It is good to have unique concepts to come up with successful startups and that is exactly where the journey begins from.
A lot of startups turned into million-dollar companies and proved to be gold for the owners.
At the same time, if you go through some case studies, several startups have failed as well. The most common reason for this problem was adopting the wrong marketing strategy or not being innovative enough.
The growth of a startup depends on its marketing tactics
The core difference between a startup and a well-established company is the monetary budget and financial standing.
Well established corporate companies can afford to take more risks and have already established clientele.
This is not the case with startup companies as they need to work hard for every milestone. One of them is getting customers and retaining them.
Marketing matters a lot if you want to create a startup that eventually turns into a successful venture.In other words, what the brand offers has to be promoted in such a way that maximum buyers are incorporated.
- Multi-channel marketing is important to meet diverse user preferences
The count of social media channels has increased by leaps and bounds in the past.
This has given people more alternatives to interact with each other, share information, and communicate.
However, for brands, this has emerged as a sign of expanding marketing platforms. To target customers on a maximum scale, they cannot restrict to one channel.
They have to access all platforms so that a large count of buyers comes their way.
We can take the example of a clothing brand that targets teenagers and adults below 25. People of this age group use Facebook, Instagram, and various other social channels.
Hence, if the user is selecting just one social platform, he would only be aiming at a handful of buyers.
On the other hand, a multi-channel marketing strategy will help in targeting all potential buyers. This is the right move if you want to grow as a startup.
It is about going all out and grabbing every potential opportunity, this means that more people should be aware of the
- Company profile
- Product line
- Rates
- Categorization
- Other aspects as well
- How is the channel selection made?
Although through multi-channel marketing, products are promoted through different platforms. Even then, there is no point in picking modes that targeted customers simply ignore.
We can take the example of a leather wallet brand that targets people between the ages group of 50 to 60. Normally, people of this age group may use Facebook and Twitter but Instagram is not their priority.
Brand owners need to filter marketing channels according to the aptitude that buyers have, as this would trim down the marketing budget for the startup.
Newbies have a limited budget for each purpose, therefore we need to make sure that our marketing efforts are not wasted as this can be damaging.
What are the 7 optimum steps for the execution of multi-channel marketing?
For any startup, it is important to know that marketing cannot be restricted to one mode. More customers can be pitched only when several platforms are used.
However, this is not as easy as it seems, it’s important to be well aware of the steps that need to be implemented.
Startups can certainly turn into highly successful ventures if proper steps come into play.
1. Detailed target audience analysis including customer personas
Do you know that sales volumes depend on how well you know your buyer? It is obvious that if you are unaware of his expectations, it’s not possible to make a successful pitch?
Hence, before you start the operations of your startup, make sure that enough information has been compiled.
- Age and Gender
When it comes to creating customer personas, several parameters have to be analyzed, age and gender are among the important ones.
If you are selling toys, the potential buyers will not be adults, you would be focusing on children of all age groups.
For example if there is a new cartoon series that they are crazy about, incorporate them into the toy theme.
Similarly, if there is an age group limit of 5, you can design the same toys for both genders. An example can be remote-controlled toy cars that both boys and girls alike.
- The business section which the customer is related to
As a company, you need to start by analyzing who your buyers will be. At times, simply knowing the age and gender is not enough particularly if you are pitching to adults.
A company that sells formal shoes will not be targeting sportsmen or bodybuilders even if the age group is relevant.
The reason is that these people wear casual sneakers and not formal ones. Instead, corporate professionals, bankers, and administration personnel may show interest in the product.
2. Properly proofread and relevant content on all digital arenas
Digital marketing is surely the most effective and well-versed way of getting the attention of customers.
Nowadays, brands do not spend a lot on television commercials and above the line marketing, because these methods have dried out.
They are no more in vogue. Instead, social media marketing, back linking, and posting links through testimonials work a lot better.
Quality content is surely the backbone of top-level digital promotion. Even if you are using multiple avenues, make sure that readers get nothing less than the best to read.
- Be relevant in terms of providing information to the customers
It is important to understand customers go through the company’s social media platforms and other areas to get more clarity.
Providing content and regularly updating it does not mean that you need to enter unrelated information.
The moment a customer starts getting confused, he would also consider other brands offering similar products.
Do not be promotional and let the customer reach a verdict about how worthy you are. Most startups fail to follow this aspect and include a lot of self-praising statements, this is where things start going off track.
Research properly and instead of using the ideas implemented by other brands, be simple and unique.
There is no point in stuffing pages with material that readers would not bother going through.
- Never Compromise on the quality of Content
For startups it’s very hard to gain reputation and build trust, especially after the changes were made in Google’s Algorithm such as the E-A-T update: Expertise Authenticity and Trustworthiness, this change was made to rank better pages or websites for human users.
To have a good grip on E-A-T people need to create unique, informative, relevant, and masterpiece content, without duplicating anyone’s thoughts or ideas.
