Startup Marketing Strategies that Always Work

Dealing with the first customers is always exciting, but, after the first success, enterprises often go through a period of stagnation, which can last longer than expected and even end in a fiasco. To make sure your company doesn’t flop, we are here to help you work out effective marketing strategies that would attract potential clients to your services.

One of the best ways to succeed in promotion is to hire a team of skillful analysts, but, as a rule, newcomers have to save on everything and can’t afford them. Moreover, it’s unclear when they will be able to get revenues eventually, as only 18 % of first-time entrepreneurs manage to succeed with their ventures, according to the Business Insider analyst, Alison Shontell. If you don’t want to find yourself among the remaining 82 %, the information presented in this post will give you a perfect solution.

The European Social Media Marketing ROI Study by Adobe Digital specialists proved that 28% of marketing managers base their work on gut instincts. Are you one of them? If the answer is ‘yes,’ it’s definitely time to change such a reckless tactic in order to avoid going bankrupt. Look through our startup marketing strategies that always work regardless of the industry you’re involved in or any other conditions. Employing these tactics, you can start getting ready for an influx of clients in a short while.

Identify Your Potential Customers

The first strategy that can guarantee success to your newly established company consists in identifying its target audience wisely. You should create a detailed description of your potential clients, particularly their occupation, salary, location, age, interests, needs, and other characteristics that can make them resort to your products. You can also use some analytics tools that can help find out more about your audience. They are as follows:

Google Analytics

This tool gives an opportunity to figure out what type of consumers is the right one for your business. With its help, you can see the location of your website visitors, which will let you adapt your content to peculiarities of certain regions. You will also stay aware of the traffic sources providing the best conversions, e.g. search engines, social networks and others.

Facebook Insights

You can benefit from this tool if your company has its own page in the mentioned social network. It shows demographics of everyone interacting with your Facebook page, particularly location, age, language, gender and some other data.

YouTube Insights

Take a look at viewers of videos related to your industry with this insightful tool. It provides basic information on the location, gender and age of people who enjoy watching certain video content.

Mention

Here is a handy tool to keep track of everything people say about your company. To be more precise, you will see who leaves a certain remark, what it is about and where that Internet user lives. In such a way, you will find out where your business is actively discussed.

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Alexa

This is an extremely easy-to-use tool. Just visit alexa.com, write the domain name of your company in the search bar and press “Go.” Then, you will see various details about the audience of your website including gender, education, browsing location, country, and other facts.

It is also necessary to think about factors that will stimulate individuals to make their choice in your favor. Keep in mind that people aren’t interested in your offerings. Instead, they are interested in finding a solution to their problems, that’s why you should figure out how your services can help them. It may look like brainstorming, but let’s face the truth. Your brand doesn’t enjoy popularity on a global scale, so it’s ridiculous to rely on the probability that your products will be sold like hot cakes to the public without any smart moves.

There’s a tendency among companies to create the whole product lines that can give a solution to the specific audience. The Coca-Cola Company is the brightest example in this case. A lot of guys aren’t delighted with an idea to order diet drinks believing they are meant for ladies trembling at the thought of extra calories. To attract representatives of the stronger sex who keep in shape, the beverage corporation produced Coke Zero in a black-and-red bottle in an attempt to make it appealing to men. In the end, this drink was sold like gangbusters and brought tremendous success to the company.

Establish a Reputation as a True Expert

One of the best marketing strategies for small businesses to make a good start is to showcase their professionalism in a certain field, as people trust only authoritative resources nowadays. Start thinking outside the box and offer your clients something they’ve never tried. Convince your audience that your products aren’t only great for consumption, but they can truly change their lifestyle for better.

Sometimes, it may be a challenge to maintain a reputation of a serious firm, but it’s still worth your efforts. Do your utmost to meet the deadlines and try to wear appropriate clothes at meetings with your potential customers. These little things may create a positive impression about your enterprise and prove that it doesn’t belong to those shady business establishments the world swarms with.

One of the companies that achieved prosperity due to this tactic is the US conglomerate corporation, General Electric. It never misses a chance to put emphasis on its highly qualified stuff and their achievements in the industry. For example, GE provides links to all the Twitter accounts of its experts and posts interviews with them on YouTube. As a result of this strategy, it’s been recognized as one of the most successful companies in the USA.

To improve your credit, you can resort to the reputation management, i.e. suppression of all the negative feedback about a company and its products from search results. Such a practice is important, as the first thing the majority of customers do before making a purchase is checking what other buyers say. Look through several tips on how to keep your business save from slander and accusations.

