Startup Marketing 101- Marketing Guide for Entrepreneurs

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Once startups release their MVPs, they focus on customer relationships. The low budgets and small number of paying users lead entrepreneurs to be frugal in their marketing approach. Therefore, they must determine a marketing strategy that maximizes efficiency with a low budget.

Each startup emerges in response to a new market and a new demand. Therefore, creating a general marketing strategy that encompasses all startups is not reasonable. However, certain fundamentals can be evaluated on a startup basis and converted into appropriate strategies. This week on Startupfon-Blog, we examine the important factors in determining marketing strategies for startups.

 

Step 1 - Determine the Marketing Objective

The concept of success in early-stage startups varies from company to company. However, we will generally examine the concept of success under the marketing heading with two main goals.

  1. Increasing Brand Awareness: When entering a new market, it is vital to introduce yourself to potential customers. If potential customers do not know who you are, what you do, and what differentiates you from your competitors, it is unlikely that your startup will grow. If you want to plan a marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, your goal should be to leave a lasting impression on customers' minds, not just to acquire customers directly through logos or slogans.
  2. Acquiring New Customers: If your goal is to acquire new customers, you can achieve this by registering your customers on your platform, having them follow certain social media accounts, or registering them on your email list. This way, you can directly reach potential paying customers and establish an infrastructure for your future marketing strategies.

 

Step 2 - Analyze the Target Audience Correctly

No matter what kind of startup you have, analyzing the target audience correctly and delivering your message to the right people is important for the company's growth. Knowing what kind of convenience you provide to potential customers, the quality of your product, and the points where you differ from your competitors will help you determine your target audience. For example, if you are a B2B company, you should correctly identify the type of business solutions your company provides and the industries in which it operates, as well as understand the jargon of the audience to whom you offer solutions.

 

Step 3 - Question Our Position in the Market

As we mentioned in our previous article, the lack of demand in the market is the main reason why startups fail. Your startup may be addressing a very narrow audience or similar solutions to your startup may already dominate the market. Therefore, determining your position in the market correctly when identifying your target audience and removing irrelevant users from your target network is important for effective marketing.

 

Step 4 - Determine Your Budget

The most challenging step for a startup is directing the right amount of money to the right area. Ventures that allocate a high budget for operations but not for marketing will not be able to reach the desired number of customers, while ventures that allocate a low budget for operations will not be able to avoid being overwhelmed by the workload. Therefore, you should not forget to spend the budget wisely according to the level of your venture, to be rich in content, to use correct targeting and content for high return on investment.

 

Step 5 - Use the Right Channels for Marketing

We emphasized the importance of identifying your target audience before planning. In this step, we will discuss how to use the right channels at the right time according to your target audience. Generally, we can examine these channels in three main headings: Website, email, and social media.

  1. Website: A website, which is almost indispensable for every business, is an organization that shows what your business does, who it consists of, and hosts your products. The first thing you need to think about before creating your website is what your domain name should be. If your domain name is good enough, people can reach your site organically and contact you. For example, Startupfon succeeds in appearing in the first place of most people who search for the words startup and fund on Google through its domain. If you have a website, you have undoubtedly heard of Google Ads. In addition to organic traffic, using advertising in a budget-friendly way is an effective method for your site's traffic. The point to be careful here is that when advertising for certain words or word groups, advertising for phrases that are compatible with your venture's identity and less preferred will make the advertising return more positive for you. In addition, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important features that make a website stand out. No matter how much money you pay, your site will not be able to reach the top if it does not have content of a certain quality. Therefore, you should manage your site based on customer needs in terms of both content and usability, and enrich your site with blog posts that can be a solution to the problems experienced by potential customers in the market.
  2. Email: In email marketing, where you have the chance to establish a one-to-one connection with your potential customers, you can announce new developments, products, campaigns, and education in your company through email. You can also attract customers to your site at certain intervals, increase your site traffic, and thus gain new potential customers. To include people in your email list, certain opportunities such as e-books or free limited training should be provided in the relevant field, and emails with rich content should be sent without sending too many mails to ensure that they do not unsubscribe.
  3. Social Media: In the digital world of today, almost everyone has at least one or more social media profiles from every segment. Now, every business from corporations to startups attaches importance to their own social media. In social media, which has become a kind of brand promotion platform, the main factor is to decide which social media channels to use actively. For example, if your target audience consists of young people aged 20-25, Facebook ads will probably not work for you in Turkey, but using Instagram correctly can bring you good returns. Of course, using all of them actively is a good option, but we should not forget the workload that comes with each social media channel. You can share certain virtual/physical events, announcements, sweepstakes, and trainings according to the service provided by your company on your social media, and turn the social media channels that you have made interesting into a customer pool.

 

Step 6 - Measure the Success of Your Campaign

After preparing and sharing your campaign, there is only one step left to follow; tracking the results of your shares. It is possible to find basic level metrics regarding your shares on almost every platform. Therefore, examining your successful campaigns with high returns and giving importance to the valuable points in that share and diagnosing the mistakes in your unsuccessful campaigns and minimizing them is the last step of the marketing journey. From now on, repeating these steps and revising your plans at certain intervals will enable your company to reach the marketing plan it is looking for.

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