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As a startup, you have a lot of things that you need to balance on a daily basis. Everything from constructing your product, managing finances, and attracting more qualified leads- everything concerning the success of your startup falls on your shoulders.
I mentor startups at a local startup incubator here in Orlando, FL called Starter Studio. Among the most asked questions, I receive from startups will be “how do I build a marketing plan that will make me more money?”
Today, I need to share a few of the suggestions I’ve given local startups together with the hope these suggestions will help your startup develop an online presence that can help you attract qualified leads and drive more sales!
Identify Your Own Startup Advertising Plan of Action
Marketing and customer acquisition are not just among the most important sections of a startup’s success, but they may also be one of the largest expenses. This is because planning, creating, optimizing, and publishing great content is not cheap or effortless.
In fact, good content can take a long time to plan out and maximize, so you want to make sure you’re prioritizing your content in line with the needs of your customers and your business goals.
The strategy your startup should follow may fluctuate based on your product/service, your industry, competitive landscape, and customer requirements.
As an example, the way that a style company leverages social media will fluctuate from an internet shop that sells traffic safety gear. How these businesses build their messaging and leverage various content depends upon how their audience absorbs their goods generally.
To learn how you should construct a startup marketing plan you should ask yourself a few questions to know your audience:
- What are your business goals?
- What exactly are your brand image and target audience?
- How will you measure the success of your marketing efforts?
- How much time, money, and resources can you commit to your marketing plan?
- Who’s in your network that you can leverage for sharing content with?
These questions can take a while to reply to, but you shouldn’t begin building an advertising strategy until you can answer the above questions.
These replies will not provide you the “secret bullet” to make a ton of money online, but they’ll guide your activities toward the best advertising strategy based on what you require, your customers, and your resources.
Blogging As Part Of Your Startup Advertising Strategy
Among the very best marketing channels that your startup can leverage is a consistent, high-quality blog. Not just is blogging a fantastic way to distribute your message for social networking and email advertising, but blogging also gives you a way to build your brand and message for your audience.
Blogging requires a good period of energy and time to generate good content your clients will read. On average I spend about two hours on each and every blog post for my website. This is because I prefer to write long-form content which gets picked up by search engines and optimized for my readers.
Once you get into a groove, your startup website may be an important asset to push sales. This is because the good content has been picked up by search engines, and this means you can significantly grow your qualified traffic using Organic SEO.
However, while blogging is an excellent way to grow your online presence and drive qualified traffic, then it can also take a while to catch on.
Here are a few tips to help you write amazing content on your website that search engines will discover and your readers will adore.
- Don’t talk a whole lot about your product since it can get boring rather fast. Talk about your own world. People will visit your site mainly by searching for a few conditions that currently occupy their minds. Startup marketing does not work unless you learn to believe as your clients do.
- Make a lot of “top X” lists. While these types of posts get a bad name, they sure do work and can drive a lot of traffic to your site if you are writing about a relevant topic to your audience.
- Should you have ANY data value viewing, data that is funny, smart, or interesting, be confident that you demonstrate it. Startup marketing isn’t about being dreary.
- Write to your audience. Write about what you love to the people that wish to understand what you already know. And if they don’t give them a reason to.
- Post the content frequently on various social media stations. Respond to opinions and engage with your audience. This leads us to our next stage.
The best part about blogging for your business is the fact that it works on many levels. Not only do you create valuable articles, gain new leads, and improve your search engine optimization ranking but you also learn a great deal about people. A number of them are going to have pretty constructive remarks.
Using Social Media for Your Own Start-up
Social networking is rapidly becoming the most effective method for start-ups to achieve their customers. This is because social networks have been made to market great content based on the personal preferences of your audience.
Unlike Google, social networking networks are produced to share content among your personal networks. This means that once your clients share your content, their friends and families have a good opportunity to observe that content. This means your start-up can get traction by sharing quality articles on social media.
Social media networks fluctuate, but generally speaking, many start-ups I’ve worked with have found success using Facebook and Instagram. This is because these platforms are made to showcase videos and images, and this type of content could be ideal for start-ups who want to share their stories via interactive content.
You may use blog posts, business updates, and daily activities to connect with your clients on social media. While social networking is a great way to reach your intended audience, you need to be aware of some things that might lead your startup advertising strategy to endure.
Here are a few hints to help your startup use social media to get your marketing plan:
- Creating a committed Facebook community is a good deal harder than it had been in the past and I am uncertain that devoting too much time together to organic traffic on Facebook may not be the best use of your marketing time. Instead, consider paid ads- they are inexpensive and very powerful.
- Twitter is a fantastic network for your own startup to leverage in case you would like to share rapid updates and accomplish a wide audience. While Twitter tends to have less engagement in comparison to Facebook, Twitter is a great option if you want to interact with your clients directly and on a consistent basis.
- Instagram is just a no-brainer for several startups as this program boasts a massive user group that is engaged with their very own community. Just ensure your products/services can be shared with pictures. This program is developed for sharing pictures, so if your startup can not craft a convincing message about pictures then consider using a different social networking network.
- In the modern business world, LinkedIn a not an alternative. Owning a Linkedin account gives your startup extra authenticity. On the flip side, the number of activities on Linkedin depends heavily on the sort of enterprise. As a rule of thumb — the more B2B oriented your startup will probably be the more you are ready to gain from Linkedin.
Increased Conversions Means More Sales
If your startup is fighting to pull visitors to your website, then you are going to wish to be certain you convert as many leads as you possibly can. The higher your conversion rate, the more money you make, and if you are fighting to attract traffic, then you need to convert as many prospects as possible.
Conversions are the most important part of your sales process, and utilizing Call To Action (CTA) and other sales tactics can help your business get some early success. Here are a couple of pointers to help you increase sales for your startup marketing plan:
- Utilize social proof on your landing pages and revenue pages. This messaging shows that others trust you and your readers can trust you also.
- Use power words on your CTA buttons. Try the following terms on your own CTA buttons: “Download,” “Get Your Own Free,” “Reserve,” etc.
- Use brighter colors on your CTA buttons. The color of your buttons should not match your logo or other colors near the CTA button.
- Make your CTA buttons big. This makes the button stand out, plus if your clients are looking at your sales page on mobile devices, you need to ensure they can quickly click on your own CTA button.
Your startup can draw in qualified leads, build a community, and raise sales on a limited budget with a powerful advertising strategy. You must consider who you’re trying to achieve, your startup’s products/services, and the requirements of your customers as you develop your marketing plan.
Use the above recommendations to start designing a marketing strategy for your startup that can make you more money now!
Author Bio:
Chris is a Digital Media Strategy Consultant in Orlando, FL. He has over 13 years of experience helping businesses grow their bottom line and expand their company by focusing on SEO, freelance copywriting, and PPC management services.
