The Top 3 Marketing Strategies For A Start-Up Business

It’s no secret how important marketing is for a business. Still, it is even more important for start-ups. One study found that 14% of businesses fail due to poor marketing alone. Chances are, if you are a start-up business, people may not know about your product or service and how it can benefit them.

A start-up’s desire for rapid growth makes its marketing strategy unique. You may wonder how you can get your start-up in front of as many eyes as possible. There is another consideration to bear in mind, cost. You have to take all these factors into consideration when coming up with the best marketing practices for your business.

Come Up with the Best Marketing Strategy for Your Company

Although throwing thousands at paid ad campaigns might seem tempting, start-up marketing budgets can be limited, and there may be more cost-effective ways to get results. Fortunately, smart companies can do wonders with a small marketing budget.

One of the easiest ways to start marketing your business is through a digital marketing agency; they take on all the time-consuming tasks at a fraction of the cost of hiring a marketing team.

If you’d prefer to get your hands dirty, then here are what we consider some of the most effective marketing strategies for start-up businesses.

Paid Search (PPC)

Yes, I know what your thinking. The word paid and cost-effective might not seem like they go well together. However, paid search can be a great way to generate targeted, driven traffic to your website. The average ROI of PPC marketing is 200%.

Paid Search or PPC, is when you pay a search engine to show your website link at the top of their page after someone has made a search. Remember, you will only appear for specific keywords that you are targeting.

For example, let’s say you are selling innovative outdoor running shoes. You could pay Google every time someone searches for ‘best running shoes for outdoors’.

This is really effective because you are actively targeting people that are searching for what your product is offering. They came to the search engine to find information or products and you provide that conveniently placed at the top of the page.

Compare this to say Facebook ads where you are targeting people that have similar interests as your product, but you are trying to catch their attention. They may not want to know about your product at this point and hence it can seem ineffective.

We have barely scratched the surface with paid search, and it is worth doing more research or speaking to a digital marketing agency to get advice on how it can help.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of optimizing your website in order to rank higher for searches in search engines. Differing from PPC above, this strategy is fully organic and doesn’t cost a penny. Although it is worth noting that it could take some time before you start seeing results (3-6 months is pretty standard).

You can implement SEO in a number of ways including;

• Optimizing page titles for keywords
• Writing blog posts around your niche
• Creating backlinks for your website

It can be really effective because when you start ranking on the first page of a search engine for relevant keywords, this can generate vast amounts of traffic at little to no cost. SEO is an ongoing process that requires analysis, optimization and consistency to get results. If you don’t think you will have the time to do this, it would be worth speaking to a digital marketing agency to see how they can help you.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has to be one of the most underrated marketing strategies for start-ups. Although generating traffic is often the goal when starting, you should add as much effort to word of mouth or recommendations. Studies have shown that customers are 77% more likely to purchase a product recommended by a friend.

Now, what does word of mouth have to do with email marketing? A straightforward email marketing strategy would be offering email subscribers or previous purchasers a reward for referring their friends.

How do you capture their email address in the first place? Offer a freebie or discount in exchange for an email address. The long-term gain of their repeat business will far outweigh that of the cost.

See how combining these two tricks can become a snowball of start-up success? There are countless other ways of leveraging email marketing, such as asking for reviews which can be turned into social proof in ads or social media posts.

So there you have it, a few fool-proof strategies for start-up businesses who are looking to enhance their marketing.