Startup marketing strategy: 10 ideas and strategies that really work

Are you new to the startup scene and even newer to the content marketing game?

With all the work that goes into founding a company, there is little time left to think about marketing strategies that prove successful and that a startup's teams can actually execute.

If you find yourself in that situation, there's no need to panic. You probably already know the tools that help with developing a strategy - a CMS, social media accounts and graphic design software, for example.

Now you just need to know how to use these tools and similar methods to build campaigns that are aligned with your business goals. Maybe you've seen the brilliant marketing strategies of other startups and wondered how you can develop a successful strategy of your own.

We have the answer for you. Here are some of the ways you can develop a successful marketing strategy for your startup and lay the foundation for your future success.

1. Use SMART goals to focus on business-critical objectives from the start.

At Growably, we use SMART goals. These are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. A SMART goal could be, for example:

Increase organic traffic to our website by 50% by 2022

Create 10 new sales-oriented blogs by Q3

The purpose of SMART goals is to lead companies to success. They set a direction and help organize your efforts.

SMART goals are invaluable for any company, but they are especially useful for startups.

In most startups, employees have to wear several hats (often due to financial constraints or a lack of resources). The founder might be responsible for strategy, product development and even PR, while the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) takes care of the website design, marketing and social media. There's just so much to do!

Of course, the main focus of every startup is product development (and it will stay that way until "launch") ... but what about all the other elements that support the company's growth?

This is exactly where SMART goals can really help. Instead of trying to do everything at once, focus on the most important goals, do everything you can to achieve them, and approach things strategically. Instead of spreading your time across many initiatives (some of which may not even matter right now), focus on three or four that form a foundation for your activities or support your ongoing efforts.

For example, if you are launching a new product, focus on development, but also set yourself goals like:

- Create 10 new blogs to raise awareness of the product by date X

- Publish 2 new landing pages to promote the new product by date X

- Secure 5 placements in online media through digital PR by date X.

These are just a few examples, but they can undoubtedly help sharpen your company's profile without costing much - the only real investment is time. Instead of spreading your capacity across many initiatives, focus on the ones that support what you're doing right now.

The key to sustainable growth is consistency and focus, and SMART goals help you achieve exactly that.

2. Create detailed documentation to identify who your target customers are.

SMART goals give your marketing efforts direction and focus, but who are you actually talking to?

For your startup's marketing efforts to deliver tangible results, they need to be tailored to your ideal target audience.

You probably already know exactly who you want to do business with, but have you shared that with the rest of your team, or at least created a document that describes your buyer personas?

This is where buyer personas come in. Buyer personas are semi-fictional descriptions of your ideal customers. They are based on market research, current data, existing customers and a few educated assumptions. Buyer personas help you understand the motivations, business challenges and needs of the people you want to reach.

It's also important to know that buyer personas are not real people, but archetypes of them.

Now that we've briefly explained what buyer personas are, you might be wondering: "Okay, but what makes them so valuable for my startup? It's simple: buyer personas let you refine your marketing and segment your target audience(s).

You want and need quick wins during the product development and launch phase. So why waste time (and money) casting the widest possible net when you can focus on the people most likely to buy from you?

Your buyer personas give you a clear idea of who these people are. Use this information to develop marketing and PR campaigns that focus on the right people at the right time and in the right place on their buyer's journey.

3. Have a clear, compelling message.

In an age of elaborate, expensive marketing campaigns and buzzwords, your job is to keep your messaging clear and concise.

People don't want platitudes or jargon. They want to understand what your product does and how it can help them solve their business challenges. In fact - and this may sound harsh - it's not even about your business, it's about how you can help your potential customers.

That's why every message your startup creates (and this applies to companies of every size) has to be created with the end user in mind. It has to be simple, informative and compelling. This will help turn your website visitors into customers.

4. Develop a content marketing strategy to generate leads.

Speaking of traffic: you need a plan to bring potential customers to your website. Content marketing is about creating high-quality content that answers your prospects' and customers' questions and moves them to buy.

Blogs, for example, are great for increasing organic traffic to your website and boosting your brand awareness. Every blog should be optimized for a long-tail keyword, because this helps drive targeted traffic (i.e. people who are definitely interested in your content) to your website. It's an easy way to grow your startup's digital footprint and raise its profile.

