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Paul Jackowski Updated: 24 Feb 2023 7 min to read

9 Popular Startup Marketing Strategies and Examples

Starting a business is not easy but marketing it is even hard, especially in this digital era. The competition for customers is high. Thus, you must adopt smart startup marketing strategies to distinguish yourself from the rest and acquire new customers.

A Bureau of Labor Statistics survey shows that 20% of startups don’t survive past the first year. What does this mean?

If you want to succeed in today’s uncertain business world, you need to have a solid marketing strategy.

In this article, we explore practical marketing strategies for startups that will help you attract new customers and increase revenue for your business.

Let’s get started.

Startup Marketing Strategies for 2023 and Beyond

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Not every customer out there wants to buy what you’re offering.

In fact, marketing your startup without your target customers in mind is like shooting in the dark.

As of 2021, there were over 2.14 billion online shoppers. However, if you sell to everyone, you sell to no one.

Besides, 35% of startups fail because there is no market need:

startups fail reasons

Image via CB INSIGHTS

What do these statistics mean?

You need to market your startup to people who are actually looking for your goods. So, first, conduct thorough market research.

Here are tips to know your target customers:

  • Analyze your competition.
  • Talk to people at conferences, concerts, tournaments, etc.
  • Create customer personas.
  • Conduct surveys at the point of sale or on the streets.
  • Conduct online surveys on social media and other channels.
  • Use Google Trends

 

Thorough market research, learning about key competitors, target audience and user habits is an important part of any startup’s efforts. What’s important is that these processes facilitate marketing efforts, but they are also essential for creating an effective app or other digital solution. Therefore, in our approach, market research is always the basis of activities, both in the area of product development and marketing. Paul Jackowski CEO, ASPER BROTHERS Let's Talk

 

2. Leverage SEO

Appearing on the first page of Google results can attack an average click-through rate of 28,5%.

 

google ctr

Image via SISTRIX

 

This means that SEO is essential for your startup’s success.

Search engine optimization is one of the cost-effective startup marketing strategies to spread the word about your new business.

Even though it takes longer to generate results for your startup, SEO can help you in many ways, such as:

  • SEO results in higher traffic and conversions
  • It’s cost-effective.
  • It can help to generate more leads for your startup.
  • Helps to attract relevant traffic.
  • Improves your startup’s visibility to customers.
  • Helps to build a long-term audience.
  • Improves brand awareness through better rankings.

Here are startup SEO best practices to build your online presence:

  • Launch a solid SEO
  • Conduct keyword research.
  • Build and optimize your website.
  • Make sure your site is optimized for mobile users.
  • Publish high-quality web content.
  • Improve your website speed.
  • Build quality backlinks.

 

3. Use Social Media Marketing

Social media is currently the top marketing channel for 44% of marketers:

marketing channels

Image via HubSpot

Besides, as of July 2022, there were 4.7 billion social media users. And even though people use social media to connect with their friends and family, 65% use it for shopping inspiration:

social media shopping

Image via Bazaarvoice

Using social marketing for startups is beneficial in many ways:

  • It can help to increase your brand awareness.
  • It’s a cost-effective marketing strategy.
  • It can help you understand the preferences and behaviors of your customers.
  • It can help you uncover the marketing strategies of your competitors.
  • Improve brand loyalty.
  • Grow your audience and connect with new audiences.

A good example of a startup that uses social media marketing effectively is Piktochart.

piktochart

Image via Piktochart

The web-based graphic design tool and infographic maker uses Twitter to encourage users to spread the word about the platform in exchange for 20% lifetime commissions through their affiliate program.

Here are useful social media marketing tips for startups:

  • Identify the best social media marketing platform for your type of business.
  • Focus on building awareness.
  • Create a content strategy.
  • Invest in high-quality visuals- video, infographics, and images to attract users’ attention.
  • Partner with influencers.
  • Focus on your target customers.
  • Encourage user-generated content.

 

4. Use Video Marketing

87% of marketers have used video marketing to increase traffic:

traffic from video

Image via Wyzowl

Video marketing for startups can help you in many ways:

  • Build brand awareness and trust.
  • Increase the time users spend on your website.
  • Drive engagement and boost conversion rates.
  • Educate your audience about a problem and your solution.
  • Improve SEO.
  • Increase social sharing.
  • Video marketing can help you introduce your products and services.

Bloom & Wild, a UK-based online florist for holiday bouquets, wreaths, centerpieces, and many more, share awesome short videos across all its social media channels to increase brand awareness:

bloom

Image via Bloom & Wild

Using an online video editor, you can create different types of videos, such as:

  • Brand story videos.
  • Presentation videos
  • Announcement videos.
  • User-generated content and customer testimonials.
  • Brand videos
  • Tutorial videos and how-to videos.

