For there’s a will, there’s a way. A really wise quote from “Shrek,” isn’t it? So, if you have a startup idea and hope to bring it to life, the good news is that, Yes! There are actually a lot of ways to do it. What’s the bad news then? Well, to put it mildly, launching a startup is never easy. Now, at the pre-launch stage, putting up with this fact seems absolutely painless, but will you be ready to realize it, accept it, but keep moving forward when you face the first obstacle on your way to success?
Let’s agree on the point that you will.
Lack of commitment and motivation among aspiring entrepreneurs are some of the main reasons why about 90% of startups fail. I admit that’s a huge number. But you should know that it’s artificially exaggerated.
Firstly, the rate of failure is different for different industries. Here is the eloquent ranking provided by Small Biz Trends and Failory.com:
Secondly, as of 2017 and according to the results of the research conducted by Cambridge Associates in Boston USA, the real percentage of failed startups hasn’t risen above 60% since the very beginning of the 2000s.
Why add as much as 30%? Believe it or not, the bigger number simply comforts unsuccessful startup founders, turning their failure into a norm. You may feel for these guys. And that’s enough. Under no circumstances should you make this mindset a part of your business philosophy.
You want to make your startup a success, don’t you? So, stick to what winners in the marketplace do, not to what losers use as excuses.
Winners say that your startup needs a strategy. A marketing strategy to be precise. A digital marketing strategy, to be even more precise. And by winners, I mean Apple, Nike, Samsung, and IBM. The names of these companies speak for themselves.
A Brief Definition
Simply put, a marketing strategy is a plan of actions you need to take to reach your target audience, introduce your product or service to them, and reap the rewards. Wikipedia defines a marketing strategy as an approach to planning with the goal to achieve a competitive advantage on the market.
However, an approach to planning is something rather more theoretical, while a strategy implies real practical measures oriented to the achievement of a certain result.
Logically, a digital marketing strategy means the set of particular measures you take to introduce and promote your product or service and benefit from it in the digital world, that is online.
And I must sum it all up with the fact that, fortunately, or unfortunately, there’s no universal marketing strategy for making every single startup successful. Still, that means you can make your proposition to the discerning market of your niche stand out. And a unique selling proposition is a sure bet for every budding entrepreneur.
Why Should You Go Digital Today?
People trust the Internet more than themselves. If you win the hearts of the online community, you’ll get well-known in the real world too. That’s just the way any business works nowadays.
In 2017 Clutch.co conducted a survey aimed at learning more about experience with website ownership of US small business owners and managers. Almost all respondents (92%) recognized the necessity of launching a website to keep their businesses afloat, while as of 2016 71% of the respondents had already claimed their digital presence.
So, if you are a startup, consider launching your own website, e-store, or at least your own blog. Introduce yourself to Its Majesty the Internet first. And after you get its approval, you can take your rightful place in the offline market too.
What You Should Know Before You Work out a Marketing Strategy
Whether you are going to open a vegan restaurant or sell custom-made T-shirts, you should start not with brainstorming the strategies for realizing your wonderful ideas.
Speaking roughly, the strategy is all about HOW you are going to achieve your goals. That’s why, naturally, you should first understand WHAT your goals are.
Find Secure Funding
Experience shows that you don’t need millions to build a solid startup. Up to $10,000 can be enough to lay the cornerstone. The much more important thing is the source of this sum.
The numbers prove that personal savings and credits appear the most widely chosen forms of funding. Investments from family and friends as well as venture capital are the other two sources from which aspiring entrepreneurs feed their projects. Co-selling is another option to pool and extend resource value; learn more at https://www.workspan.com/guide-to-drive-co-sell-partnerships/.
So, you should first find a reliable material base for building your startup.
Decide What Exactly Makes Your Proposition Unique and Practical
Knowing everything about your product or service isn’t enough unless you know what exactly makes it stand out from the crowd of its competitors.
Greg Chapman, a small business advisor and coach who assists budding Australian entrepreneurs, believes that to grow successfully, you and your team should answer one simple question: why are you different? Whatever makes your proposition differ from its forerunners in the market, be it a new way of delivery or a new pie recipe, you need to highlight it.
Learn Everything About Your Target Audience
You should understand whom you want to interest in your product or service. As soon as you define your potential customers’ age, sex, income, profession (if necessary), online interests and preferences in purchasing products like yours, imagine a typical representative of your target audience in every detail.
Think about how he or she spends a working day and weekends, what he or she eats and wears, what he or she might associate your product with. Make up your typical customer’s story in order to better understand their needs and desires, which your proposition must satisfy.
Make Sure You Can Solve Your Customer’s Problems
Of course, you aren’t supposed to discover the elixir of life, though it’s quite a good and original idea. But still, your product or service must be helpful to your customer. Before you start building a marketing strategy, you need to decide clearly what benefit you want your customers to get from paying money for your proposition. This benefit will lay the foundation for the entire promotional campaign.
