Marketing in a startup should begin well before you have a product. Many successful startups started as a simple newsletter, blog, Facebook group or even Slack channel. This is a good way to test out the waters before you going out building the product. As matter of fact many started to build the product when they had significant traction. When it comes to building your startup product think cupcakes as supposed to wedding cakes! Cupcakes are small, nimble, can quickly change it whereas a wedding cake have too many belles and whistles that no one may want. But for marketing how do you go about planning to fire up things up? This is one of biggest challenges startup face. It’s to grow! Here are some ways to tackle it:
Before anything else figure who is your audience.
Without knowing your audience you’re blindly going out there and posting and praying someone is going to click or buy. Here are some questions to ask to figure out your audience?
What are their problems?
Where do they hang out?
What is their goals and aspiration?
Start building your audience before you build your product.
Start a Facebook group, Slack, newsletter or blog are a great way to start developing followers. But the most important thing is two things: start Niche and develop interesting content that adds value!
Write your positioning statement.
Positioning statement helps you figure who are you targeting and how can you write compelling content that works. Check out the positioning statement in the free download we put together for you.
Break down your actives into inbound vs outbound marketing.
Start marketing activities general fall into inbound vs outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is where you should start before you have product. Inbound is when people discover your brand organically. There’s no budget needed for this. It’s all about creativity and you can try out different channels: blogs, videos, or newsletter are some great ways to get started. Outbound marketing requires a budget and this includes channels such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Sponsored posts, or other ways to advertise.
Have a Plan of action.
Everything written down is great but what’s point if it’s not being executed? Often times founders tend
Experimentation is the key.
Some marketing channels work better than others and sometimes that marketing channel that is working gets saturated so you have to experiment like a mad scientist.
Have questions about how to grow your startup book us a time to chat with us on how we can help accelerate your startup growth.