The content you create also helps you build connections and demonstrate your expertise. For example, you could create informative ebooks and gate them behind landing pages on your website. Visitors can then download your ebooks in exchange for their contact details.

That way, you can be confident that the people who download your ebooks are also interested in getting in touch with you. The ebooks you create work especially well for the "early adopters" audience, i.e. people who want to stay on top of new technologies and software.

Over time, more and more content gets created, and your website becomes a treasure trove of information. If the content is optimized for the right search terms, the right people will keep finding it.

5. Distribute the content you create.

It's not enough to click "Publish" and wait for customers to come. After all, content marketing isn't only about organic search traffic. To get the most out of your budget, you can repurpose the content you create, distribute it on channels other than search, such as social networks and email, and promote it to both new and existing audiences.

Take a blog post, for example. If you've written an article with 10 tips, you can create a social media graphic for each tip and build an info series for your followers, while also promoting the full article and/or an offer for related content.

A social media plan like this should be part of every content marketing strategy, and every content marketing strategy should be developed with distribution in mind.

6. Run ads for short-term results.

Content marketing is a long-term game. Although it can pay off significantly over time, you probably won't see immediate results. While you build up your content platform, you need a way to generate leads and ROI in the short term, and ads are the best way to do that.

Ads are "pay to play", so they don't scale like content marketing, but the advantage is that your ads are shown to users shortly after the campaign launches.

But which ads should you run first? That depends on your advertising strategy, but a good rule of thumb is the following:

• Google Search Ads - Best when people already know the product/service you sell and are searching Google for the right provider/vendor.
• Social Ads - Since people don't go on social media specifically to shop, these work best when people don't know the product/service yet and you can grab their attention in a fun/visual way. Also great for finding niche groups.
• Display Ads - Best for brand awareness and retargeting.

7. Implement a digital PR strategy to increase attention for your brand.

If you want to get the most out of everything you do - especially when it comes to content creation - why not amplify it with digital PR?

Digital PR takes everything that's good about traditional PR: press coverage, events, outreach, thought leadership content - and brings it online. Suddenly, the content you created for your marketing activities can be repurposed for PR.

Digital PR even goes one step further: the agency you work with will do everything it can to earn backlinks to your website (editors and publications are notoriously difficult when it comes to getting links in content). As a result, people who read your content in online publications can actually find your company, and the content itself is already optimized for search because you've already done that work.

All in all, digital PR helps increase your company's visibility both online and offline. It helps you get your work covered in the most important trade media and generate positive attention in your industry.

8. Measure and improve Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Since it's easier and cheaper to retain existing customers or sell them something new than to win new customers, it's important for startups to measure and improve CLV:

• Improve the customer experience and remove points of friction
• Track customer satisfaction and improve customer retention
• Develop a strategy for upselling and cross-selling

9. Build and maintain your reputation.

87% of customers read online reviews for local businesses in 2020, up from 81% in 2019 (Bright Local). The internet allows customers to be better informed during the buying process than ever before. A bad reputation can therefore hurt your marketing and sales efforts, while a good reputation can help close the deal.

With that in mind, you should do everything you can to leave a positive impression:

• Ask your customers for feedback and act on it.
• Ask for testimonials when you've exceeded expectations.
• Cultivate other forms of social proof, such as case studies.
• Respond to online reviews in a professional manner.

10. Build a referral engine.

Despite all the digital marketing strategies and tactics, word of mouth is still very powerful.

This is especially true for companies that deliberately set out to improve the customer experience.

Referrals often happen organically, but a referral marketing strategy can help you generate them faster. Here's what you can do, for example:

• Identify promoters and ask them whether they know anyone who would benefit from your product or service.
• Encourage customers to refer their friends through a referral program.
• Leverage user-generated content.
• Create campaigns that benefit both sides, or champion a cause your customers support.

Marketing ideas for startups

The strategies above give you a good overview, but execution is a whole different story. To give you a feel for how a marketing strategy can help your startup succeed, here are a few ideas. These ideas come from startups and are meant to help you picture how a successful strategy can support your own marketing goals.

1. Use paid ads to build a community.

2. Use social media to connect with customers.

Social media marketing doesn't have to cost money - it can also be used to grow your audience and engage with existing members. 

It's free to create a Facebook business page and optimize it so leads and customers can find it. 

A startup social media page that features customers, offers helpful content and invites participation is a free strategy to increase reach, drive clicks to your website and show your credibility in the industry.

