Starting a business of any sort is one of the greatest challenges you could ever face. In fact, the notion that you can build and they will come is quite misguided, and it has taught many people bitter lessons.

After you have set up your business, you have to promote it. And not only that, you have to promote it in the right way. The problem with most people is that they never have the foresight to create a marketing plan for their startups.

Startup marketing has to be more than an afterthought, and here’s the right way to do it.

A Guide to Marketing for Startup

Foundations of Startup Marketing

Marketing a startup is unique in that, at this point in your business, you might not even know what exactly your customers want. Therefore, your marketing plan should take into consideration feedback from customers so that appropriate changes are made to the product or service on time.

Choose the Right Marketing Strategy

This means you have to choose the right marketing strategy. There are some goals you should try to achieve as you promote your product. For instance, you need to popularize your brand in a way that helps your potential customers understand what your product is, why it is unique, and what position you have among your rivals.

Choose Your Market

As a startup, you have to know your market early on. Choosing your market will help you save time, money and effort as you will focus on people who will really have an interest in your product. In particular, you should decide what kind of demographic will take an interest in your product, how they get marketing information about the products or services you are promoting, and how you can have a better position than other players in that space.

Determine Core Metrics

You have to understand how you will define your success if your marketing strategy works. When you measure your success, you will have the information you need to refine your strategy.

Getting followers on your Facebook page after a promotion campaign is not enough proof of success, you have to consider if the increased attention is translating into greater sales for your business.

Therefore, you have to measure conversions in addition to the number of engagements on social media and email subscriptions.

Define Keywords

You have to use certain keywords to market your business, and you should come up with an effective keyword list. Obviously, with some keyword research tools, you should have an easy time finding the most appropriate keywords for your business.

Essentially, you should have a certain list of keywords that summarize your startup and what it does.

Estimate Conversion Rate

After you have determined the foundations of your marketing, you can now proceed to determine conversion rates.

You can determine that getting 1000 followers on Facebook could translate into 100 sales, which is a 10% conversion rate.

Know Ways of Marketing for Startup

Once a foundation for your startup marketing strategy is in place, you can proceed to explore how to market your startup.

Now that you know what to say to your potential market audience and who to say it to, you have to decide how to market your startup.

You can even enlist the help of a consultant. This will help you determine the best way to market your startup. Some options include social media marketing, content marketing, and other methods. But obviously, some techniques will work better for your startup than others.

Social Media Marketing

These days, social media is an important part of any business marketing strategy, as it helps businesses to connect with clients, influencers and other players who will help the business grow.

Clearly, these relationships are very important, and you should, therefore, have social media marketing as part of your strategy.

To connect better with your audience with social media, you have to understand your audience properly. Young people might prefer channels such as Twitter, while more professional clients would be more inclined to use LinkedIn.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a good way to show the audience you are speaking to that you are an authority in your niche.

One way to use content marketing is to start a blog, in which case you should hire a good copywriter that will create good content for your blog.

Good content marketing should help you engage your fans and entertain your audience and help you rank better on search engines.

The benefit of this marketing technique is that it is more organic, and therefore, its effects last much longer.

But as with social media marketing, you also have to consider the audience you are trying to market your startup to.

Some customers like videos, while others like podcasts or articles.

PR Drives

You can market your startup by organizing events such as offering tickets or specials promotions where you address issues about products and services. While at it, ensure you have the right person to market your brand.

Choose a Specific Strategy for Marketing for Startup

Even after you have understood what it will take to market your startup, you have to choose the most appropriate strategy for your startup. Therefore, you have to find the most effective way to market your business. Some of your options include the following.

Having a network of industry influencers

Influencers can help your brand have more visibility. They can also get a good social media buzz going and that can help your brand have greater value in the eyes of your audience.

Build an email list

Email marketing is one of the best ways to get sales, and many email promotions get very good conversions. You should make something attention-grabbing that convinces people to join your email list.

Email marketing is especially effective when accompanied by some offers such as discount codes.

Using content to build credibility

You can have a bunch of articles created that will make your business have more credibility online. The good thing about content marketing is that it will help you rank better on search engines. This content can also give you an excellent chance to promote certain keywords and link them to your business.

Use guest posts for backlinks

Having guests say something about your brand is important in that it will help you create backlinks. It also makes you look more like an authority in that market.

Define Your Budget

You have to set some money aside for the sake of marketing. Even with a limited budget, you have to take marketing seriously if your startup is to take off.

Fortunately, there are many modern ways to market your business effectively without spending too much money. You can look into this if your limited budget makes some marketing options less viable for you.

Conclusion

Marketing a startup is important, although most entrepreneurs don’t give it the attention it deserves. Above are some way to market your startup more effectively so that it gets off to a good beginning. Due to lack of proper startup marketing, many businesses end up failing for lack of sales.

Contact us for more information. We will be glad to discuss how to promote your startup.

[fc id=’2′ align=’center’][/fc]