“Company branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room” – Jeff Bezos – Founder of Amazon.
For startups to stand out and survive in a competitive market, they need to employ effective and innovative marketing tactics that help them build a presence.
Promoting a new startup product is a bit challenging in this competitive environment. It would be best if you had a broader plan to promote a product and boost sales.
There are many options available in the marketing spectrum to promote a new product or service for your business. Sometimes, it can be overwhelming for companies that are just starting out to figure out the most effective marketing method to achieve the most desirable results.
The truth is, there are few smart and effective ways to promote your brand, and what works may depend on your industry, offerings, and audience. Take a look at these 10 methods below and see which ones make the most sense for your startup brand.
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Engage Your Customers With Google Ads
We know very well that search engine optimization can help you rank among the top on the search engine result pages. However, organic SEO practices can sometimes take months and even years to start showing results.
For immediate effect, Google Ads is the effective way to go. Google Ads ads will give you top rankings in search engine results pages, even list your ad above the organic and local listings.
Google search engine is popular because it provides the largest share of search engine traffic, high flexibility, ad-building features, and in-depth performance metrics.
Send A Quick Email To Them
Sending an early morning mail to the users may engage them in the product as they open it with a fresh mind.
Email marketing is considered one of the best strategies to promote your brand. It consistently converts leads at a higher rate than social media.
This is because, on social media platforms, you're competing for users' attention with massive distractions. On the other hand, personal posts and direct messages attempting to grab the user's attention are more straightforward than the previous one.
Email inboxes are more streamlined, and with this, potential customers have already shown interest in your product by giving you their email addresses.
Implement Referrals Programs
Have you heard stories of brands making it big with referral programs? One of them is Dropbox. It is the most successful example of executing a referral program the right way. The tactic they used is incorporating a refer-a-friend feature that helped the brand get the attention of a vast audience in a short time. Their signups increased by over 60% with their referral program and had 2.8 million direct referral invites coming from their users in just a single month.
They offered a simple 500Mb additional free storage for each friend they referred, which blew up their sign-ups. This was in 2010 when Dropbox was quite new and counted among the startups in the year.
The catch to referral programs is to offer something hard to resist. Referral programs can help generate word-of-mouth marketing that can uplift any young startup's reach.
Not only Dropbox, but Uber, PayPal, Evernote, Airbnb, Amazon Prime, and many other brands have used referral strategies to increase their brand presence. It offers the existing users some benefits and provides reassurance to the new users as it has been referred to by their friends. You can also offer a few rewards in exchange for the referrals given. It could be:
- Major discounts
- Extra points
- Free cash
- Free services for some time
- Free access for the paid product
Practice SEO Techniques
There is no alternative to having a digital presence when it comes to new entrepreneurs, i.e., having a website/ web app/ progressive web app. And SEO is the one that strengthens your brand’s online identity.
There are several marketing ideas for startups but nothing can beat the results earned from search engine optimization. SEO is the most used and popular marketing practice for any startup to boost a brand’s online presence.
You need to perform a detailed analysis of your business, competitor, and services to check what keywords need to be a target.
SEO tactics to promote your business include:
- Adding relevant keywords to specific places on your website
- Fix technical SEO issues
- Creating original, high-quality content with images
- High page load speeds and security
Shout Out Loud
It’s pivotal to showcase your brand in the market to bring the required visibility. Having a PR team to get you the required attention and media visibility needs to build the image.
Even Richard Branson, the undisputed king of PR, had said, “You have to get your brand out and about, particularly if you’re a consumer-oriented brand. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front-page ad.” His points on PR included:
- Tell Stories
- Be Creative
- Choose The Right Channel
- Be Truthful
- Have Fun
- Collaborate
- Stress The Second Impression
- Listen To Your Customers
Investing in a great PR team helps your startup to increase its brand reach and presence.
Harness The Power Or Online Listings
There are numerous websites available where young entrepreneurs can list their businesses. It helps them get discovered among the potential customers.
Listed down some reasons why brands get listed on such listing sites.
- Customers always trust clients reviews on such listing sites
- Exposure of your brand to different parts of the world
- Listing on business directories also shows up on search engine result pages
- Your brand can have a better visibility
- Direct traffic to your website that might lead to conversions
Here are some of the online listing sites where you should list your website:
- Product Hunt
- Crunchbase
- Clutch and Good firms
Create An Eye-Catching Website
A good eye-catching and engaging website not only acts as a promotional tool for your business but also tells what you offer, provides contact information, and reflects your brand’s personality.
Creating a website using a state-of-the-art content management system (CMS) is a much better way to go ahead with brand marketing.
CMS like WordPress or Drupal offers many impressive pre-built templates for you to launch your brand in the market. You can make the website more dynamic and scalable with the available plugins. You can optimize the content using SEO plugins to add functionalities like social media integrations, etc.
Knowing Your Buyer Persona
Irrespective of the marketing strategy, knowledge of the audience and their preferences is a must, to begin with.
Understanding your customer traits is critical for your business. Consider their interests, opinions, values, purchase patterns, professional outlook, past purchase history, wishlist, etc. Creating an ideal customer persona prior to market launch helps you identify your potential market and gives you a clear idea about where to focus on and what your target audience would be.
Creating buyer personas can help you get started. Start with detailed market research, gather data using research tools and also consider social media networks.
Also, analyze your competitors and their profiles to know the people that are engaging with them.
Try Influencer Marketing
Another smart way for new entrepreneurs to promote their startup brand is by connecting with trending influencers.
Influencers have the power to convince people with their messaging. Influencers are highly respected, popular, and trusted experts with large social media followers and a massive audience base on social media platforms that can promote your startup product or business to a large group of people.
Before reaching out to an influencer, look at their accounts across all networks; comment, like, and share their content. Then, make sure to approach them and ask for something in exchange.
Also, you can write a high-quality guest post on their services that benefits their targeted audience while also providing a backlink to your site.
Investing In Social Media Advertising
Presently, social media advertising is the most utilized and profitable form of digital advertising. More than 3.6 billion people use it today. It offers ease of use and exceptional value for your advertising dollar.
Connect and contribute on LinkedIn: You can join in on group discussions, connect with potential customers, form new partnerships, or just do general online networking.
Upload videos to YouTube: Video marketing is a great way to promote your business, and YouTube is the best way out! YouTube is the most efficient way to help potential customers or clients connect with your business.
Engage your audience on Instagram: There exists a variety of ways to use Instagram to engage your audience and promote your business using permanent images, short-lived Stories, IGTV series, live sessions, and Story Highlights.