• Provide better search engine optimization of customers’ positive testimonials to eclipse negative comments.
• Take care of publishing your press releases on authoritative sites to show your brand in a favorable light.
• Make sure that high-ranking sites have only laudable remarks about your company.
• Launch a fake site with the same name and state that all the complaints are referred to its owner, not you.
• Create many accounts to post flattering reviews about your company’s products and argue with authors of negative comments.
• Claim that you have already solved all the problems your clients complain of and now everything is perfect.
• Encourage people who praise your brand with free items to stimulate their interest in sharing more happy thoughts.

Cooperate with the Leaders in Your Field

As no startup can advance on its own, it’s important to get familiar with companies flourishing in your industry and enlist their support for further collaboration. If you give referrals to their products, it will drive more traffic to their online platforms, and you are unlikely to find a person who wouldn’t appreciate assistance of this kind.

Find popular websites covering the latest trends of your business and ask their editors to write a brief review of you company. Create your own articles with a link to your website and don’t be shy to distribute them, as high quality content available for free is in great demand today. This tactic will help you look reliable in the eyes of your potential audience.
Nowadays, word of mouth is known as one of the most rewarding marketing strategies expanding the scope of any business. The more stir you cause, the stronger online presence you will build. Adhere to this motto to thrive in your undertaking.

An example of successful collaboration is the partnership of Visa, a corporation conducting payment transactions, and Marriott, a company providing hotel services. They found out that they pursued the same audience and agreed to offer holders of Visa cards a 20% discount on Marriott room charges. Consequently, the former had more purchases made, while the latter had more rooms booked.

To find people influential in your business sphere and review the content they share, you can use the following tools.

Send Newsletters to Your Clients

Email marketing also belongs to the strategies that always work, but it should be implemented wisely. If you impose your services on people by overloading their mail boxes with tons of messages, it will probably arouse their aversion rather than interest. Spam is one of the most annoying things on the web, that’s why you can’t allow the name of your company to bring up unpleasant associations with this practice.

Make sure that your letters are informative and brief at the same time so that addressees could read them from start to finish in a few moments. Draw up a schedule of sending messages and stick to it without any digressions. Take into account that your list of recipients should include only those individuals who will be glad to see the news from your company. Don’t waste your time on reaching every living being on the continent, as it will bring you nowhere.

Eurostar, a corporation providing railway connection between London and Paris, has flourished in reaching customers by means of email marketing. Many people who received its newsletters couldn’t resist temptation to take a journey after looking at charming pictures of the cities presented against the background of an uncluttered layout.

So, if you are going to take advantage of email marketing, don’t hesitate to make use of some cool tools that are as follows:

Build Presence in Social Media

The emergence of social media has become a true godsend to everyone who wants to avoid spending a fortune on promotion. Being active in social networks gives an opportunity to advertize services and build an online community for free.

At first, you should create accounts for your startup in all the major networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, with a link to your website being included. But, this is not enough. After completing your profiles, it’s important to start posting interesting facts and complement them with eye-catching images on a regular basis.

Another way to benefit from social media is to join communities where users hold heated discussions on various subjects. Read their conversations and make informative comments that would attract attention of all the interlocutors to you and, therefore, your startup.

There are many companies that have built solid customer bases by advertising their products in social networks. One of them is Starbucks, a popular coffee chain. Today, it has more than 6 million followers on Twitter, and over 36 million likes on its Facebook business page.

On the web, you can find numerous resources covering a wide range of social media marketing tips. The most popular and extensive resources are mentioned below.

Take Part in Various Events

The golden rule of marketing for startups is to use any possibilities you come across, and one of them is to attend events related to your industry. You will be able to find many strangers interested in your business there, which is a nice chance to spread the word about it. To make sure people you meet won’t lose your contact details, you are recommended to hand out brochures advertizing your company.

In your neighborhood, there may be some locally recognized companies involved in the same industry as you. Since they work with the category of people who can become your customers, don’t hesitate to stick with them and show up at their conferences. Being a stranger, you will still look reliable in people’s eyes, because serious firms don’t establish contacts with crooks.

For example, if you are involved in the sphere of information and communications technology, don’t miss the Brand ManageCamp Conference. You’ll have an opportunity to establish relations with many senior-level marketers who attend it to discuss their fresh ideas. Another great event to participate in is the Ad Age Digital Conference that brings together more than 500 specialists to share thoughts on various issues of digital marketing. Just find a proper place to tell about your business and become its regular visitor.

To make sure you won’t miss any interesting events, there is a useful social networking portal to track their schedules, Meetup. With its aid, you can find and join communities united by common interests, e.g. IT, entertainment, health, politics, whatever. Just enter your city, postal code and the topic you’re interested in, and the tool will do the rest for you. As an example, follow this link to look through the upcoming IT events.

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Marketing may seem to be a difficult activity, but everyday practice will definitely help individuals master it. If you want your new business to reach a wider audience, you should follow the startup marketing strategies mentioned in this post. They’ll lead your company in the right direction and bring it a triumph eventually.