Today, we’re witnessing a startup boom, where everyone with a bright idea, a well-developed team and enough willingness to succeed can become the next Mark Zuckerberg. The question is, how to start a successful startup?
Most likely, you think that all you need is an excellent service or product and an original brand. However, in today’s marketing-driven world, having a steady marketing plan, it’s imperative for your business success. Your startup promotion not only has to be powerful enough to engage customers but also affordable enough.
Marketing campaigns must support the continuous growth of your project. That said, you have to ensure that your startup survives the competitions and other challenges on its way.
In this article we will dive deeper into the most effective and cost-effective ideas for your startup marketing campaigns.
Target Your Audience
While increasing the user base and visibility of your startup, bear in mind one thing – it’s humanly impossible to engage or please everybody. Not everyone will be as hyped for your service or product as you’d think, and that's just fine. That said, you’ll need to know who’s going to be interested in your service or product and focus your energy and resources on them.
But where should I start?
Marketing to anyone and everyone is simply a waste of time, effort and money. Why? Because when you don’t have a clear target audience in mind, your marketing campaign will most likely cost you a fortune. Instead, try to focus your marketing and branding strategies on a specific group of individuals who sincerely have a need, a want or some interest in your business.
42% of startups failed as they weren’t able to find a market for their offerings. That’s why identifying your market needs should be one of the first steps. But if you discover that there is no market for what your startup has to offer, try not to lose you cool. Go back to the drawing board and sort out something else before you spend too much time and money.
Create a website
It goes without saying that having a website isn’t just an option but a necessity for a successful business.
In the information age, a strong online presence is imperative. A website can serve as a realistic and reliable information source for your target audience, where they can be up to date with the latest news about your business.
Contrary to what you might have heard, a website doesn’t necessarily need to be expensive. With a wide range of ready-made templates for any kind of website, you don’t even need any coding, design and technical skills.
SEO Your Startup
The next essential step of a marketing campaign is SEO or search engine optimization. This simply can’t be ignored in a world so deeply influenced by search engines such as Google. The concept behind SEO is to improve your website traffic and visibility. That said, it’s an efficient and free way to attract more potential customers. How does SEO work?
Search engine optimization has two main branches, also known as the on-page and off-page. The on-page takes action within your site, like meta descriptions, content optimization, URL, titles and many more. It allows you to rank higher on different search engines results. Meanwhile, the off-page SEO involves factors like social media shares, backlinks and so on.
Give a Presentation
If you already have some experience, bright ideas or knowledge that you’d love to share with others, then a seminar or a presentation is a sure way to go. Don’t hesitate to share your experience and promote your business in the most common and effective way possible. This can help you meet new talents, extend your reach and grow a client base.
If you’ve already booked your event location, well-descriptive popup stands should not miss within a few days before the presentation as this will allow potential attendants to get an idea on what your presentation will be about and luckily stir their curiosity. Also, try to make your presentation more engaging for the audience by including photos and informative videos as individuals tend to digest new information way easier when it’s presented in compelling visual forms.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one vital strategy for engaging potential customers to your startup for little or no cost at all. Once you’ve developed a steady customer’s email address list, you can send them an email to promote your business.
To better take advantage of this strategy, you should first learn how to collect prospect email addresses. If you already have a website for your startup, you can place a newsletter signup system on it. That, or you can directly ask your customers for their email addresses. The only thing to remember is that you have to come up with more diverse emails with non -commercial content such as how-to articles, smart and detailed guides, infographics and videos.
Social media promotion
Today, our lives revolve around social media platforms. With more than two and a half hours per day, the average usage for social media is shocking. That said, if you’re avid to push your startup forward, you’d better learn how to take advantage of this. How? Focus on being active on different social media platforms, engage your customers in bright and practical conversation and update fresh posts.
In case you find it challenging to create blog posts too often, you can share updates and relevant information in your field from reliable sources. Also, you can rely on ads and even share special offers as this can improve your reach and develop a vast customer base.
Any successful entrepreneur knows that it’s vital to get your startup both heard and noticed. As long as we live in a highly competitive society, it can be quite difficult to draw necessary attention to your brand. For this reason, you must get inventive and find new ways to expand your promotional sources.
