Top 5 Ways to Start Marketing
Here are the top 5 things you need to do to get started marketing your startup
Persona
Product / Market Fit
Messaging
Website / Social Media
Content Creation
Persona
To make the most of your time and effort marketing, it’s important to really know who your primary persona (target audience) is.
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.
You want to know who they are, what they do, why they do it, along with understanding their biggest challenges.
Knowing who your persona is will help you create your messaging using vocabulary that resonates along with knowing where to publish and promote your product. For example, if your primary persona is in the C-Suite - targeting LinkedIn will be more helpful than say Instagram.
Product/Market Fit
The importance of ensuring you have established product/market fit cannot be emphasized enough. While you may build a product that solves a problem, if your prospective customers don’t see the value, enough so to buy then you have not found product/market fit.
Product-market fit, also known as product/market fit, is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. Product-market fit has been defined by its inventor as "a unique product offering that people desperately want."[1]
A problem only becomes a business when your solution fixes a problem that people will pay for. This step helps to ensure you are providing something of value. This gives you the opportunity to meet early adopters, get their feedback and learn about interest beyond what you have.
Messaging
Now is the perfect time to begin building your main message. This WILL change over time as you build your product. Get to know your audience and learn more about their pain points, along with the very words they use to talk about how your product solves their problem. Messaging is what will give prospects a reason to buy your product. Product positioning is a statement for your target customer that describes what your product does and how it works. It centers around your key benefits that address customer pain points while including your unique differentiation from your competition. Tell them the problem your product solves. The point is to connect with your customer on an emotional level.
“If you can position your product as the bridge between where they are and where they hope to be, they will crave it like kids crave chocolate.”
Website/Social Media
No matter what business you are in you need to have an online presence via social media and a basic website. A basic website will make you look professional. You can show customer testimonials and it gives your customers a place where they can learn more about your business and also contact you. A social media presence helps you to reach the customers to drive interest.
A website will bring awareness of your product line to customers, information about your product and even education about your market or industry. Online is where businesses are going to find new customers and reach their most loyal customers.
The importance of social media participation for startups cannot be overstated. By actively participating in the social media landscape, you open up a world of possibilities to connect with your audience, build brand awareness, and establish your business as a trusted authority in your industry. It’s important to figure out where the best place your customer is going to be. Pick one, then make the most of your promotions and actively converse with your followers to do the best you can with one platform before expanding your marketing footprint. It requires time to build your follower base which is why now is the best time to get started before you finalize and launch your product.
Content
Every marketing tactic you plan will be based upon the content you create. Content is necessary for every stage of your buyer’s journey. From awareness and consideration, to conversion. Your content needs to align with your persona and where they are within each stage of buying. The point is to provide value to those who would be most interested in what you have to offer. Think of it as sharing what they want to see when they are ready to see it.
The basis of content marketing is quality content. It’s a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience. You do this by providing content of value on a regular basis. The content you create is mainly written or visual information not focused on the product directly, but all the experiences around it. It can be in digital or print newsletters, blogs, articles, social posts, video, speech or any other publications or productions that include topics your audience is particularly interested in, and that is related to your service or product.
To help you get started - automate. You can use automations for every step. Use ChatGPT to HELP you with your messaging and content creation. Disclaimer: We do not recommend you rely on ChatGPT to fully create your content for a variety of reasons that will hurt your efforts, solely as a way to get started with an outline, grammar, etc. Use automation to build your website and schedule your social media posts. All of which helps when you are stretched for resources. Add a bit of good luck.
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FunFact Friday
Rather than take a traditional approach to their marketing, due to the competition consisting of large corporations, Dollar Shave Club had to come up with something unique. Something that would be an attention grabber. They came up with a marketing campaign that included a humorous sales video of CEO Michael Dubin telling you why you should subscribe to receive quality razors $1.00 a month. This video grabbed over 12,000 new subscribers within 48 hours, making it a true competitor in the industry.