Here are practical tips for creating a solid video marketing strategy for your startup:

  • Create a solid plan.
  • Analyze your competitors to see how they are executing their video marketing campaigns.
  • Analyze different types of videos.
  • Create awesome videos.
  • Distribute them across different platforms.

Ensure you learn how to edit videos to produce high-quality video content.

 

5. Use Email Marketing

Despite the increase in prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps, email is still more relevant now than ever.

In fact, a 2021 State of Email report by Litmus ranks email marketing as the top marketing channel by effectiveness:

marketing channels

Image via Litmus

Email marketing is also a cost-effective marketing strategy that can provide immeasurable benefits to startups such as:

  • Increase brand recognition.
  • Boost sales and revenue.
  • Generate more traffic to your website.
  • Increase conversion rates.
  • Boost your brand reputation.
  • Reaches a huge target audience.
  • Helps to build lasting relationships with customers.

Here are email marketing tips for startups:

  • Launch a powerful email marketing campaign
  • Build a killer email list.
  • Optimize your email marketing strategy.
  • Create high-quality and interactive email content to boost engagement.
  • Keep your emails short and to the point.
  • Write catchy email subject lines
  • Send personalized emails to your target customers.
  • Include videos and emojis in your emails.
  • Include catchy call-to-action buttons.
  • Optimize emails for mobile users.

 

6. Create a Blog With Useful Content

Blogging is also one of the most effective startup marketing strategies to reach potential customers.

If you have already created a website, the next step is to add a blog section where you will be creating interesting and useful content to educate your audience about your products and services.

Remember that to come up with consistent content for your target audience, and you need to create a content marketing strategy.

Follow these content marketing tips to create helpful content for your audience consistently:

  • Create a content marketing plan that shows when and who will create the content.
  • Create blog posts and articles that correspond to your niche and the expectations of your audience.
  • Maintain honesty and accuracy in your content.
  • Keep your content unique, interesting, and evergreen based on recent studies and real data.
  • Optimize your content for search engines and users.
  • Make your content visually appealing by including videos, images, infographics, etc.
  • Promote your content across multiple channels.

 

7. Partner With Influencers

Influencer marketing is yet another powerful marketing strategy for promoting your startup.

With this type of marketing, you partner with celebrities and other people with influence in your industry who can promote your startup to their audience in exchange for money, free products, etc.
This way, you tap into the huge fan base they have already accumulated over time.

Before investing in influencer marketing, you need to understand the types of influencers.

Influencers are categorized into four groups depending on the number of followers:

  • Nano-influencers: Influencers with less than 1,000 followers. These have a great influence on their followers.
  • Micro-influencers: Influencers with between 1,000 to 100,000 followers.
  • Micro-influencers: Influencers with between 100,000 to 1 million followers.
  • Mega-influencers: Influencers with over 1 million followers.

To promote your startup effectively, we recommend partnering with Nano-influencers since most of their followers are relatives, friends, and close acquaintances. This makes these influencers more influential.

 

8. Use Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is when you encourage your customers to do the marketing for you in exchange for cash discounts, bonuses, free trials, and other rewards.

This marketing strategy is effective because people trust recommendations from friends, family members, or other people they know on a personal level.

The benefits of referral marketing for startups include:

  • Improved customer retention rate.
  • Increased marketing reach.
  • Attracts valuable customers.
  • Generates great ROI.
  • Increased brand awareness and reputation.

To get started with this marketing approach, you need to launch a referral program. This way, your customers will market your startup on autopilot while you do other important things for your business.

The good news is that launching a referral program isn’t as costly as you might think. You could offer your referring customers a discount on their purchases, cash, and other rewards.

Be sure to choose the right referral rewards for your customers.

9.  Advertise on Google and Facebook

Paid advertising can also be a helpful and fastest way for startups to generate more traffic and sales.

The good news is that almost all popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube allow startups to run ads.

You can also launch a powerful paid advertising campaign on Google.

The beauty of Google Ads is that you can optimize and set your ads to show up based on the keywords users are searching for.

Besides, since Google Ads uses the pay-per-click model, you pay only when someone clicks on your ads.

Another way to promote your startup is through Facebook is to use their advertising platform known as called Facebook for Business.

Facebook is currently the king of social media, with approximately 2.96 billion monthly active users.

It’s also a great platform for connecting with your customers and can be a great tool for promoting your products.

What’s more?

You can create paid ads on Facebook and target users on Instagram.

It’s worth noting that Facebook doesn’t offer targeting capabilities like Google thus, you can’t target customers based on what they are searching for.

However, you can segment your audience based on interests, demographic, and region.

 

Conclusion

There you have it. 9 powerful startup marketing strategies that can help you double your sales and increase revenue for your business.

Implementing these strategies can help to improve your brand’s value to customers as well.

Granted, there are a handful of marketing strategies you can use to promote your startup out there.

Which of these strategies do you use to promote your startup? Please let us know in the comment section.

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Paul Jackowski

Executive Brother

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