Duplication is an offensive issue highly scrutinized across all the search engines.
There are numerous duplicate checkers available online to verify your content’s duplication, make sure to check for plagiarism before finally publishing your content.
- Rely on automated grammar checking
The most professionally equipped writers also make grammatical errors during writing.
The customer will not accept this fact and he or she would measure credibility following the content quality guidelines.
Startup owners cannot afford to make even the slightest of mistakes and submitting incorrect information is a big blunder. Therefore, when it comes to proofreading, using an automated grammar checker is more than necessary.
This tool makes it quite simple to produce top quality content without worrying and putting in the extra effort.
First of all, writers do not need to overthink about checking mistakes. Once the check is performed and there are no mistakes, the submission can be made without any further proofreading.
The best thing about a grammar checker is that most options come free of cost. Using paid applications can be a problem considering the cost that is attached to them.
Grammar checking tools do not have a price so any user can access them without checking his monetary scalability.
These tools save time which is a key priority for any content writer, to improve the presence of a brand, fresh content has to be provided at regular intervals.
3. Use video content as a part of the marketing campaign
Visual content is the future of information sharing by all means. People are not as interested in reading as they are going through videos and images.
For instance, suppose that you want to check the latest smartphone launched by a popular brand. We would be interested more in viewing the specs of seeing the appearance and functionality through a video.
As the traditional way of text-based content would not appeal that much.
- Make sure that the video is not very long because this exerts pressure on the connectivity level.
The format of the video will make a lot of difference as well. Use a format that exerts less burden on the connectivity level, keep a check on the duration of the length as well.
In a nutshell, if you have a relevant video that does not exert pressure on the network, the brand will touch new heights and that too within no time.
4. Keep your social media channels updated with the latest information
Startups and even established companies have to keep their social media platforms beefed with the latest information.
If the customer pays a visit and figures out that the information on any of the channels is outdated, he would not be in favor of making another visit.
The best strategy is having a dedicated representative to update social media channels with recent information, make sure that consumers know everything including
- Recent product launches or offers
- New introductions
- Everything related to the brand.
- A lot depends on the channels that each brand is using. For instance, if your consumers are using Facebook and Instagram, add new posts to the Facebook page and images to the Instagram account.
The goal is to make sure that consumers get all the needed information from social media accounts. It needs to be updated at all times
5. Comparative analysis with competitors
Several startups are launched daily and if you belong to the same sector then competition will exist.
The goal is to keep an eye on what rival brands are doing. You need to be exclusive so that customers prefer you over other brands that belong to the same sector.
Successful case studies show that progressive startups always used to keep an eye on competitors. This is what the current marketing practices demand as well.
- Have a look at the product line that other brands are offering.
- Start by presenting something different from the targeted audience. People will not be attracted to you until an X factor is present.
- The second component you need to concentrate on is pricing.
- Most newbies launch at a low price to gather customers. However, make sure that an overly low price can have eyebrows raised about the quality you are offering.
6. Tracking consumer behavior through programmatic advertising
The buying practices that people adopt depend a lot on the psychological mindset they have.
For instance, if a buyer has been making most of his purchases at discounted rates for the past ten years, he would continue to do so.
This can be taken as a trend by companies and used to design offerings.
For instance, a product line at lower prices or special discount than usual can be introduced for these buyers.
- Keeping a track of consumer behavior comes under programmatic advertising.
It is considered the future of digital marketing, startups in particular are using it to analyze buyer mindsets and then pitch products accordingly.
This form of promotion can have varying budgets for companies and make adjustments according to their financial position.
- Programmatic advertising can have two kinds of positive aspects.
- One is that new companies can use it to get hold of more buyers, this means more leads and higher sales volumes.
- The second plus point is loss minimization, new brands do not have a lot of monetary budgets to rely on. Hence, they have to mitigate losses at all times.
7. Progress tracking at regular intervals
Every brand has some metrics to measure performance. The ones that are more active on social media analyze the number of clicks and comments.
- Comments and likes on different social media channels give an insight into how good or bad a brand is.
- If the majority of people are liking your brand, they would punch in positive comments that would give you an insight that your progress is above expectations
- Similarly, negative comments would create alerts that you need to improve to retain and increase customer count.
- The feedback of customers on social media channels is considered very important these days.
- For any brand particularly startup to grow, getting impressive feedbacks through these channels is critical.
Have you seen a brand grow these days with negative feedback on Facebook or Twitter?
The answer to this question is no.
In a nutshell, depending on the channels you are using, track the performance of your brand to acquire a strong position.
Conclusion
No business or brand wants to fail, but business empires are built on accurate and effective strategies, those follow them succeed and those choose the opposite direction they eventually fail.
Above given exceptional points are extracts of the Industry experts. Thus makes it a proven strategy to follow on.
