Marketing Strategies Every Startup Should Implement

If you are start­ing a com­pa­ny, you’ve def­i­nite­ly faced the para­dox of “my idea is genius and every­body needs it; how do I let the world know?” You tell the world about your prod­uct or ser­vice they so great­ly need through the incred­i­ble and far-reach­ing world of marketing.

Your startup needs marketing

No mat­ter what kind of busi­ness you are start­ing, you need mar­ket­ing to help you ful­fill your company’s full poten­tial! Mar­ket­ing estab­lish­es a reli­able line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between brand and consumer. 

It is the way you will con­nect with poten­tial buy­ers, get the word out about your prod­uct or ser­vice and con­tin­ue to inform your audi­ence of updates. 

To get the most out of mar­ket­ing, you need to devel­op and fol­low a strategy.

A strategy changes everything about how you market

Craft­ing a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy ensures that no tac­tics you imple­ment are ran­dom or with­out pos­i­tive effect. In fact, it helps make cer­tain that every effort you put forth helps you grow as a com­pa­ny and gain con­sumers who con­sis­tent­ly pur­chase your products.

Devel­op­ing your strat­e­gy is the first step in mar­ket­ing. Through­out the process, you’ll refine your busi­ness objec­tives, gain a clear under­stand­ing of your tar­get audi­ence, and anchor a clear set of goal trackers. 

Get­ting start­ed might sound daunt­ing, so we’ve set out a list of steps to fol­low. Each step comes with research, insight, and plan­ning of its own. Take your time as you strate­gize; when you are ready to exe­cute, you’ll be in a per­fect posi­tion to con­fi­dent­ly enter the market. 

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Cre­at­ing a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy requires research, steady dili­gence, and a com­mit­ment to imple­men­ta­tion and progression. 

Fol­low these guide­line steps for the best results:

• Iden­ti­fy the tar­get market
• Per­form thor­ough research
• Run com­pet­i­tive analysis
• Deter­mine a fea­si­ble budget
• Choose mar­ket­ing channels
• Cre­ate an email list
• Brain­storm con­tent creation
• Gath­er influencers
• Estab­lish a mea­sur­ing system

How to Do Market Research for a Startup

In this sec­tion, we will look at the first three strat­e­gy cre­ation bullets:

• Iden­ti­fy the tar­get market
• Per­form thor­ough research
• Run com­pet­i­tive analysis

Identifying the target market

Before you can start mar­ket­ing, you must know whom you are mar­ket­ing to. Here’s how to find out:

• Seg­ment tar­get audi­ences to clear­ly iden­ti­fy poten­tial con­sumer groups and learn about their respec­tive differences
• Account for gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences (and sim­i­lar­i­ties) with­in tar­get groups; even though con­sumers are the same age, they have vary­ing inter­ests with­in their gen­er­a­tion brack­et for which type of con­tent to digest and when
• Nar­row in on the con­sumer groups most like­ly to need and buy your prod­uct, but leave space for unex­pect­ed audi­ences who grav­i­tate toward your brand; e.g. don’t say no to pay­ing Gen X con­sumers because you want to be a pop­u­lar Mil­len­ni­al brand

Perform thorough market research

Research is your great­est guide to pleas­ing your tar­get audience:

• Accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fy need for product/service 
• Uti­lize inter­views, focus groups, prod­uct tri­als and requests for feedback
• Deter­mine prod­uct differentiation

Run competitive analysis

Check out what your com­peti­tors are up to so you can up your game or avoid sim­i­lar mistakes:

• Run SWOT (strengths, weak­ness­es, oppor­tu­ni­ties, threats) analysis
• Col­lect and ana­lyze com­peti­tor strate­gies, audi­ences and flaws

Now that research is tak­en care of, we can look at the remain­ing strat­e­gy steps.

Determining your budget

Mar­ket­ing is a big invest­ment, whether through time or mon­ey. Seri­ous­ly eval­u­ate where you can afford to spend and where you can apply your own time to achieve desired results:

• Be real­is­tic with bud­get as a start­up; it’s okay to start small
• Look where you can get most for your mon­ey based on skills, con­sumer inter­ests, and pre­dict­ed ROI
• Bud­get accord­ing to your busi­ness objectives

Choosing marketing channels

Each con­sumer group tunes into dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing chan­nels, so you’ll need to deter­mine which to focus on for shar­ing your message:

• Let con­sumer research guide you
• Cre­ate cohe­sive and linked social profiles
• Research the respec­tive tone/purpose of your cho­sen platforms
• Leave room for pro­file expan­sion, but keep cur­rent efforts focused on the most nec­es­sary channels

Creating your email list

Emails speak to con­sumers over time as they offer a rou­tine check-in and point of brand exposure. 

