With the rise in online shopping, it’s no longer a surprise that high-quality online marketing has become a core need of every business. Whether you are the owner of a newly launched startup or an existing business, the fear of competition persists in both cases. While unique business ideas are important to stand out in the market, having these ideas reach your target audience at the right time and right place is also integral to the success of the business.
Although traditional marketing techniques are useful to some extent, businesses now need to implement strategies that are efficient as well as effective. In the era of technology, the internet is a huge enabler when it comes to digital marketing. Modern marketing techniques are helping businesses increase their engagement by reaching their potential customers globally. Various marketing strategies have proven to be helpful which include paid media advertising, social media marketing and viral marketing, co-branding and many more.
When we specifically talk about early-stage startups, the most crucial part of your initial steps includes your market research. This does not only mean determining the gap between demand and supply in the market but also establishing who your potential audience is for the product or service that you are going to offer. How do you figure that out? The answer is pretty straightforward – exceptional marketing!
As a newly launched startup, it is not necessary for you to have the product overstocked when you reach out to the market. Rather, it is helpful to figure out who wants your product and how you can reach out to them. Marketing can be highly beneficial if you consider its advantages in the short and long term, both. This article is going to list down some of the top-notch ways how marketing can be useful for your startup.
Key Reasons Why Marketing Is Important for Startups
As we mentioned before, marketing is an integral factor to consider when you are launching a startup. There are plenty of reasons why you should have a great marketing strategy for your business. Let us walk you through some of the key reasons why you need to market your startup in the most effective ways.
Customer Education
Marketing helps you spread awareness regarding the products and services you are offering. In essence, it actually helps you create a base to inform and educate your potential customers regarding your brand and its offerings. Before a customer relies on your product, they need to have a solid understanding of what they are investing in.
Equality
If you compare different modern marketing strategies, some may be more cost-effective than others. However, if you compare modern marketing with traditional marketing, the costs for modern marketing, which is basically digital marketing, are much lower. With the help of social media platforms and e-mails, you can now promote your startup just like any other business giant and reach out to consumers with a much more pocket-friendly method.
Brand Sustainability
Marketing is like food to your business – you have to feed your business every day to get the best results and help your startup business sustain the initial phase before it gets big. What it can do is help you maintain a healthy relationship with your customers so as to build brand loyalty which in turn leads to sustainability.
Choose Marketing Objectives
Marketers and successful business owners like Reid Hoffman, author of Blitzscaling, and Elad Gil, author of High Growth Handbook, emphasize choosing the right strategy when starting a business. Using traditional marketing strategies can help in gathering the required information. However, in an internet-dominated world, it could be too slow. Considering the demand for instant gratification today, efficiency is of core importance whether it is in choosing the right business strategy or designing objectives and goals.
You could have many goals for your business that need to be outlined in your marketing plans. However, some of those goals are more important than others and need to be broken down into short-term objectives and plans. In the beginning, determine where your startup stands and focus on the major marketing objectives that you thoroughly need to ensure are being fulfilled. Some of the important marketing objectives include:
- Building brand awareness
- Promotion of products and services
- Targeting audience
- Digital visibility
- Lead generation
- Retaining loyal customers
- Increasing market share
Become Successful with a Sound Marketing Strategy
Once you have fulfilled the basic marketing aspects which include the important P’s – Price, Place, Promotion and People. You then need to move on to more advanced strategies which help your business grow and become accessible to potential audiences easily. Choosing the right strategy that falls in accordance with your startup is highly important. Here are some of the popular strategies used by successful brands and businesses.
Social Media Marketing
One of the best ways to get exposure and reach the target audience for your startup is through social media marketing. Not only is it low-cost but also highly effective as social media platforms have people of different ages and from different geographic locations. With the help of social media marketing, you can easily turn your startup into a popular and profitable brand. However, it is important to know about the commonly used platforms along with the right techniques needed to promote your brand through this marketing strategy. Some of the popular social media marketing platforms include:
- Facebook – More than 2 billion users use this platform. It can provide you with any niche you want to target for any kind of service or product.
- Twitter – Used by authoritative personalities. It helps B2B as well as B2C businesses. It is slightly more expensive than Facebook. However, it allows you to broadcast ads for various goals.
- Instagram – Startups focusing mainly on fashion, fitness, health and beauty can take great help from this platform as it offers various features that can help you reach your niche.
- LinkedIn – Best for B2B startups as this platform is mainly used by professionals. If you want to carry out a thorough market research regarding your competitors, this is your go-to platform.
- YouTube – Helps create video marketing campaigns and targets relevant audience on the platform, in turn improving your reputation and generating leads for your products and services.
E-mail Marketing
Although it may seem like an old-fashioned marketing strategy, when you look at the ROI you receive on every penny you spend on your e-mail marketing, you would be surprised. E-mail marketing is in fact one of the most cost-effective strategies that you could implement for your new startup. The ROI you receive on e-mail marketing is 40 times more than any other strategy. Ignoring e-mail marketing means neglecting a large proportion of potential customers who could generate high revenue for your business.
If you have not yet launched your products or services, you can use e-mail marketing to garner customer attention by sending those customers newsletters and informing them that you are coming soon. You can also collect customer e-mail addresses to keep them updated with what you have to offer. Additionally, through this strategy you can also offer beta testing for your products and build an e-mail list. However, you need to ensure that the e-mails you are sending out are catchy, attractive, and interesting enough for the customers to read. Break down the content in small paragraphs and use simple language, otherwise they would lose focus and skip the mail. Also, you do not want to plague your customer’s mailbox which is why sending 2-3 e-mails per week is enough.
Search Engine Marketing
When it comes to digital marketing for startups, Search Engine Marketing is one of the best methods to get effective results. There are various search engines like Google where you can advertise your business and get more exposure and sales. With this strategy, you get complete analytics regarding your reach along with data and insights which can help you improve your SEM campaigns and other marketing strategies that you have implemented. For startups especially, it is recommended to start off with a small budget like $10 per day which you can stop at any time.
SEM is one of the most effective strategies. However, you need to have a certain level of expertise before you get on board with this strategy as it can be a little extra for your budget if not done correctly. In order to avoid getting overcharged, you can set a bid cap and budget limit after which your advertisement will come to a halt itself. Also, when you choose this method, it is important that you work on the look and feel of your landing page as you do not want to make your customers think badly of you solely due to a website that is not visually pleasing or interactive.
Over to You
Considering the uncountable startups currently existing, you need to be unique and stand out from your competitors to be able to get recognized as a brand. Hence, marketing is an essential part of your business and should be your main priority even when your startup goes big as it is a continuous cycle of matching new demands and trends. Good luck!
