How to Start Marketing Your Startup: A Beginner’s Guide
Even if you are a small business and you can’t afford to do costly studies, you do have the ability to run different kinds of tests in your app or on your website and see what works best. — Roger Dooley
On the road to running your own startup, there are only 3 kinds of possibilities that exist as far as marketing goes.
Firstly you are yet to define your marketing strategy
Secondly, you have a marketing strategy in place, but you are yet to experiment with it in the market
Finally, you have started executing your marketing strategy and realized that it requires changes
This article covers a must-have in a start-up marketing strategy and hence can help you with either of the above scenarios.
Let’s look at few cold facts to understand the journey of startups.
· As per Forbes, 90% of startups fail [1].
· Failure is most common for startups during years two through five, with 70% falling into this category [2].
· As per CBInsights, The number one reason why startups fail is due to misreading market demand — this is found in 42% of cases [3].
Ability to understand market requirements and whether the product offering meets that requirement is the numero uno job of marketing. It also showcases how important it is to get the marketing lens early in the startup life cycle.
To address the above and other related issues, let me introduce you to the ABCDE formula for the marketing of startups. The ABCDE formula is a ready reckoner for all crucial things related to marketing in a StartUp. It stands for
A — Audience
B — Build the product
C — Learn from Competition
D — Define marketing objectives
E — Earmark Budget
A- Identify Target Audience and willingness to pay
The first thing is to understand who your target audience is. The entire marketing effort shall come out to be a damp squib if a startup fails to identify its audience.
Also, a crucial factor in this is identifying who all shall pay for the product and services being offered by the startup.
A product might be relevant for a larger group and can be rated very highly; however, purchasing it is a different ball game.
When there is an overlap between the target audience and willingness to pay, then that is the sweet point which any startup should be gunning for. It can also be called the Core Target area.
B- Build your product by exposing your product to the consumer environment
The second most crucial thing is feedback on your product. One needs to get out there and find out what your target audience thinks about the product when used in their environment.
Are they satisfied with the performance of the product, or do they want tweaks?
The more consumers can respond to the product of a startup, the higher the chance of coming out with a robust offering quickly.
The simplest way to achieve it is as follows.
· Interview people
· Conduct focus groups
· Let them try out your product
· Listen to their feedback
Launch fast, fail quickly, and continue to build to deliver a robust offering,
C- Competition Evaluation
Unless the product category is a white space entirely, looking at your competition is a good way to gauge future challenges.
Another model that can help in evaluating your competition is by using Porter’s Five Forces framework [4].
It helps you evaluate an industry or market according to five elements: new entrants, buyers, suppliers, substitutes, and competitive rivalry. According to Michael Porter’s model, these are the key forces that directly affect how much competition a business faces in an industry.
D- Define marketing objectives
One can land up chasing multiple marketing objectives while running the startup, and hence you must define a picture of success.
· Is it people visiting your company’s website?
· Is it the number of downloads for your app?
· It is engagement in your social media handle?
· Is it the email list of your customers who buy your product?
Each metrics that you choose would lead you to a specific course of action and marketing initiatives.
You mustn’t waste your time and precious resources to chase wrong marketing objectives.
E — Earmark your marketing budget
Running out of money is one of the top 3 reasons because of which the startup fails.
Appropriate budgeting is important for all businesses. But it’s even more important for startups. That’s because when you first launch, you don’t have a steady income yet.
Consumers don’t know whether you exist or not, and neither you have a regular clientele base. Hence you must define a marketing budget that works for
Once defined, you need to stick with it most of the time until or unless a piece of new information opens up a new dimension for your business. If you exceed those spending limits, it could be the downfall of your company.
The good news is that in marketing today, multiple things can be done for free, which can set the stage for your future success.
1. Send Emails
Email marketing is an essential strategy for attracting customers to your startup for little or no cost. Once you have a prospect or customer’s email address, you can send them emails to promote your startup. Once they buy, then more specific mailers can be sent to them with a customized offer.
2. Start A Blog
Blogging is an extremely potent strategy that can help your startup generate the exposure it needs. One report found that businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads than their competitors without blogs [5]. With a blog, you can position your startup as a leading source while also attracting organic search traffic to your site.
3. Post On Social Media
Statistics show that more than 2.4 billion people use social media, so it’s important to incorporate this channel into your startup’s marketing strategy [6]. As your business’s presence on social media grows, more people will see and recognize it.
Resolution:
Having done the above with some consistency, you will get enough information to execute future paid marketing initiatives with better results. The ABCDE formula shall help you get your marketing firmly in drive and go a long way to strengthen your startup for future growth. May the force be with you!
Lastly remember, Believing in yourself is the most important factor in developing a successful business and selling it to your initial customers.
Reference:
[2] https://www.embroker.com/blog/startup-statistics/
[3] https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/
[4] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/porter.asp
[5] https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/10/stats-invest-content-marketing
[6] https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media