• Start slow, your list will build through con­sis­tent effort
• Prac­tice patience as you col­lect addresses
• Offer an incen­tive to receive more email sign-ups

Brainstorming content

Keep­ing con­tent inspired is essen­tial to con­sumers both­er­ing to tune in to what you share. Keep the brain­storm­ing rou­tine and gen­er­ate as many ideas as pos­si­ble before begin­ning cre­ation. This will nar­row down ideas and give you plen­ty of back­up mate­r­i­al for cre­ative droughts. 

• Let research guide you
• Con­sid­er team resources and skills
• Research mar­ket
• Under­stand the effect of con­tent on your con­sumers’ behavior
• Deter­mine mar­ket position
• Refine voice and message
• Ana­lyze com­peti­tor content
• Diver­si­fy types of content
• Build slow­ly, don’t rush to pub­lish all at once
• Cre­ate a post­ing time­line or sign up for auto­mat­ed service
• Stay cre­ative! It’s okay to run tri­al and error

Gathering the right influencers

Influ­encers help com­mu­ni­cate your mes­sage and brand in the native tongue of con­sumers; as you onboard influ­encers, do the following:

• Research who con­sumers fol­low and trust
• Reach out to macro- and micro-influencers
• Keep influ­encers rel­e­vant to both brand and audience
• Build gen­uine con­nec­tions to estab­lish long-term relationships

Establishing a measuring system

A mea­sure sys­tem will be crit­i­cal in eval­u­at­ing your mar­ket­ing efforts:

• Match strat­e­gy goals to busi­ness goals
• Deter­mine the ide­al ROI per tactic
• Observe con­ver­sion rates against a pre­dict­ed or desired benchmark
• Con­sis­tent­ly col­lect Email data points
• Use Google Analytics

3 Tips for Implementing your Strategy

1. Diligently track progress

If you prop­er­ly strate­gized, you devised a track­ing sys­tem. Now, you must imple­ment that track­er dili­gent­ly. Mar­ket trends change when con­sumer inter­ests change, and you can often observe these shifts in audi­ence response before research noti­fies you of any gen­er­al mar­ket tran­si­tions. Set up a week­ly, month­ly, or quar­ter­ly review routine.

2. Be ready to adapt 

When you notice parts of your strat­e­gy not work­ing or not meet­ing goals, re-strate­gize this sec­tion and imple­ment the new plan. You are bound to run into efforts that don’t gel with con­sumers as well as you’d hoped. That’s okay! The impor­tant thing is to observe it and then to adapt. 

How can you get con­sumers to share your video if ask­ing them to share didn’t work? Maybe they’d rather share a pho­to; maybe you can incen­tivize them with a dis­count or dona­tion to a cause.

3. Keep working steadily toward goals

Whether you have instant suc­cess or it’s a slow pro­gres­sion, remain con­sis­tent in your efforts. This is one way to estab­lish trust with con­sumers — trust is an essen­tial ingre­di­ent when it comes to a buyer’s pur­chas­ing decision. 

Affordable Effective Marketing Strategies

Adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing are inevitably big invest­ments you’ll need to make at the start of your company’s growth. The invest­ment will be either finan­cial or time-based. If you’re short on cash flow or you want to pre­serve your ini­tial cap­i­tal, there are a vari­ety of low-bud­get (though time demand­ing) mar­ket­ing avenues you can explore.

Exper­i­ment­ing with these low-bud­get strate­gic tac­tics is a wise choice as you will gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and how the tac­tics you imple­ment affect your prod­uct, brand, and business.

Try these dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing approach­es to boost your strat­e­gy on a shoe­string budget:

• Upload more videos
• Pub­lish info­graph­ics, they’re easy to share
• Focus on high-qual­i­ty con­tent over more con­tent (qual­i­ty over quantity)
• Stay con­sis­tent on social media
• Keep email­ing; it gen­er­ates return
• Repur­pose old content
• Offer incen­tives and contests
• Use refer­ral programs
• Invite guest bloggers
• Go live on social media

Rosy Strate­gies can help you build the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that your start­up needs in order to thrive. Trust our dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts to put you on a path toward achiev­ing your busi­ness goals through tan­gi­ble, exe­cutable mar­ket­ing tactics. 

Reach out to our team to learn more and get start­ed with your start­up mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, today.