We
have already discussed different aspects related to a startup business from
beginners guide to the potholes to avoid.
Today we will be discussing one of the most important aspects related to
starting a business and that is its marketing. We will be talking about why
your startup requires marketing in the first place, how to market your startup
and different ways of marketing your startup business.
One
of the biggest mistakes associated with startup businesses is overlooking the
power of marketing. Startup marketing will itself help a startup in becoming a
brand; it plays such a vital role in the integral development of a startup.
Those overnight successful startups are not something to be believed on; life
is not a fairytale or a movie where heartbreak will lead you into a successful
entrepreneur. The hard work and the dedication which is required to build a
startup into a successful one is no less than that of an ant that struggles to
carry food that weighs more than its own weight but still tries to carry it to
feed everyone.
Startup
marketing is one of the most important tools to build a business, it helps to
build a business into a brand that is potentially recognized by everyone.
Marketing is such an important tool for a startup; it will let your customers
know about your startup business. Through a proper marketing strategy, your
customers will come to you and you will have one less thing on your mind to
worry about.
It
allows your business to maintain a long-lasting and ever-green relationship
with your customers. Marketing allows you to tell your customers what they
don’t know about your products or services. It helps in building a reputation
for a startup business. Marketing is the
core to boost the sales of any business. It can help you beat your competition
if done right. A startup needs nothing apart from sustaining in the market,
having good sales and growing the business. And Marketing is the key tool that
provides all these things and many more to a startup. It is like the food for a
startup and you know very well what happens if food is not available to anything.
So let’s move and understand how you market a startup.
There
are many ways to market a startup business but making a marketing strategy is
among the first things to do. It will help you achieve your goals much quicker,
also keep you in check with the progress and let you know what other forms of
marketing your startup will be requiring. Marketing strategy is the big picture
of a business’s plan on how they are planning to market their business. It
basically refers to the overall game plan for attracting customers by stating
the benefits your startup will provide to customers and how it is different
from any other business in the market.
With
a proper marketing strategy, you are letting your customers know that you exist
or else they may look for the product or service you are providing and won’t
find you. More than half of the businesses that are active in the market lack
the marketing strategy and hence people don’t even know about their existence.
The most important thing to market your startup business is knowing your
customers, knowing which markets you need to target and where is the demand for
your product or service is.
There are hundreds of ways to market anything in today’s world so you need to find the best ones for your startup that works for you. Here are a few common and always working marketing ways.
1. Emails
It
is an essential strategy for attracting customers as in today’s digital world
everyone has a mailing address and people love finding out about new things
through the internet. But to send E-mails, you first need to get the mailing
addresses of your customers and for that, there are many ways but the easiest
of it all is getting a website for your business. Ask your customers to sign up
for your newsletter by providing them with a unique discount or something which
no customer can ignore.
The
other way is asking the customers directly for their mailing addresses which
might be difficult as everyone thinks something is fishy when an unknown person
asks about your E-mail address. Now, the key thing to remember is the way of
sending an E-mail. If you want your customers to read your E-mails, you need to
make sure the E-mails are worth investing time, some customers will only want
the product or service details and nothing else but most of the customers will
opt-out of the E-mails if you just send them advertorial E-mails.
You need to diversify your E-mails, provide non-commercial content like guides, articles, etc but related your product and service to attract the attention of the customer and then at last mention your product or service so that the customers want to buy from you even if they need not to.
2. Social Media
We
all know the impact of social media on our lives. Today’s generation is getting
everything from social media from education, daily news to games, entertainment,
and whatnot. So, to ignore social media in your marketing strategy might turn
out a wrong move. More than 2 billion people are connected to social media
daily one way or another and they see everything from brands to small
businesses that put up ads on these social platforms to turn random internet
surfing people into their customers.
Facebook is currently holding the largest number of people around the world and the most important thing about it is that unlike other social platforms, it is used by every age group so you don’t have to worry about the age group you want to target. Facebook allows you to put an ad about your business and it is also not that costly, it will show your ad to the people and that way, your startup will get the recognition it required.
3. Printed Media
If your targeted audience is middle-aged people, then the newspapers, magazines and other printed media can play a vital role in the advertisement for your start-up. The middle-aged group is the one that still reads and learns from printed media, so getting a paid advertisement in a magazine or a newspaper will be a good marketing strategy but if your potential customer is different then these people then don’t waste effort, money or time in this media cause the young generation don’t have the time required to go through a newspaper even if they are willing to read one.
4. Paid search engine advertisement
Search
engine advertisements have become a popular advertising channel for start-ups.
Search engines like Google, Bing etc. all provide paid search advertisements
nowadays. It allows your start-up to find targeted audiences that are
definitely future customers.
Google AdWords and Bing ads are the tow leading paid search networks nowadays. They allow you to create an ad for your business and let you describe what your business is about in your own words and when someone types any keyword related to your business, your business ad will pop up in the top results which will definitely bring you traffic and you know what most of the traffic generated from here will be potential customers, not just surfers.
5. Sponsor a team or an event:
What do big brands to get more customers, they basically sponsor an event or a team, like Nike is the sponsor of many football teams around the world and what they get in return is a huge recognition. The same thing you can do with your startup, find something that can help you grow your customers and then sponsor it, even if you are not big enough to sponsor something huge, then sponsor mini-events. Sponsor a local event, a school or college fest/event, that way more people will get to know about your business.
You just need to pay a small fee to become a sponsor in many cases. However, there are other ways too, sponsoring a player can also get you huge recognition, think of MRF who used to sponsor Sachin Tendulkar. Open your mind, find your target audience and then let the sponsorship work its magic.
6. Starting a Blog:
Starting
a blog can also be a great strategy to gain audiences; it is found that
startups that are active with blogs tend to generate more leads than
competitors that don’t blog about their products or services. We have already
discussed about blogging in our blogs, if you wish to learn about blogging,
then please visit our Be a Blogger section.
Final Words: Many young
entrepreneurs understand the importance of startup marketing but they make the
mistake of investing too much in it. It is another pit hole that needs to be
avoided, make a budget for advertisements and assess the volume of your
customers after some time to know if your marketing strategy is working or not.
Now,
we have discussed the different aspects related to marketing your Startup, if
you have any complaints or suggestions, please do write to us. If you don’t
want to miss on any updates, please subscribe to our free newsletter.
