10 startup marketing strategies

Did you start a startup? Do you know startup marketing methods? Stay with us in this article to learn about successful startup marketing strategies.

Have you recently entered the field of startups? Are you new to content marketing? With so many things to do to start a business, there is little time left to put together effective and appropriate strategies. If you are in the same situation, there is no need to worry because our goal in this article is to find the right strategy for new businesses. You are probably familiar with the tools that startup marketing experts consider necessary to start working; For example, CMS software, social network user accounts, video and photo editing software, and many other things.

Now the subject that you must master is how to use these tools to design campaigns that match your business goals. You may have seen the progress of other startups in designing advertising campaigns and asked yourself how it was achieved. Achieving success in your business is not possible without planning, and for this reason, having a marketing strategy in different channels will help you in the process of growing your startup.

For this purpose, in this section, we are going to express 10 features that a successful marketing strategy in the field of startups should have:

1. Use SMART goals
2. Determining the main customer and business persona
3. Design clear and catchy messages
4. Developing a content marketing strategy to attract leads
5. Content distribution
6. Advertising is an efficient way to get quick results
7. Developing an online marketing strategy to introduce the business
8. Measuring and improving customer lifetime value (CLV)
9. Having credibility through customer satisfaction
10. Create representative system

Now that you are familiar with the headings of the first part of this article, we will explain each of the mentioned items.

10 characteristics of a successful startup marketing strategy

1- Using SMART goals

As you know, SMART goals have five features that you should pay attention to when designing. These five characteristics are:

• Specificity
• Measurable
• Attainable
• to be relevant
• Timable

As we mentioned earlier, SMART goals are a road map that sets the perspective of your startup activity. Also, among other advantages of this system, we can mention the order that can be created within the team; This means that the role and duty of each person along with the related deadline is specified.

SMART goals are unique to each business or organization; Therefore, any goal that was beneficial in another organization will not necessarily be successful for you.

In most startups, due to a lack of financial resources or lack of human resources, employees have to work in several positions. For example, the portfolio manager may be in charge of such tasks as strategy design or product development, while the technical manager, in addition to being responsible for website design, is also in charge of marketing and even social networks.

Most startups are focused on developing their product, But what other things are there that can make a startup progress? This is the stage where SMART goals can be very beneficial. Instead of trying to delegate everything to a limited number of people at the same time, first, find the basic criteria of your goals and then put all your effort into it and inject it into your strategy.

For example, instead of spending your time doing preliminary and basic things (which may not be necessary right now), it is better to focus on three or four things that can have a more effective effect. If you are introducing a new product, in addition to thinking about product development, you can also have goals such as the following in your planning:

• Production of 10 text contents to inform the audience about the new product within X days
• Creating two new pages to introduce and promote the new product within X days
• Introducing your product on five different websites

These are just a few typical examples, but they can easily lead to the introduction of your business without spending huge financial costs; Of course, you have to spend a lot of time to reach them. The only key to continued growth is consistency and focus, which you can achieve with SMART goals.

2- Determining the main customer and business persona

Smart goals focus and direct your efforts; But what audience are you trying for? Is your target medium? Does he have an education? Does he live in the city or the countryside? For your actions in the field of marketing to reach more concrete results, they should be designed according to the target audience group.

At this point you probably have a general idea of who you’re looking to recruit, but have you discussed it with your team? Do you have a written document of your target persona? This is where the importance of buyer persona comes into play.

A persona is an image of your ideal customer. This image is derived from things like market research, databases, current customers, and assumptions. Having a persona helps you better understand the business challenges and needs of your main audience and try to solve them. Of course, you need to know that the persona is not a real person, but only an ideal image.

Now that you have a brief introduction to the concept of persona, you may ask what makes this category so important to my startup. You should know that it is the buyer persona that will help you design marketing campaigns and with it, you will get a better view of what you are going to do. So, as a result, by recognizing the persona, you design a campaign that will focus on the right person at the right time and place.

3-Designing clear and catchy messages

In today’s age, people in society do not seek to repeat themselves and listen to useless and aimless words. People are looking for the benefit that your product can have for them, and the basic question they ask you, and you must have a convincing answer to it, is “how this product or service can solve a real need and problem.” solve the customer?”

So, although it may seem a bit far-fetched, people may not have any interest in your product; Unless they are aware of the benefits it can have for them and the need it can solve for them. Therefore, before designing any message (for any business of any size) you must imagine it from the audience’s point of view and in their mind. So your message should be simple, informative, and catchy. These three elements will convert your website traffic into leads.

