5 tactics for startup marketing (with action steps!)
Marketing for startups comes with its own set of unique challenges. Competition is fierce, however, and it can be difficult to make your startup stand out from the rest. Here are five marketing tactics (with immediate action steps!) you can use to grow your business.
Understand your target market
This is basic, “Marketing 101” advice, but it firmly belongs at the top of this list. One of the most important things you can do as a startup is to understand your target market.
Ask questions, like:
Who are you trying to reach with your products and services?
What problems do they have that you can solve?
Where do they spend their time online?
Where do they search for solutions to their problems?
What influencers or information sources do they trust?
Use the answers to these questions to create buyer personas. Once you’ve done this work, you will know where to market and what type of messaging to use.
Action item: Sit down and create these personas. I like HubSpot's Make My Persona tool, but you can use a simple notepad and a pen. Whatever works best for you!
Use ads for immediate, short-term growth
One of the quickest and most effective ways to jumpstart the growth of your startup is with ads. Ads can help you to reach your target market quickly and generate leads and conversions almost immediately.
You must use the right type of ads for your target market, however, and make sure that they are properly targeted. For example, if you discovered that your buyer personas spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, but you're only running Facebook ads, you're not setting yourself up for success.
It may seem straightforward, but there are a lot of nuances that go into a successful advertising campaign. While it’s good to dip your toes in and get a feel for things, it’s advisable to work with an expert to achieve optimal ad results before you spend a significant amount of your own time and money.
Action item: Establish where advertising is most likely to reach your buyer personas. Then, condense your offering as tightly as possible to fit in an ad's headline. (Sidenote: learning to be economical with language will improve your marketing and communications across every channel)
Invest in SEO as soon as possible
One of the best, most sustainable ways to improve the performance of your startup is to invest in SEO. If you're reading this, you almost certainly already know what the basics of SEO are, so I won't go into it here. (If you need a refresher course, there's no better source than Moz.)
But I will hammer home this point: Meaningful organic traffic is the holy grail of digital marketing. Nine times out of ten, it should be what you're working towards. As a long-term strategy, it is the most sustainable and cost-effective digital marketing channel for most businesses.
(There are exceptions to this, but I ask you to kindly not shout "Aha!" and waggle your finger at me if your business happens to be one of them.)
SEO is an investment, and it will take time to see results. This is especially true in industries like healthcare or finance because of how Google treats YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics. You should start working on your SEO strategy as soon as possible so that you can begin to reap the benefits down the road.
Action item: I recommend a lot of careful planning before truly implementing a content strategy. If you’re raring to get started, make a short list of the most common questions you get from your customers. Then, write a blog post (or posts) answering those questions.
(If you want to read more about SEO for Startups, check out this guide from botpresso.)
Partner with relevant, trusted sources
Building trust is important in any kind of marketing, but even more so as a startup with little history or reputation.
If you’ve done your homework, you know who or what your ideal customers already trust. There’s no better way to demonstrate your trustworthiness than with a vote of confidence from organizations and individuals your customers already know and love. (This goes for both search engines and actual people.)
A great example of this is a client of mine who creates platforms for chronic disease communities. Whenever they launch a new platform, they do it in partnership with leading patient advocacy groups, which establishes legitimacy from the get-go.
But we don’t leave it there. We continually identify and reach out to bloggers, influencers, and other relevant sites to form partnerships. If your offering truly adds value to their audience, they will be happy to work with you.
Action item: Look for two potential partnership opportunities, and reach out. Make sure you outline why a partnership would be mutually beneficial—and not just an “opportunity” for them to promote you.
Provide value through social media
It’s easy to think that your social media accounts primary purpose should be promoting your business. After all, they’re your social media accounts! While people have varying reasons to go on social media, nobody logs on to read endless self-promotion.
By now, you know what kind of content your audience is looking for, and you probably know where they go to find it. You might be expecting me to tell you now that you should just start creating and posting that content on social media, and you’d kind of be right.
A secret to social media, however, is actually spending more time posting other people’s content than your own. Once you’ve established yourself as a source of value to your audience, they’ll be more interested in what you have to offer—such as what you’re selling.
But as with all marketing, establishing trust first is key. Then you can sell.
Action item: Make a list of great resources for your target personas. Once identified, schedule social media posts that share those resources.
Strategy + tactics = success
The tactics I’ve outlined above are ones I have successfully used in real-world scenarios, but like any marketing initiative, I don’t recommend you implement them blindly. It’s great to know what tactics you can use, but tactics can only be truly successful as part of a larger strategy.
Use the action items above, but do so thoughtfully. Know what you hope to achieve with your marketing efforts. The end goal is always to “grow my business,” but what are the KPIs and metrics you’ll use to measure success?
If you cannot define success, you will never achieve it—but that’s a topic for another day.
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In the meantime, let me know what you’re thinking right now. Preferably about the above, but I’ll also accept (and respond to) unrelated thoughts as long as they’re interesting. Leave a comment if you like; otherwise you can reach me on Twitter, via email, or if you’re a special kind of person, via phone.