Growth Strategies for Startups

Developing Growth Marketing or Growth Hacking strategies for Start up’s is a complex and time-consuming process, it is integral to ensure a start up’s success. Over 20% of Startups fail due to lack of Marketing! Startup Failure Rate Statistics To Take In 2020 .

Let’s jump into a few growth strategies for startups when developing your Marketing plan!

Define your audience and develop around this

Combine Data Analytics and a personal research to understanding your audience. Look into the data on your potential and current user base. Use Free Audience and Affinity Analytics such as Google, Facebook, etc. Install analytics software in your site or app, use scroll tracking, heat mapping, eye tracking. This data will tell you a lot about your target audience and their behaviors.

With the hard data in mind, now its time to get personal! Join communities that your audience may be a part of (online and face to face), ask them questions, engage in discussions, find their pain points, dig deeper into these areas and record your findings. Combining Analytical Data with your personal research will expose many amazing marketing opportunities and create stronger marketing strategies.

Use Traditional Marketing

It’s easy to get distracted by all the latest software and ‘Hacks’ to get your product in front of its audience or users. When developing your Marketing strategy, Focus on your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or UVP (Unique Value Proposition). Let your audience know why your service or product is better or what it makes unique or creates value for them.

If you can’t find either, spend your time finding it! Over 40% of Start up’s fail due to the lack of need in the market for their product or service.

Awareness

A Growth Hackers specialty! Creating Awareness and Visibility for your SaaS or product will require resources and time. There is an ever-increasing list of strategies, tools, and techniques to achieve this. This encompasses, SEO, Referral Marketing, Digital Story Telling, Social Media platforms, Automation, Press Releases, Blogging, Blogger Outreach, and this list goes on! The issue that many Start up’s faces are financially related at this stage, there isn’t large amounts of funding to create mass awareness. That’s where you need to get creative!

Some growth strategies to include in your marketing plan-

• Create Authentic Content that is valuable to your audience- You may have heard ‘Content is King’, it still applies. The only problem in 2018 is that there is A LOT of content, so ensure your content is more valuable than the others. Try to assist them and show that your startup is focused on providing value, people are low on time and looking for specifics, develop your content around this knowledge.
• Harness SEO– The use of good SEO can level the playing field between you and your competitors along with exposing your Audience to a product or Service. (SEO tip- Target Long tail keywords, for greater success in your rankings)
• Automation- There is so much great software and API’s out there, spend some time allocating plans and setting up your tools correctly. Low-cost tools worth looking into include- Mailchimp, Drip, Zoho, SEOQuake.

I wanted to include a quick side note relating to Automation- Don’t forget to be Authentic if you are using Automation tools! Sending automated thank you and please subscribe messages on Social Media is spam! Chatbots with poor scripting and limitation is also spam! These don’t seem authentic to the user or audience and can have negative acquisition consequences.

Audience insight and Awareness Intersect

Buzzfeed is a great example of using Growth Marketing, that is they have found Low Cost and effective methods of promoting their platform. Buzzfeed understands their users and what they want to see or discuss across the internet. This understanding has allowed them to create some of the most successful viral content across the internet multiple times with extensive platform awareness. Anyone remember the below example?

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Execution

Creating a Marketing strategy for any business can be difficult and complex. More so, a Startup faces financial challenges that can impact on marketing and product development. Focus on marketing your unique product and value to the customer that you understand, demonstrate your value and your understanding of the customer, exhaust all the lower cost and free social media channels through your developed Social Media Marketing Plan, use SEO, automation and most importantly keep moving! Never stop learning and researching Marketing strategies and methods.

If you have any questions or need any assistance with your growth marketing or growth hacking strategies, you can reach me via Linkedin or Contact us.

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