4- Developing a content marketing strategy to attract leads

Now that we’re talking about traffic, you probably want to have a plan to drive potential customers to your website. The basis of content marketing is first and foremost the production of quality content to answer the questions and needs of potential customers and then guide them to purchase.

For example, a blog is a suitable space to attract natural traffic and increase brand awareness. Every blog should be optimized for a long-tail keyword because it will attract more targeted traffic. This is a simple way to get the word out about your startup among different people.

Also, the content you produce will demonstrate your expertise and attract leads. For example, you can write e-books about your field of expertise and give them to the audience by designing a landing page, and in return receive the person’s profile, including their phone number or email address.

With this method, you know that people who have downloaded your e-book are interested in your field of work and have sent positive pulses about the subject. Your book will be especially useful for early adopters. Over time and with continuous content production, your website will become a reliable source in your field of work, and by optimizing it in the right terms, you will attract the right people.

5- Content distribution

It is not a correct hypothesis to expect to receive customers just by publishing content. It is important to note that content marketing is not necessarily based on organic traffic attracted from search engines. To increase your chances of success, after reviewing the content, you can distribute it on social networks or via email and share it with new audiences. To better understand this issue, pay attention to the example below.

Imagine you have prepared an article about “10 benefits of using Google Ads for a store website”. You can familiarize the audience with the article by designing a serial infographic that introduces 10 benefits as headlines and publish it on your Instagram, and then ask them to refer to your website to read the full article. This social media strategy should be a part of the content marketing plan, of which content distribution is an inseparable part.

6-Advertising, an efficient way to get quick results

Content recovery is a long process. Although great successes may be obtained from it, in general, the results do not appear in the short term. After you start producing content, you will need to attract leads, for which the best solution is to use advertising. Advertising may be less reliable than content marketing, but it has the advantage of “quickly showing your ad to the target audience”.

What kind of ad should we start with? Of course, to answer this question, you have to refer to your advertising strategy, but in general, you can pay attention to this category.

• Google Ads: The best option for when people are familiar with your product/service and are looking for its supplier on Google.
• Social media advertising: Since people don’t use social media to buy, this space can be the best option to inform the audience about your product/service so that you can attract their attention in the right way. This method is also suitable for attracting a specific audience.
• Banner ads: the best option for creating awareness and retargeting.

7- Develop an online marketing strategy to introduce the business

If you want to get the most feedback from your activities, developing an online marketing strategy will be right for you. Digital marketing does all the things you can do in the offline marketing space, including advertising in magazines and creating events online.

The online space has another advantage over the traditional space, and that is the possibility of getting backlinks for your website (in the offline space, publishers rarely allow links to be included in books or magazines). Then people who read your content on different websites can get to know your business. In general, digital marketing makes your startup grow in both spaces.

8- Measuring and improving customer lifetime (clv)

Since maintaining and selling to the audience we already have is easier and less expensive than attracting a new audience, it is necessary for startups to always monitor their CLV and try to improve it.

Among the actions you can take to improve this index:

• Improve user experience
• Monitoring customer satisfaction and trying to improve the return rate
• Design of upselling and cross-selling strategy

In general, overselling can be defined as selling products with higher quality. On the other hand, side sales can also be introduced by offering a complementary product to the customer when purchasing.

9- Having credit due to customer satisfaction

According to the statistics of the Bright Local website, in 2020, 87% of online buyers have read the comments related to that product before purchasing, which has increased by 6% compared to 2019. The Internet has given buyers access to more information than ever before. Just as good credit can help your sales, poor credit, and reputation can kill your marketing and sales.

Therefore, you should do your best to leave a positive image of yourself online. For this purpose, you can:

• Ask your customers to comment on their opinions about the product/service.
• Participate in specialized discussions (blogs and forums) of your field of work and show off your expertise.
• If the quality of the service or product you have provided to the customer has exceeded his expectations, ask him for a testimonial.

10- Creation of a representative system

Despite all the digital marketing strategies you can employ, word-of-mouth marketing still has a lot of power and will only benefit you if you can deliver a strong user experience to your customers.

Customers who come to you through a referral are usually natural and random, but having a strategy can increase this category of referrals. For this, you can:

• Identify the suppliers and ask them for details of the people requesting your goods/services.
• Encourage your customers to introduce you to their friends by creating a referral program.
• Use user-generated content.
• Design campaigns that support a cause (social or cultural) important to the audience.

