5 EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR STARTUPS

Marketing your Startup is essential, the most difficult part is figuring out where you begin and which options are the most effective.

When it comes to marketing, startups face an uphill struggle. Not only are they going up against the considerably larger budgets of incumbents, but their brands are also unknown. It’s a double-whammy that makes marketing a challenge.

However, it’s worth pointing out that it’s an opportunity. Starting with a blank slate allows the newly founded company to create a unique brand identity without any baggage.

Here, we’re going to take a look at five effective marketing strategies for startups.

Press Releases And News Features

Press releases are a vital component of digital marketing, one of the most effective marketing strategies for startups. The purpose of a press release is to communicate news-worthy material to the broadest audience possible, generating awareness of who you are and what you do.

Distributing PR online can help your news, updates or releases be broadcast to large publications internationally and locally. If you rely on foot traffic for your business, online PR directed throughout local PR networks can increase foot traffic as well.

Journalists love Press releases (well as long as its news worthy or beneficial to the journalists/publications audience), Over 60% of Journalists across various studies have stated that Press releases are their number one way to find stories.

The online Press release provides additional SEO benefits by allowing large websites along with a variety of niche sites to link to your website which will assist in boosting search engine visibility.

Search Engines also have the ability to track mentions of your brand and associated news, in turn, relating this to your brand and website. This will also improve your SEO efforts.

Don’t forget, this Press Release is going to represent your brand. Ensure that the release is well written, this includes structure, grammar, clear message, includes sources and data, addresses and contact information is correct and matching across documents and online, plus much more.

It is always best to look into a Freelancer journalist or copy writer who can do this for your business, alternatively, you can hire a Digital Marketing team to take care of this for you.

Other important PR elements to consider are ensuring strong channel syndication, include Social Media, relevant journalists in your industry, publications that your audience will read.

Understanding who your audience is when writing the press release is fundamental in ensuring success, if you are producing a Press Release that is targeted to journalist and it contains exciting news, don’t fill it with statistics and create a literature masterpiece. Journalists are busy and on time sensitive deadlines, so create an exciting and succinct release that captures their attention and contains all important information you are conveying and that they will require. Every detail must be included and assessed in the editing process, including the PR title.

Just as there are PPC and SEO services, there are also press release services. So if you have a well written Release ready to go, then you don’t have to go to every media outlet in the country and tell them your story: get a press release writing service to do it for you. These services connect with dozens of media outlets and will publish your press release across a broad swathe of relevant publications. Popular services include PR Newswire, but there are many others.

Content Marketing

The place where startups can shine the most is in their content. Content marketing is a vital part of brand strategy, helping to flesh out what it is that you do, and what you’re trying to achieve. It’s a substantial time investment, but usually worth it because of the organic traffic it creates.

As a startup solving a unique problem, you have ample opportunity to create videos, blogs, and infographics showing people what you’re doing. Your content should be informative, to the point, and emotionally evocative.

If you dont have a content marketer included in your team, there are DIY options that might be of assistance. Take a look at Canva , Promo Republic or Design Bold. All great options for creating content that looks professional and without the requirements of knowing photoshop or illustrator. If you are not design orientated or feeling particularly creative, take a look at their templates for some inspiration.

Below we have listed some brief tips in creating great content.

Visually appealing-

Use professional images or video content, plan colour schemes, layouts, and every other detail. Leave no visual stone unturned. Don’t forget sometimes, simplicity is the key!

Target your audience-

Ensure your content is specifically targeting the correct audience. If it is a professional audience then images that are fun and playful or opinion articles might not be the greatest content to provide to your audience. Instead you could use statistics or an infographic or professional opinion article. The most important consideration when creating content, is to consider if your content will provide value to the audience. This will be your greatest guide in audience targeting.

Create infographics or material displaying facts and statistics

Provide statistics and data. This displays knowledge and can build trust with your audience and customers.

Capture your Brand and Emotion

Create content that displays the essence of your brand and can stimulate emotion, even if it is for only a moment to gain attention. For example, If your brand is daring, exciting and adventurous, aim to display this into your content. Another method is through Digital Story Telling, a great way of conveying a brand or products message through Digital media.

Professionalism-

If you are posting from a business account, ensure professional business related content. Avoid posting personal opinions (unless beneficial or of interest) to the audience.

Seek out opinions-

Ask opinions from your team and others to ensure the content looks, feels and includes relevant information whilst displaying the brands message and values.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation can be effective and it is a very effective marketing strategy for startups.

SEO is an essential component of so-called “growth hacking.” Creating content through viral videos or blogs can be one strategy, but if you want to rise through the ranks and generate a steady stream of interested customers to your site without PPC ads, then SEO is essential.

