A typical startup has a miniscule budget and a small team of friends having an ambition to nurture and sell a new business idea. The challenges are many for a new company. But the toughest challenge is to take the business to an entirely new audience which is different in many ways from the existing one. But traditional marketing methods are expensive for startups and they are now experimenting with new marketing methods due for want of funds. In 2017, companies with new business ideas are likely to come up with alternative marketing ways.
A big marketing concern faced by startups is that products or services are new and unproven. Spending time and money on new business ideas can be risky. Their assumptions about target demography may prove to be wrong in the end due to lack of data on buyer personas. So, startups do marketing mostly on guess work. Their only hope for attracting investment rests on a detailed analysis of products. Due to new business idea and limited investment prospects, startups have to be extra careful in creating effective marketing campaign. They can use traditional marketing but it is simply too costly.
Traditional marketing techniques include advertising in newspapers and magazines, broadcasting about a product or service on radio and television, telemarketing and direct mail. Startups do not have financial prowess to pursue such marketing methods, which established companies make use of so effectively. We all know that global brands launch multi-million-dollar ad campaigns. Startups cannot think of spending millions of dollars on 30-second ad spots. Other ad platforms such as direct mail and telemarketing, which are forms of interruption marketing, do not drive sufficient customer traffic as these are seen as disrespectful to customers. Moreover, Customer Acquisition Costs of startups goes manifold higher even if they try these traditional techniques. Spending too much on acquiring a customer is simply out of budgetary reach of new businesses.
The right strategy is to extract high impact at low cost
Since traditional model of marketing is too expensive for startups, their only hope rests in making quick high impact on target audience. This strategy is known as growth hacking, which involves summoning all modern marketing means to make an instant impact on audience. In such marketing invasion, well-informed marketers use social media, guerrilla marketing and content marketing all at once in an aggressive manner. This helps create a buzz for a startup company and its business. For startups, this marketing method is cost-effective as they can outsource marketing job in only few thousand dollars.
However, for any marketing plan to work successfully, you need to pay heed to basics. Make sure that you have researched thoroughly your target audience. There are multiple factors that influence startup success. Your purpose of marketing should be crystal-clear to your marketing team. You must portray your ideal customer. Then, find effective ways to reach out to audience. For example, you can explore social media to create word of mouth publicity for your new products or services. Also, engage your audience. A proven way to engage them is to tell a story about your brand for your marketing.
Here are some tips for startups to follow for business promotion
1. Use Power of Video
Nothing matches the power of visuals for convincing and engaging an audience. Amongst a variety of visual content, videos are the most effective for driving viewers to a business. Startups can explore videos for making a quick rapport with potential customers. What is more, contrary to belief of it being expensive, videos are actually entirely affordable for startups. Even students with little financial means are now using this medium frequently. So, create your video channels for business promotion.
2. Focus on Your Target Customers
Do not waste energy and time on addressing entire gamut of audience in your startup’s marketing campaign. Studies confirm that more than 80% of a company’s revenue comes from just 20% of its customers. This implies that you should avoid attracting the masses.
Your efforts instead should focus more on loyal customers who will return to buy your products or services again. For example, send emails of thanks to customers who have already bought from you and encourage them with incentives. Try to turn them into your brand ambassadors.
Another point not to be missed is to create your graphic design items such as logos, business cards, websites, stationery etc by keeping your customers’ profile in mind. Remember that logos, business cards etc convey your brand’s message. So, they should be carefully designed for an impact on target customers. If you find graphic designing of logos etc expensive, then launch a design contest on crowdsourcing sites like Designhill to get customized designs for your business at low prices.
3. Maintain a Good Online Reputation
In this age of cutthroat competition, rival businesses will generate bad publicity about your business. This is the reason flourishing of online reputation industry. You should keep a close online watch on bad reviews of your company created by your rivals.
To counter rivals’ ill efforts, set up Google Alerts for your company to monitor any damaging publicity against your brand. When you track a slew of bad reviews, target them by creating many positive reviews and good word of mouth publicity on social media for your company. That will bury bad reviews deeper in the web.
4. Create Effective Content Marketing Plan
Content is king, but only when its marketing has a purpose and design. Blindly posting your content on plethora of online platforms will not yield desired results. Note that Google has already made changes in the way content was picked earlier by search engine spiders. Now, rich content is going to be picked first for ranking purpose.
A clever and desirable way to content marketing is to create blogs that address customers’ specific queries. Try to create more lengthy blogs so that each piece delivers sufficient relevant information to customers. Google is more likely to rank a lengthy piece of information for search results.
5. Make Use of Offline Marketing
While focusing your means on online marketing ways, do not ignore offline marketing. In fact, a successful marketing campaign will combine both methods. Offline marketing includes handing out business cards on the sidelines of a major event, distributing leaflets to passersby, meeting influencing people to generate good word of mouth publicity and so on.
For better results, startups should explore local networking events. A presence on local platforms will help in landing your first bunch of customers. You can then use local networks as a stepping-stone for reaching out to more customers.
To conclude, these new marketing ways are the ones startups are likely to go for in 2017 for yielding fair amount of traffic to their new business. While following these tips, make sure that you explore each of them with some expertise involve in order to making an early positive impact on target customers.
