12 Truly Practical Marketing Tips for Startups

Startups need flexibility and cost-effective marketing strategies, so their budget goes further. However, how can you do a massive marketing campaign, when your budget is minimal?

The truth is that the success of a marketing strategy isn’t determined by its size and cost. Learning by doing is how startups with small budgets can get traction with marketing, but it is hit and miss. Your time is money and if marketing is not your strength, outsource to marketers with the knowledge and experience to ensure your campaigns convert.

Form a Marketing Team

Hiring the right employees is crucial if you want to succeed. The same goes for your marketing team – if you gather the right individuals, you’ll get a savvy marketing team that will efficiently develop, adapt, and executes complex marketing strategies to deliver the required results. As an entrepreneur, you’ll probably have a hectic schedule, so having an entire team working on your marketing strategies is certainly the way to go!

Or, if it’s too soon for your own dedicated in-house marketing team, engage freelancers or a marketing agency to get the job done.

Carry Out Efficient Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing never gets old, and it is still one of the easiest marketing campaigns to set up and carry out by using a landing page creator. If you do it right, the benefits from a well-executed email marketing campaign can be huge, but you shouldn’t expect it to be an easy task.

Target the right audience, send the right message, promote the right product, and you may undoubtedly win lots of new followers. A good marketing tip is to use emails to promote a contest, event, or giveaway, as it can quickly attract the attention of many people. With email marketing, you need your own email list.

Email marketing list

To build an email list of subscribers, you need to incentivize your site visitors and social media followers to join.

Why should they sign up for your email marketing? What’s in it for them? Answer these questions on the landing page with your email list sign-up form.

Plus, be transparent – let your audience know how regularly you plan to email them. When you give your audience a choice, you know they are genuinely interested in your content when they sign up.

Remember slow and steady wins the race. Building up your email list will take some time, but you can promote it to get more subscribers in a short time frame. Remember, you will also lose many subscribers if you get them through a promotion like winning a prize or offering a giveaway.

Target the Correct Audience

You can’t expect to positively impact everyone you try to reach. Marketing campaigns, especially startups, should target a particular audience.

Reaching all the masses can cost a lot of money, and it may not deliver the desired results. However, getting the right audience will have much better results in terms of success and attention. Once you’ve prepared your product or service, you must decide what criteria to use when targeting your audience.

Do your research

Who are your competitors’ customers? Which social media sites do your customers frequent? Use Google’s free marketing and analytical tools to understand your target audience in detail so you can provide them with relevant content and satisfy their needs.

Never Underestimate Social Media

Social media is the biggest thing in the marketing field nowadays, and every successful marketing strategy involves a whole lot of social media interaction.

Set up a business page on Facebook and Twitter, and start building an audience. Get set up on these sites if your customers are also on Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, or another social networking site. Yes, you have a lot of work to do. 🙂

Of course, you shouldn’t forget to interact with your followers regularly to keep their attention and interest. Be swift to respond to tweets and comments, and your followers will think highly of your company.

‘Big’ Isn’t Always Good

Many novice entrepreneurs think the best way to progress is to invest lots of money in one extensive marketing campaign. However, spending all of your budgets on one campaign may negatively impact your finances, and the worst part is that there is no guarantee that you’ll achieve the desired results.

Make sure to build relevant campaigns, and don’t pay too much attention if they are grand or expensive. Expensive isn’t always better; it is much better to implement tricky and intriguing marketing campaigns to awaken users’ interest.

For example, sharing a video you shot on your smartphone that resonates with your audience is preferred over the super professional and costly promotional video. If you can do both, this is chosen as the professional video can be on your products or services while the homemade smartphone video can be on what’s happening now. To remain relevant, you will need to shoot many short clip videos, especially if you’re using TikTok.

Build Partnerships

Succeeding alone won’t be easy, especially if you and your business are newcomers to your market. However, building the right partnerships and forming solid relationships with some of the big names in the area may significantly help you deploy your marketing strategies. Determine who the industry leaders in your field are, and make sure to get closer to them.

Strategic partnerships can get you a long way; the best part is that resources are shared. For example, use Instagram collabs to share content with a synergistic user, so you mutually get to share and grow your followers.

Stay Professional

Your company isn’t the only thing you should market. Marketing yourself is also essential, so take the necessary measures to look professional in the eyes of your competitors and potential followers. Wear the right clothes, say the right words, and go to the right places, and you will quickly turn yourself into one of the trusted entities in your field of business.

Offer a Free Trial

Offering a new product or service? Still haven’t built a reputation? Offering free trials is an excellent and neat way to reach a wider audience and reassure your followers that your products and services are authentic and of the highest quality. Yes, you might not like giving stuff for free, but the potential returns will undoubtedly pay off for the complimentary trials. Once again, you can also give away free stuff that is not your product.

Create opportunities to give away stuff that showcases other businesses that are not your direct competitors creating a win-win outcome.

Become a Brand!

One of the primary goals of every startup should be to build a brand, but this may be trickier than you’d expect. It involves implementing a broad range of marketing strategies and techniques to popularize your product or service and to turn you into a name to look up to. Building a brand means being a popular name in your field and being known as an expert in your business.

Avoid marketing traps like greenwashing marketing. If your business is not sustainable or interested in being environmentally friendly, don’t promote it, as this action will hurt your brand reputation.

Networking Should Always Be Your Top Priority

Try to connect with people whenever you get the chance. Practice your speaking skills, research the places you plan to visit, and never be shy to start a conversation! Contacting people, speaking with them, listening to their opinions, and interacting with them will go a long way! This won’t just help you popularize your brand, but it may also help you build a good partnership.

Start a Video Blog

Vlogging is widespread, and if you manage to get some of your videos to go viral, you’ll undoubtedly be pleasantly surprised by the quick growth of your audience. Of course, being a successful vlogger won’t be easy, so you must be prepared to come up with unique ideas that will attract viewers’ attention.

Lasting Impression Is the Thing to Strive For

Always do your best in your attempts to leave a lasting impression on you and your company. Speak about your ideas, the technologies and techniques you use, discuss the recent news in the field, and strive to prove that you are among the experts in your area. Surprise people in a way that will make them remember you and your company for as long as possible. Think outside the box and be different!