Marketing is an essential element for any successful business. The reason behind this is that marketing is a tool for growth. Businesses grow not just because of the excellence of their products, but by how well they are known. Reputation, brand recall, brand loyalty, and uniqueness are all addressed by a great marketing plan, which includes several marketing strategies.
Aside from increased revenue and growth, well thought of and executed marketing strategies can even catch the eye of venture capitalists and other investors. So in this article, we’ve compiled a list of essential marketing strategies that are sure to kickstart your startup to success.
1. Develop and maintain an email list.
Email marketing is one of the most basic marketing strategies that any startup can apply. It is relatively easy to legally obtain an email list of prospective customers online. However, maintaining a good email list is another story.
The main goal of any email list is to convert each and every one of those on the list as sure and loyal buyers. Most of the time, this does not happen overnight or with just one email blast. And anyone can simply opt-out of the email list.
To avoid that from happening, your objective is to provide useful and relevant content that will not be too annoying and won’t automatically go to spam, too. In order to do this, you need to improve your content marketing game or you must think of a way to provide extra value to your prospects through every email blast you send.
2. Start a social media marketing campaign.
Another popular marketing strategy is making use of social media. Unlike email addresses that are technically private information, social media accounts are full of prospective customers that are willing to be connected with. However, social media marketing is more than just creating a social media account for your startup and making sure that you can maintain your so-called social media presence. There’s actually a lot of things involved in starting a social media campaign, especially now that there are tons of social networking sites available to users all around the globe.
For you to utilize these platforms effectively, you need to do proper research about the topic and how to execute just one social media campaign at first.
3. Sponsor an event.
If you have extra funds, there’s no harm in sponsoring someone else’s event. This can be anything from a charity event to a concert. The goal of sponsorship is to introduce your company to a big audience (or an audience that matters to your company). The organizers will do all the advertising and program management that you need to get the boost in audience reach for a day or so. Sponsorship deals are not hard to come by. You just need to figure out what’s the right kind of events that your company should sponsor.
4. Join competitions.
Joining competitions is a great way to prove yourself against competitors, and is practically free advertising for your startup. But remember, participation medals won’t really do you any good in this regard since competitions rank people in order of excellence. If you’re not confident that you would reach the top, then maybe don’t join until you’ve perfected your craft. Competitions are a double-edged sword that could either make or break people or groups, so beware.
5. Invest in promotional giveaways.
Finally, another traditional marketing strategy that startups could take advantage of is investing in promotional giveaways. When it comes to these items, your imagination is the limit. You can give away anything from USBs with your logo to promotional accessories like sunglasses at any given point to instill brand recall. After all, who doesn’t love a nice gift, right?
These are just some of the essential marketing strategies startups can use to boost their reputation and sales. While there are other unconventional strategies out there, you can start out with these 5 tried and tested ones to make sure that you can achieve your goals in the shortest possible time.
