Marketing 101 for Startups and Scaleups
Successful businesses rely on marketing to thrive.
If you want your company to grow and succeed, it’s important to learn the basics of marketing.
Marketing 101 for Startups and Scaleups provides a view about what entrepreneurs need to get started, like how to stay ahead of the competition, best practices in social media, and more.
Marketing is critical for startups because it allows them to raise awareness and acquire momentum for their goods and services.
However, with so many marketing options available, first-time businesses may be unsure where to begin.
Develop the right marketing plan for your company with proper guidance, to cover how to market your business, where to invest time and money, and other best practices that will ensure success, fast track your way to increased sales revenue with a step by step process.
Setting the goal
Depending on how you define success, your early company goals may differ. For example, a new client acquisition strategy is a top priority for most businesses, but it's not the only one. Getting new users to join your platform, getting them engaged with your product, or converting existing leads into paying customers could be your top priorities. Use appealing design, text, and call-to-actions in your marketing plan in order to achieve these objectives.
There's a lot that goes into marketing strategy
Talking about what you are offering and what makes it exceptional, original and different.
Your target market and the individuals you are attempting to attract should be discussed, as should the messages you will use and the channels you will use to deliver them, and you should probably map out a complete marketing funnel, the customer journey, to assist streamline and enhance the purchase process.
It’s only that a critical ingredient, which is all too frequently neglected, is what may create the difference between a good business and a great one that has both a positive impact and does extremely well. It’s also important to design your business such that your consumers have a positive experience.
Marketing matters - packaging matters - presentation matters - branding matters
We all evaluate a book by its cover – whether we like it or not.
Brands work because of their uniqueness.
Brands are extremely strong because of three important factors.
As a first step, you need to have faith in your past experiences. Risk aversion is the norm for most individuals, which means they prefer to make a purchase that has the least chance of being a terrible experience.
As humans, we don’t know what we want, so we go about and attempt to find other people to help us make our decisions. This is a really fundamental psychological feature that’s been established and sort of hard wired, from generations to generations, and it’s what makes brands so powerful.
Brands take advantage of this by trying to make you feel like you’re part of a tribe or a community by buying into the brand’s identity.
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Confirmation of your identity
Through branding, we may either accurately represent who we really are, or aspirationally represent who we hope to become.
Enclosed cognition and sensory theory states that when we wear symbolic clothing, we acquire the features and actions and attitudes of those garments.
Start by defining your brand’s perception and judging criteria.
There’s a lot more to a brand than just your logo, colors, or message. Rather than being a product or service, a brand is the impression that someone has of you or your firm.
No one aspect defines your brand; rather, it’s a summation of all of them.
This is why brands aren’t built overnight, they take time, they take consistency, they take repetition, and they take strategy
Marketing tactics for startups
What are the most common marketing tactics for startups?
Online marketing, social media marketing, and influencer marketing are all critical components of startup success.
– Online Marketing refers to any type of advertising or promotion that is used on the Internet.
– Social Media Marketing involves influencing awareness of a product through different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Social media allows businesses to connect with their current customers and past customers who might be interested in their products or services.
– Influencer Marketing occurs when an established person within a specific industry endorses your brand on social media or elsewhere online. This results in increased sales of goods and services—it can lead to organic growth by gaining word-of-mouth referrals from customers.
Let's see now in details:
What is Online Marketing?
Online marketing includes any promotion or advertising used on the Internet to grow a startup’s customer base and increase sales, leads, and brand awareness.
Online marketing can be used in conjunction with other types of marketing tactics to aid in a business’s success. Online marketing can include:
- Organic growth through social media
- Banner ads
- Email blasts
- Paid search engine ads (PPC)
- Sponsored content or native advertising on websites
- Display Network ads on Google Adwords.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media has become such a fundamental component of online communication that businesses that ignore it are likely to be left behind by their competitors.
New Startups can use social media marketing to accomplish many business objectives, such as:
- Brand awareness and differentiation
- Conversion of leads into customers
- Customer service and support
Online and offline engagement with customers Online social media marketing takes place on the following social channels:
- Facebook – Business Pages
- Twitter – Business Profile/Page (unified)
- LinkedIn – Personal Profile; Company Page.
- TikTok Personal Profile and Business Profile.
Tik Tok vs YouTube
Why companies in the US and UK should consider having a Tik Tok account.
According to app monitoring agency “Annie,” Tik Tok has surpassed youtube in viewing time per user in the US and UK.
Tik Tok is not just a fad. It is here to stay.
While youtube video content may still be the most-watched, Tik Tok has many benefits for users and companies alike.
Marketing happens when businesses create accounts on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to develop relationships with customers and build brand awareness.
In the United Kingdom and the United States, users of TikTok are spending more time than on YouTube, according to new research.
According to App Annie’s research, TikTok users spend much more time on the service than the average user, indicating a high level of engagement with the app.
According to App Annie, the video-sharing app TikTok has “upended the streaming and social environment” in the digital era.
YouTube is the most popular website in the world, not because of the quantity of users, but because of the sheer volume of time spent on the site.
There are a projected two billion monthly users of the Google-owned video behemoth. As of mid-2020, the most current available numbers for TikTok indicated that there would be approximately 700 million subscribers.
According to App Annie’s study, live-streaming applications like TikTok, among others, are fueling an increase in the amount of money being spent on artists.
According to the research, live-streaming applications that have “a significant feature” accounted for three-quarters of all money spent in the top 25 social apps during their first six months of operation in 2021.
For example, on the gaming website Twitch, viewers may purchase “Bits” – a virtual currency – and use them to “cheer” streamers while they are broadcasting in real-time. Alternatively, they can regularly subscribe to a creator’s channel in return for perks available exclusively to subscribers.
Promoting your Product
Influencer vs employee. Is it worth it to invest in influencers, or should companies rather invest in their employees and create their own brand ambassadors?
The answer is both!
Influencer marketing is an exceptional way to get the word out about your brand and product, but it’s also important that you develop relationships with customers and fans of your own.
Whether that means building communities of “influencers” within your company or prioritizing internal social media platforms designed for engaging with customers is up to you.
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Online PR – Online press releases and public relations efforts geared toward increasing brand visibility online and engagement with current customers.
This is a good strategy for startups looking to generate awareness, grow their customer base, and increase sales.
Online PR can be used to promote a product launch event, build buzz around a new product/service offering, generate interest in your company’s upcoming events or announcements, etc.
Online PR options include:
- Online press releases
- Online media relations
- Online pitching
- Online celebrity endorsements
Online press releases are usually informative in nature and are often posted on high-authority news sites, offering value for readers. However, they focus more on the business or company rather than specific products/services being offered.
In conclusion
It all begins with acknowledging that the way we do business today, and more significantly, the way people buy products today, has changed. So, to recap, when it comes to selecting a business model or company concept, one of the essential factors to examine is the market’s development potential. In other words, is there a rising demand for what is being offered, or will you be trapped attempting to sell something that no one wants?
Many items now enter the market and have a very brief life, a short trend, and the desire for them may collapse just as fast as it increases.
The more essential factor to consider is shifting customer trends and purchasing patterns; in other words, how are items sold in the first place and is there a method to capitalize on the next trend?
So that you can offer your company the best chance of success.
And to answer that question, we only need to look at this Oberlo article, which forecasts that worldwide e-commerce sales will reach $4.2 trillion.
The wiser approach to do business is to spend less, sell more, and guarantee your company is founded on a strong foundation of demand, or, in other words, to offer products that people truly desire.
Statistics of global Ecommerce sales from Oberlo.com
