Starting a business is not simply getting your ideas into actions, but it shouldn’t end there. One of your goals is to become profitable while helping other people. You can only achieve both when you have the right marketing strategy.
With so many marketing strategies available online, you should make yours a creative one for your business to stand out. To make it happen, you should first have a marketing plan. In it, you have to list down all the steps you need to take so you can reach your marketing objectives.
Because the world is changing fast, one or two of your marketing efforts that are on your plan may not be applicable anymore. That’s why your marketing plan should be flexible. Even when you may need to revise some parts of your marketing plan, you must always consider the following components of your marketing strategy, especially when you’re a startup:
#1. Customer Identification
When you’re a startup, you may be desperate to offer your product or service to almost everybody. You may think that it’s effective, but this strategy isn’t effective at all. If you want help or learn from professionals how to market right, a startup marketing agency, such as Fractal, may assist you with it.
Also, targeting the right market can help your marketing efforts fruitful. Targeting the right market simply means identifying your possible paying customers. You do this by segmenting a large market into a specific group based on their unique features, which can be done through demographic segmentation, geographic areas, behavioral segmentation, or psychographic segmentation.
By doing so, you wouldn’t put all your efforts into a vague market that may not even be interested in your product or service. With customer identification, your market may seem smaller, but they’re the ones who are most likely needing your product or service.
Since you can speak directly to a specific audience, who are most likely to relate to what your business is, then you can convert high-quality leads. Once presented with what you’re offering, these leads will then be paying for your products or services.
#2. Buyer Journey Tracking
Now that you’ve defined your market, it’s best to track their buying journey. This component is vital as the prospective buyer will make decisions based on how you nurture them. You can do so by helping them with what they need and guiding them at every stage of their buying journey.
How you guide them will help you establish their trust. Instead of hard-selling, help them with what they need so they can trust you. By doing so, you’re more likely to convert them to paying clients.
You should understand the stages of a buyer’s journey so that you’ll know how to approach every stage. Here’s a brief outline of the buyer’s journey, which is also known as the sales funnel:
- Awareness Stage – It’s the initial stage wherein the buyer is least likely to purchase but only eager to learn more about your product or service. The buyer may need to know whether your product or service will help solve their issues or needs.
Your role here will be to guide them in the right direction. Thus, you’ll need to educate them on how your product or service can help them.
- Consideration Stage – As its name implies, the potential buyer will consider your product as well as other providers. Since the potential buyer will be comparing your product or service from competitors, you need to build your relationship and show why your product or service is much better and unique from the others.
- Decision Stage – Now that the potential buyer is ready to purchase from their list of suppliers or service providers, it’s best to present how your product has been effective to convert your potential buyer to a paying client.
You can use product videos and testimonials as proof that your product or service can help the potential buyer resolve their issues.
- Post-Purchase Stage – The buyer’s journey didn’t end when they paid for your product or service. Hence, you should keep on interacting with them by maximizing the value that you provide to your clients. This goal for this stage is for your clients to come back and make a purchase again.
#3. Edge Over Competitors
When you’re a startup, gaining an advantage over the industry you’re in may be difficult. One reason for such is the existence of companies offering the same products or services.
To solve such an issue, you need to gain an edge over your competitors. Without such, even if your products or services are superb, you may have difficulties getting customers.
You can do this through the following marketing strategies:
- Although quality has been one of the considerations of customers, the price should be reasonable. If your product or service is way too high, then better reduce it to a competitive price.
As long as you don’t go way below your capital, setting a reasonable price will help.
- Trust, as repeatedly mentioned, is vital to convert your customers to paying ones. You can do this by doing what your company is advertising. If you do what your ads say, then you’ll satisfy your buying clients. As a result, not only will they be returning, but they’ll also be referring your company to other people.
- Give more than what they’ve paid for. This means that you may offer them video product demos, or educate them about your products and other means going beyond tangible products. If they see that they gained more than what they’ve paid for, it makes you more unique.
- Most importantly, you should provide convenience to your clients. It means that they should be able to easily reach you out and order your products or services without filling up long forms.
Conclusion:
There are more components of a marketing strategy for your startup to be a success. But these three key components are the most vital ones that you shouldn’t neglect.
Even if your product or service is a great deal, if you’re offering it to random and uninterested people, you may not get buying clients. For a more fruitful marketing effort, it’s best to target the right audience. Then, you should keep track of your buyer’s journey from the awareness stage to the post-purchase stage. With this, you’ll convert more buying customers.
Lastly, gaining an edge in an industry full of similar product or service is important. By giving your customer something that they’ve never had from competitors, they’ll likely pay for more.
