Understanding how to market your startup

“Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart” – Joe Chernov

This quote aptly sums up how effective marketing is in the building of a brand. I firmly believe that a strong brand has roots in all aspects of efficiency. Along with a firm grounding in knowledge, it is imperative to rightly market it as well. The whole point of creating a product is to make sure it reaches the right target audience. Even the wrong feather in the right hand becomes a highly sharpened knife. Your startup can only stand to gain from effective marketing.

Here are some tips to follow:

1.    Defining your market-

A fixed target audience is a must in any startup founder’s arsenal. The product you create can be amazing, but will not achieve the recognition it deserves until it is placed in front of the right audience. So, it is of absolute necessity to first define the target market. Segmentation, targeting and positioning play a crucial part in effectively increasing the reach of your ideas. Decide your target market on the basis of geography, demographics, lifestyle choices, etc. You also need to evaluate the market size, whether your chosen market has the money to spend, your competition, as well as what value your product offers the consumer. It creates a very tangible idea of what can and cannot be achieved once you have narrowed down your targets.

 2.    Create tangible goals-

Most often startups fail to create waves because they don’t clearly define what success and reach mean to them. Sit down with your team, and create a comprehensive set of goals you want to achieve. Eg: 50k followers on Instagram within the first year of setting it up. Plan out the strategies you can employ to make that materialize, and list out the resources you’ll need so as to achieve the said goal. 

3.    Set a budget-

I know it seems highly unlikely that a marketing budget plays a significant part in successful marketing of a startup, but it does. The right resources, and the feasibility of your marketing goals gets defined. It is imperative to be realistic about goals based on how much you can spend on marketing and advertisement, along with extra to spare. 

4.    Study social media

Social media is the most effective free tool available to entrepreneurs. Regardless of what your product is, it can always benefit from having an online presence. Facebook,

LinkedIn, Instagram, and to some extent even Snapchat can increase the reach of your startup. Whether it is posts from your business pages, or sponsored ads, these platforms can boost visibility considerably.

Once, you have decided on a brand name, and brand identity, ensure that you are consistent with your posts, and follow up. Create posts that are engaging for your consumers, and respond to them as and when they reach out to you. A key point is to make sure you are using a few key words in all your posts- they can be used as hashtags or as parts of your posts too. Including Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons on your social media pages is a great way to keep your customer’s attention. Since a CTA is included on the page they’re browsing, they don’t feel like it’s too much work to actually visit your website to place an order/book a consultation/get a trial of your product. 

5.    Understand conversion rates for every channel

Conversion rates mean the percentage of potential customers reached that have converted to paying consumers. If you are sending out a weekly e-mail blast you can figure out the analytics of how many people actually open your e-mails (such softwares are very easily available on the internet, and are mostly safe). E-mail blasts usually have a 3% open rate, and an even lower conversion rate, but are still a method of being in the consumer’s line of sight. Even if your potential client won’t necessarily open your e-mail, your brand name will at least linger at the back of their mind through visual retention. Once you get a fair view of what gets potential customers to open your e-mails, you can get on board with experimenting lesser on the theme, and more with other aspects of the messages. This is one example of how digital channels of reach have a subtle yet powerful impact on your target audience. 

 Apart from these tips, it’s always important to do regulated analysis of your channels of reach. Regularly checking up on the progress helps you formulate a realistic timeline of where your startup is headed. It’ll help you cut out on unnecessary spending of time and resources, in addition to making the necessary changes in the plan.

We at LFS are constantly trying new and upcoming methods of marketing our organization. It is a continuous journey of trials and errors. But, the learnings gathered on the way have a major impact in the shaping and positioning of the organization. We are sharing this information to further our cause of helping startups achieve their maximum potential.

About Devansh Lakhani

Director of Lakhani Financial Services, and a Chartered Accountant, he helps start-ups raise funds from his network of investors. He guides and advises start-ups to scale up by providing efficient sales, marketing, team building, and business management strategies. He has executed fundraising by block deals on the stock exchange and conducted IPOs and right issues on the SME platform to the tune of over Rs. 50 Crore. He is currently working with start-ups from various sectors to help them channelize their business models and investments.