted. But, this is something that even established businesses want, which means you are probably going to strive to reach this goal in years to come too, with target numbers increasing (hopefully).
● Another critical goal new businesses need to focus on is raising brand awareness. While this doesn't directly turn into profit like increasing the number of customers does, it puts your name on the map. By raising brand awareness, people will start recognizing your start-up, and you will get mentioned when they mention your competitors too, which is a good thing. That will mean that your start-up is up there among others and that people know its name. But, it is a long way before you get there, which is why working on brand awareness is something recommended for newcomers, especially if you just completed a successful fundraiser campaign. That on its own is a massive brand awareness boost, and you should look to build on top of it.
Tip #2: Get (People) Involved
Communicate!
Content is still king, but you already know that, and you know that you should produce content. But don't stop there. Time to get into some Social media Marketing
If you write a killer blog post, share it on social channels. And don't just schedule and forget the post; get involved in conversations.
If someone asks a question, respond to it yourself. This will send a signal to your potential customers that you care and that you are not there just to take their money and vanish.
If founders and managers take time to answer questions people have on social networks from time to time, that won't get unnoticed, and you will become known in the community as a part of the pack, not just a predator who is only thinking about cash.
Another way to get your brand noticed is to get involved in forums and groups relevant within your niche or digital places where your potential customers hang out. This is a more "guerilla marketing" tip, where you will answer questions and offer help, without asking anything in return, and mentioning your start-up here and there. Eventually, you will build a reputation, and people will start viewing your profile and going to your site. That approach will tremendously raise brand awareness among your ideal buyer personas, but it takes a long time, and you can't expect results overnight.
Let Customers Promote Your Start-up
While getting involved yourself and promoting your start-up is something you should be doing, why not let your customers do the same thing themselves? There's just nothing like having happy customers recommending the products to their close ones, which is why you should implement an affiliate program or referral program. That way, if your existing customer brings in a new lead that turns into a paying customer, they get a percentage of the sale.
What makes affiliate programs great is that they have no wasted resources - affiliate commission gets paid only if the deal is closed. And if you are generous enough and give out hefty percentages, or if you decide to continue giving the fees for as long as the new customer stays subscribed, you will see sales increase graph steadily growing.
But, keep an eye on your product quality by reading reviews on independent sites and conducting surveys. You don't want to become one of those companies reducing the quality of their products along with weak customer retention, relying only on massive affiliate commissions to bring in new customers. Hosting companies with notoriously poor service do this often, with influencers and review sites recommending them, only because they give massive commissions. That is a big no-no, especially for a company that is new on the market.
Tip #3: Work On Your Offline Presence Too
Without a strong digital presence, you will not do very well in today's world, and that's a fact. But, that doesn't mean that offline presence is unimportant, on the contrary.
When trying to position yourself digitally, you are putting your start-up in front of a global market. That means you will have the potential to attract customers from all over the globe. But, it also means that you will have competitors from all over the world too.
But, if you also work on your offline marketing presence, you will be much more likely to stand out from your competitors. By getting in front of new audiences and presenting your brand in front of new eyes unfamiliar with what you do, you get a valuable chance to become the go-to name within your niche, at least for them. When they start researching, they will compare all the other names they come across to you, not the other way around.
Old-school media such as magazines, newspapers, and local TV channels are still strong. You can create an event or host a contest that might attract local media, and you may even be invited to say something in front of a camera or get featured in a magazine, all of which will draw attention to your brand.
Take Part And Attend Local Events
One of the best ways to kickstart your brand awareness is to sign up and speak at local events. Conferences, trade shows, fairs, and events organized by your local chamber of commerce are excellent opportunities for you to get in front of a new audience and introduce yourself and your company. That way, people will get to know you as a person, and you will be able to speak about core brand values which will create relationships with the brand.
What's more, after you finish speaking, you will be able to network with people from other start-ups and companies, as well as the audience. Plus, the audience will get flyers and emails with information about every person speaking at the event, which will bring more eyes to your brand. Yes, it is not very comfortable to get on stage, but it will be well worth it!
While defining marketing goals, getting staff and customers involved in the marketing process, working on your offline marketing, and taking part in local events isn't exactly reinventing the wheel, these three common-sense marketing tips worked before and continue to work in 2021 and beyond. Why? Because these are not simple one-off hacks that are aiming to trick people into buying. These are sound strategies that slowly build trust and raise brand awareness, which is why they continue to bring people in. In combination with a great product or service, these strategies will see sales follow too.
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