For example, if you are the first vegan restaurant in the neighborhood, you can definitely meet the interests not only of those people who don’t eat meat but also of those people who are too busy to come up with healthful recipes every day or just want to add new tastes into their regular menus.
Get Both a Physical and Web Addresses
Both will strengthen potential customers’ trust in your business when they come across your ad in Facebook or find you on Google Maps.
By the way, you’ll need both addresses to build your visibility in Google Maps and Google Search via Google My Business, a special Google’s tool that helps to establish and promote business presence online and offline. If you are having a WordPress site, you might want Google Maps Widget to handle showing your location on the website. Check this neat Google Maps Widget PRO review for more details about the plugin.
GMB listings quickly provide the necessary details of a local business which searchers google for. The position of your business on such listing is highly likely to help it stand out in search results. Besides, with GMB you can make your business more mobile-friendly since the listing dominates mobile local search results. And local search for many industries is getting more and more mobile nowadays.
Startupper’s Checklist of Digital Marketing Strategies
Now when you know the ins and outs of your proposition, business niche, and target audience, you can move on to introducing and promoting yourself online.
Remember that even the most experienced digital marketer can’t say for sure which strategy definitely guarantees your small business growth and recognition. Be prepared for a standstill and even loss of the position you got by spilling your blood, sweat, and tears into the whole project. But never give up. Because fortune favors the bold. Either does the online world.
Pay attention to all aspects and stay flexible to make instant changes in your campaign whenever you realize it needs improvements. By growing your startup, you grow your professionalism. That’s what your customers will trust in.
So, let’s make out what your startup needs to become a success.
1. Learning SEO
To those who are new to search marketing, Search Engine Optimization sounds like something really complicated but extremely essential for growing a business online. But even those people who dare consider themselves experts in SEO say the same: SEO is complicated though truly essential.
One of the core aspects of SEO is the correct work with keywords that are popular among searchers when they want to find a product or service like yours online. Well, you may compare keywords with hashtags in Instagram: keywords help users find what they want on the Internet.
But the difference is that you can’t make keywords up. You must research to learn how people search for and find products and services of your current competitors.
2. Blogging
If someone tells you that it’s mundane and useless, be sure this person knows nothing about it. Blogging for the sake of blogging never works well. Your blog must have a clear purpose, and that’s what will attract searchers to it.
Whether you want to share the latest news in your industry with them or just entertain them with the results of a humorous case study, you should realize what the purpose is: informing, entertaining, or involving into a purchase.
Yet, you should remember that blogging is not just about posting content. You need to support your blog and check if everything works correctly in it. Under Construction Page WordPress plugin will help you with that. It’s especially convenient and simple to use if you are a budding blogger and entrepreneur.
3. Using Google’s Tools
Google is a strict judge when it comes to any novelty offered to it by a startupper. But it doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t support really cool ideas and their dedicated authors.
As you start building a business, check out such Google’s tools as Startup with Google and Grow with Google. And I’ve mentioned Google My Business above.
For example, Startup with Google provides help and consultation at every stage of business development:
4. Building Trust in Social Media
Make friends with Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and LinkedIn in order to promote your products and services, as well as build strong relationships with your customers.
Although no marketer can tell you for sure which of these platforms is the best assistant for your small business, all marketers can agree on the fact that Facebook is your safe choice in any case. Advertising on Facebook can help you engage a target audience and understand it better.
At the same time, Google+ can help you increase the search ranking, while Twitter is believed to leverage PR possibilities.
What you should do at the initial stage of the startup is to learn more about the options of each social media platform. Base your choice on the particularities of your product or service and your knowledge of the target audience.
5. Working on Content
You should carefully think out everything from text to videos that you post on your website or Facebook page. Every detail of the content must support and add to the philosophy of your brand or the purpose of your whole business.
In 2018 captivating headings and stories, infographics, and video tutorials remain the most valuable pieces of content that can provide your audience with the info you want them to know in the way they will like to learn it.
6. Doing Email Marketing
No, it’s not about spamming. It’s about helping your customers find out more about the opportunities your product or service gives them.
In order to be sure that your customer won’t delete your message as soon as they get it, ask yourself a simple question each time you write text for it and attach a nice image: would you like to receive this?
Experiment with the frequency and types of messaging till you find the most effective ones for your business. But after you define them, you can still create one or two emails that will stand out and surprise your customers.
And if you’d like to make your email marketing campaign more effective and organized, opt for ActiveCampaign, a special tool that will help you maintain communication with your customers.
To Sum Up
It’s difficult to surprise the modern world with a novelty. But the novelty is exactly what this world wants and seeks. If at least one element of your entire startup campaign possesses this feature, the chances are that it will succeed. Your main task is to introduce this feature in the most effective way.
That’s what marketing strategies are aimed at. Yes, developing them takes times, following them takes nerves, but enjoying the fruits of their effect on your business is definitely worth all efforts.
For there’s a will, there’s a way.
Good luck!