3. Crowdfunding marketing that can generate positive press.

Are you thinking about launching a crowdfunding campaign? If you do, you could get a lot of press and increase your campaign's reach. 

Even if you only have a few customers, you can use your crowdfunding campaign as a marketing tactic to get more people interested in your company.

4. Host a virtual meetup instead of a conference.

5. Use user-generated content to tell your story.

Startups usually don't have the money to run large-scale social media campaigns. 

A user-generated content marketing campaign is an easy and free way to include testimonials. You can use your social media channels to run the campaign and add hashtags to show up in more feeds.

When you're thinking about campaign ideas, you may not need to look very far. Maybe you can use some of the tools you already have to amplify your campaign messages. Is there a webinar you could host on a specific topic, or a content offer you think would resonate especially well with your LinkedIn audience?

6. Create SEO-optimized content to attract interested users.

SEO is another free and cost-efficient strategy that startup marketers can use to get their company known.

But there's a catch: of all the strategies mentioned, this one takes the longest.

That's not to say it's incredibly time-consuming - it isn't, but it is ongoing work. The more you optimize your website, the better it will perform, which in turn leads to more leads for your business.

You need to know that SEO won't bring you new customers right away, but it lays the foundation for lasting success in the months and years to come.

The idea behind SEO is that you optimize your web pages (and content) for search terms you know potential customers use to find products or services like yours.

Even better, identify long-tail keywords with low to medium competition and high search volume that are relevant to your product or service, and use those instead.

Of course, your most important service pages compete with other companies in your industry for many similar terms, but you can use the content you create to link to these pages, boosting their SEO value over time and improving their rankings on the search engine results pages.

By updating and optimizing your website, you can make sure it keeps growing and attracts interested customers over the long term.

7. Introduce a referral program.

Referral marketing has become a hype in recent years as people increasingly rely on product and service reviews, testimonials, and case studies to confirm their buying decisions.

The goal of this specific marketing idea for start-ups is to use those who have already bought your product/service and ask them to promote you - whether through a review, a testimonial, or a case study.

This type of content is invaluable because it shows your potential customers that you've found solutions for people like them in the past. To make your customers more likely to do this for you, you can offer them discounts or free product trials.

You could also consider giving out free access, trials, or versions of your product to specific people. A good way to reach out to the press and increase brand awareness is, for example, to let specialist journalists test your offer free of charge. They can then write a report and forward it to the appropriate online publications and link to your website.

And finally, make sure that you publish these reviews in a prominent place on your website. They help build trust and authenticity - both are the keys to success in today's digital world.

8. Offer a free or trial version of your product

One of the best ways to get the word out about your startup is to offer a free version of your product or service - and that's already worked for many companies.

Canva, Dropbox, Zapier, HubSpot - all of these well-known tech companies offer some sort of free trial of their product or service so people can try them out before they buy (or upgrade) them. When people use the products and realize how great they are, they feel compelled to buy the “unlimited” full version with all the bells and whistles. It's great, isn't it?

But it's not just about getting people to use your product, it's also about reducing customer acquisition costs by talking about how good it is. With a freemium model, many companies offer current test users a discount on the full price of the software. This is much more attractive than paying full price and can potentially turn more leads into paying customers very, very quickly.

Even for those who become non-paying customers with this offer, you can find out which features or parts of your service are missing. You can ask them for feedback, make the necessary changes, and then roll them out to see who's accepting the full offer.

To achieve the greatest possible effect, you should compare your offer with the main problems your buyer personas have when it comes to your technology. Consider adding features to your product/service that solve these issues (where possible). Maybe you'll create a road map and show people what to expect. Transparency is a good way to get more users!

Also keep in mind that this approach has the risk that people won't want to upgrade to the full version. Therefore, you should state as clearly as possible what users get from the full version and how valuable it can be for them. Keep your coolest features under wraps!

The best strategies use a combination of ideas and tactics

If you want to get the best results out of marketing, you need to focus on what's working.

While there are many different ways to achieve your goals, you should always focus on the most effective and cost-effective one, and as a founder, you probably already know how important that is.

The best strategies use a combination of the above measures and then analyze their performance to determine which of them require more or less investment. No matter what you do, remember that your marketing efforts are only as good as your goals and objectives. Good luck!

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