Startup marketing strategies

The strategies that we will introduce to you in this section are a road map for the development of your business and give you a picture of what you should do. To better understand how marketing can make your startup successful, we are going to explain 8 ideas completely. These patterns originate from real startups. By studying them, you can visualize the impact of a successful and correct strategy in achieving your marketing goals.

For this purpose, we will explain each of these items below:

1. Using click ads to reach new users

StarburstData is a B2B company that helps organizations analyze their website data. They use a search engine through which the user can access a large amount of data in a short period. This collection uses LinkedIn ads to reach its target audience.

A content marketing expert working at a company like Starburst will most likely find an audience on LinkedIn because they are a platform designed for professional networkers. The use of these advertisements allows us to obtain a lot of information about the audience interested in this business. Another B2B may need to advertise on another social network. Another strategy can be to publish a special offer using your business hashtags to make it more visible.

2. Use social networks to connect with your customers.

Social media marketing doesn’t necessarily have to cost money and can be used to increase your following and build business-to-customer relationships. Having a business page on social networks is completely free. All you have to do is to continuously produce content and optimize it, and in this way, you will receive leads and new customers.

For example, receiving positive comments from your current customers can be a sign of the credibility of your brand. Then you can take a behind-the-scenes video of your daily work process and share it with your contacts. Also, holding various webinars can help you get closer to the target community.

A page on social networks for your startup that has strong content and encourages the audience to interact is a simple strategy that will increase the reach rate, receive clicks, and increase site visits, as well as increase your credibility in the industry.

3. Crowdfunding marketing or collective investment

Have you ever thought about crowdfunding campaigns? With this method, you can attract attention. For example, consider the NeighborSchools campaign. The field of work of this business is childcare and it provides childcare under the supervision of professional educators.

In its campaign, NeighborSchools was looking for people who have full confidence in the business and are willing to invest in it. With this trick, this company was able to collect an amount of 3.4 million dollars. In addition, this news was mentioned in different media, which was another positive point for them to be known. Even if you have few customers, you can attract more people to your business with crowdfunding.

4. Holding virtual events instead of face-to-face conferences

Mabl is a Boston-based machine learning SaaS (software as a service) company. To build a wider community, Mabel decided to hold a virtual event with industry experts. The speaker of this webinar provided various trainings to the audience about different hardware.

This process is fruitful and is a low-cost way to distribute your professionalism and expertise among people interested in the subject without the need to hold face-to-face conferences.

5. Content generated by the user (User Generated Content)

Usually, startups do not have a large budget to design large campaigns in social networks; Therefore, most of the time, they leave a part of their content production task to their contacts, which is also referred to as UGC. Hopjump’s marketing team decided that the best thing to do is to tell stories on virtual pages. For this purpose, their strategy on Instagram is to use the content that users have produced from their travels; Users who have used the services of this startup for their travel.

Customers who have used Hopjump’s services publish pictures of their trips on their pages and try their luck to be placed on Hopjump’s Instagram by tagging the collection page, which makes this travel company more visible on this social network. will be.

Using user-generated content (UGC) in an advertising campaign is a simple, smart, and completely free method that, in addition to creating a close relationship with your customers, will make your brand more visible and attract new audiences.

Sometimes before running a campaign, you need to spend more time thinking about its different stages. There may be steps you can take to spread the message of your campaign more broadly. Can you host a webinar on your campaign topic? Do you think there is a topic that can get the attention of your LinkedIn audience more than others?

6. Production of SEO content to attract the target audience

Another free and productive method that you can use to promote your startup is SEO. But in the meantime, one point should not be neglected: this option will take the most time from all the other options; Not in the sense that SEO is a time-consuming or time-wasting process, but more continuity is necessary in it.

The more optimization you do; You will get better your performance; This means that you provide more leads for your business. It is necessary to state here that SEO will not bring you success in a day or a month; Rather, it is the foundation of your success in the coming months or even years.

The basis of SEO is to optimize the website pages and their content based on the words that your potential customers use to find your goods/services. A better strategy would be to use long-tail keywords with low to medium competition and high search volume; Words related to your work and used by your users.

As you can guess, your website’s home page competes with your other competing businesses. So, by producing quality content and linking to your home page, you should increase its SEO credibility and increase the ranking of that page in Google results. Updating and optimizing your website content is a guarantee for its continuous growth. Also, this work will attract more of your target users in the long run; So you should never miss this opportunity.