The trick for startups is to find keywords associated with their products that aren’t targeted by the existing firms in the market (this can be a difficult task at times). If you offer a new solution to a problem, this is surprisingly easy. All you need to do is target specific intent-related keywords people type into Google. If you are entering a more established marketplace, target long-tail keywords first. Shorter, highly competitive keywords are more difficult.

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are three to four keyword phrases that are very specific. These long-tail keywords are important as they target a visitor at the end of the funnel, a person that is more likely to make a buying decision. Long Tail Keywords have a higher conversion rate due to the nature of providing specific results.

For example- ‘Non Stick Frying Pan’ or ‘Keyboard with ergonomic support’.

Short Tail Keywords

A short tail keyword is a phrase that contains 3 words or less. A broad keyword/search term that encompasses the genre of product or service. For example, ‘Frying Pan’ or ‘Keyboard’. These are highly competitive keywords and you will find depending on the industry, it is those who have invested in SEO for many years or larger websites/businesses dominating search for those keywords.

Our three biggest pieces of advice for Startups when optimizing your website and search content firstly is the same as we mentioned above in the content section.

• Cater your SEO efforts to be of value to your customers and visitors- Don’t worry about ‘Keyword Stuffing’ and loading the content with a variety of keywords or one particular keyword. Provide content and stay topic relevant, the keywords will be there. Google, in particular, has advanced algorithms that recognise high-value content and its importance/rankings.
• Focus on Long-Tail Keywords-More specific keywords are going to rank faster and a little easier than short keywords. Get a few SEO wins+conversions with Long tail keywords then narrow in on Short Tail Keywords.
• Get a good SEO plugin for your CMS Platform- If you are on wordpress then you can install plugins such as Yoast or Rankmath. Two of the best SEO plugins out there! These aid in ensuring you are optimising a page to its fullest, create sitemaps and robot.txt, overall allowing the best opportunities to be found on Search

PPC Ads

PPC ads still play an essential role in startups. They enable you to launch yourself to the top of the rankings without the usual fuss. Ensure that you target specific niches within your audience. And if you’re on a tight budget, only target keywords with clear intent to buy.

The trickiest consideration for any start up or small business is the budget. PPC can be costly if the correct search terms are not analysed or correctly or your bid settings are ineffective. For example, one click in some industries can be over $32.00. This click is not guaranteed to convert. For a start up or a small business this can make or break a business, we have many horror stories where a business will invest their finances into PPC and do the ads themselves to only find that they went through their budget extremely quick with minimal results.

On the other hand, if you get PPC keywords, ad copy, bid settings, and other factors working correctly and unison, then PPC can be a very effective method with a high conversion rate.

Our suggestions to consider when creating a PPC Ad Campaign.

-Great Ad Copy

Write great ad copy! You have minimal characters to write a succinct ad that promotes your product or service. You could also include special offers and attention grabbing title/headline.

-A/B test with lower budget-

Test varios ad creatives and copy. You might find one particular ad that is doing much better than the rest, you can scale this ad immediately. Sometimes what you may think is an amazing ad isnt the one that resonates with the audience. So its always a good idea to test different Ad’s and look for the winners.

-Use Keyword planner or other software-

This is essential! Use Google Keyword planner within your Google Account. Google offers many great tools that assist in providing insights into the search volume and bidding cost on a search term. It also provides an option to estimate budgets and forecast possible results.

-Ensure that daily and lifetime budget is set on campaigns-

Set your daily budget and lifetime budget to a manageable amount for your startup. Ensure you have accounted for the possible increase on certain days for the budget to slip over the daily amount.

-If you aren’t getting results-seek a professional immediately-

If you arent getting results or its getting confusing, seek out a PPC expert or PPC Agency.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is undoubtedly one of the most potent forms of growth marketing available. Despite having been around for more than a quarter-century, email marketing has the highest ROI of any digital advertising to date. Most email campaigns achieve an ROI of 400 percent or more. Slowly build your email list organically (don’t buy it), and then send out high-quality marketing material to your customers.

A great tip to improve your email marketing effort is to use the content that you have already created and promote this through your emails to subscribers.

You can also use an email platform such as Mailchimp to manage mailing lists, improve the appearance of your email, track open and not opened emails, along with many other data points.

Need more Inspiration in Creating Marketing Strategies for Startups?

These are just a few basic strategies to get your startup on its way to greater awareness and growth. If you are still unsure where to begin or need professional Growth Marketing assistance. Reach out anytime for a Free Audit.

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