Launching a new business can be incredibly exciting, especially if you’re confident people will love your products and services. However, simply offering products for sale isn’t quite enough to make it in today’s highly competitive market—you also need an excellent marketing strategy to get noticed, reach your target audience, and stay above the competition.
It’s understandable that a marketing strategy can seem overwhelming in your early days as a startup. Where do you begin? What exactly goes into developing a successful marketing campaign?
Here’s the ultimate guide to startup marketing, and how to contact Katava Marketing when you’re ready to develop a digital marketing campaign.
What Is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy is a plan your business makes to reach one or more specific marketing-related goals (such as increasing revenue or brand awareness). It is a high-level plan that involves coming up with tactics that can help you reach your goals.
In the context of marketing, tactics can be defined as specific steps your business takes to meet short-term objectives on the path to meeting your top goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, one of your objectives could be to grow your social media following by 25% by the end of the year, using the tactic of hiring a social media marketing specialist to help you get there.
Digital marketing is a form of marketing that focuses specifically on using online mediums to grow your brand and achieve your marketing goals. Google Search, social media, and your own website are examples of online channels you focus on with digital marketing.
How Can Startups Benefit From a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy can help you achieve your most important business goals. Here’s a list of some of the top benefits associated with a startup marketing strategy:
- It can help you better understand your customers and target audience, which can help you develop the right buyer personas.
- It gives you the opportunity to reflect on and set measurable goals and objectives.
- It can help you avoid making rushed, last-minute decisions that can hurt your business, such as adopting trends that don’t align with your business or target audience.
- It can help you track your successes and failures, which paves the way to growth and better strategies in the future.
- It can boost your brand awareness, especially if you develop strong social media marketing campaigns.
- It can generate and drive leads and sales, which is essential for viable startup growth.
- It can foster loyalty among your customers and audience, which can lead to positive online reviews, repeat business, and greater reach.
- It can help you stand out from your competitors and help you gain a competitive edge.
- It can save your startup lots of money, given how digital marketing is often extremely cost-effective.
Steps for Building a Startup Marketing Strategy
As a startup company, it may seem overwhelming to develop a marketing strategy from scratch. A great way to get started is to hire a full-service marketing agency that can guide you through every step of the process—from developing a new website to launching social media campaigns and ranking high in organic search.
If you’re not quite ready to work with a full-service marketing agency, here are some steps that can help you get started with building a strong marketing strategy.
Do Market Research
Market research is absolutely essential for startups, as it is key to helping your business make informed decisions. Study your competitors, along with past and present industry trends. Identify your target audience and study their demographics to gain a clear picture of the types of customers who may want your products and services.
Develop a Brand Identity (Visual + Message)
A strong brand identity can help you stand out and make your business, products, and services widely recognizable. Visual branding and message branding are core components of brand identity.
The logo, colors, typography, and illustrations are some of the many elements that make up visual branding. Message branding, on the other hand, focuses on how your brand speaks or how it conveys its business values to your target audience. Collaborate with your team to develop a brand identity, or hire a marketing agency that can help.
Create a Website and Blog
Having a website and blog is essential to surviving in a highly competitive market, and to establishing and increasing brand awareness. An online presence makes your business more credible and gives it the opportunity to establish itself as an industry authority. Many digital marketing agencies offer website development services and can work with you to build a website with excellent SEO and content marketing strategies.
Choose Your Social Media Channels
Social media marketing is also a must for startups and for nearly any business, but it’s not necessary to be on every single social media platform in existence. Each platform has its own personality and audience, which means some may be better for your business than others based on factors such as your target audience and the types of products and services you offer.
Understand your target audience and look into where they spend most of their time so you know where to reach them. This can help you determine your primary channels so you can get started on developing your social media marketing campaign.
Plan Your Calendar
A marketing calendar can help you stay organized and ensure you stay consistent when it comes to publishing new content on your blog and other channels. A calendar can also help your business prepare for deadlines and events such as product launches, conferences, and holidays.
Use an electronic calendar you can share with your team, such as Google Calendar, or create your own calendar using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. A marketing calendar can keep everyone on your team accountable and help you stay on top of daily tasks and day-to-day operations.
At Katava Marketing, your vision is our mission! Our full-service marketing agency offers search digital marketing, website development, SEO, and everything else your business needs to increase revenue. Contact us today at 973-998-8008 to get started!
