You had a great idea and launched a startup; what’s next? Taking an idea and creating a product/solution out of it and monetizing it are two completely different things. Research report indicates that a staggering 90% of startups fail, and 22% of all startups fail due to marketing problems. Marketing for startups and early-stage companies is very different as budgets are limited and the product continues to evolve.
Here are a few things startups can do effectively to optimize their marketing spending.
1. Build a robust digital marketing strategy:
The digital marketing universe is expanding. Your marketing costs can soar high if you leverage the complete potential of digital marketing channels such as social media campaigns, email campaigns, content marketing, display advertising, programmatic advertising, etc. In addition, you also need to have a very comprehensive website strategy to engage visitors from these channels to convert them into prospects. Managing all these channels requires extensive experience and very different skill sets.
The right approach is to understand where you can narrow down your audience. Understand where your audience engages and what platforms/channels they are more likely to engage with rather than spending on all channels simultaneously. For example, Google as a forum doesn’t allow you to target audiences based on their titles. LinkedIn allows you to do that, but the cost per impression and cost per lead on LinkedIn is generally higher. Also, LinkedIn is a great platform to target people in Sales, Marketing and HR. For example, if you intend to target people in Supply Chain, there are better platforms than this.
Each channel is unique regarding how you can engage with visitors and the expected outcome. In addition, you also need to be mindful that each of them is more effective in different stages of a buyer decision-making journey.
2. Crafting the right messaging or Value proposition:
Have you ever encountered an advertisement where you failed to understand what the ad was or intended to communicate? This is common when you follow an inside-out approach or the value proposition is vague. As people’s attention span reduces and they are constantly bombarded with spam messaging and digital advertising, it is essential to stand out with your messaging. Communicating why they should engage with you, how it benefits them, and a clearly defined CTA can help you get more relevant leads.
The messaging also needs to be crafted separately for each target audience. For example, you have a solution that, when implemented, can improve employees’ productivity. You may be targeting the decision-makers in the company, but the messaging for the CEO will be very different compared to the CFO and the COO. While the CEO might be interested in how the solution can help them grow and increase revenue, the CFO will be more interested in understanding the cost of the solution and the savings it will deliver. The COO, on the other hand, might be interested in understanding how it will enhance productivity and the ease of use of the solution.
Depending on the buyer persona, you must craft separate messaging for the same service. In addition, the landing page should talk the relevant language as the advertisement. There cannot be a disconnect between the two, as it will lead to a high bounce rate.
3. Invest or Outsource your marketing function:
Marketing is a complex function, and everyone has their opinion on it, but executing marketing campaigns and giving ideas is entirely different. Everyone in the organization can comment on how marketing should be done but running a successful marketing function is complex. You need the right set of professionals for it.
To build a successful marketing team, you need a designer, developer, campaign specialist, copywriter, content writer, and marketing manager. The people cost of making this team can easily reach up to $800K annually, impacting your ability to spend that money on marketing programs.
Depending on the need of your business and the lifecycle of your business, you should ideally use a hybrid model where some part of the marketing function is done in-house, and you leverage an agency to run the marketing function for you. This in-house / outsource ratio can be from 10:90 to 90:10 depending on how much you can build in-house and what you can outsource. But it is always essential to have someone in the team whose primary job is marketing and accountable for working with an agency to deliver results.
There are advantages and disadvantages to working with each model, and there is no right or wrong answer to building in-house capabilities vs outsourcing. Multiple factors can impact this decision.
Must Read: How to choose the best digital marketing agency for your business?
4. Leverage the right tools:
You can amplify your marketing efforts and create more impact on your sales pipeline. The important thing is to understand what the right metric is to track. For example, do we want to track how users interact with my website when we only have a small 5-page website? Does it make sense for me to follow the ranking of my keywords? Today’s essential Google and paid marketing tools have magnified our ability to track multiple things, but this data can be inundating and cause analysis paralysis. Mapping the relevancy of marketing tools to your marketing goals is essential. It is a time taking process, but when done correctly can help you create the marketing tech stack, which can help you amplify your marketing goals significantly.
5. Content Marketing:
The buyer decision process has significantly changed in the last few years. Earlier, the onus of closing the deal was entirely on the sales team. Today, with the advent of search engines and SEO-based content programs, a buyer has a lot more information and has done their research. The buyer is more than 70% convinced about what product/services they will purchase and from whom before they even speak with a sales rep. It is essential to create relevant and informational content that prospective buyers can leverage during their buyer decision-making journey. Your content should speak the same language across your website, blogs, contributory articles, and social media posts. You should also leverage videos effectively for promoting content.
These ideas can help you craft your marketing strategy for the year 2023. While the fear of recession looms at organizations, you have a choice. You can be more aggressive in your marketing strategy and grow your business or shut down marketing to conserve liquidity. There are case studies that tell us that companies who stopped investing in marketing stopped growing and ceased to exist; while liquidity is important for businesses to sail through tough times, marketing can help you swim against the tide and grow as an organization in turbulent times.
