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This article will explore the top seven marketing activities that can help your startup start, grow and scale, based on my 10+ years of experience developing businesses and startups, managing projects, and leading marketing efforts.
For me, the most essential thing in marketing and building your startup is using the scientific method — creating a hypothesis, testing it through various experiments and adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the market results.
Being the founder of a startup can be challenging. You must wear multiple hats while building something from the ground up, face a limited budget, and push for rapid growth while battling fierce competition. The following list simplifies the marketing steps.
Related: How to Develop Empowered Leaders Within Your Own Team
1. Target audience
The outside perception of marketing is that it involves only running ads and posting on social media. Still, the reality is that it is about understanding your target audience's motivations, pain points and behavior. This is the basis of my experience running my marketing agency, Aezir.
I've quickly realized that you cannot solve all marketing problems for all businesses. You need to find and target the audience where you provide the most significant help and clearly state your benefits. Niche down and explore through market research, customer feedback and data analysis.
2. Clear, actionable goals
Start by defining clear, actionable goals that align with your most pressing business priorities. Often, startups start their marketing journey chasing quick wins or top-of-mind metrics without a plan for sustainable growth.
Setting SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound — is the best way to define goals clearly. Whether increasing email click-through rates by 50% in the next quarter or posting daily on LinkedIn with a focus on building our core audience for a month to test a hypothesis, having clear goals keeps everyone on your team aligned and focused.
3. Identity
The next step is building your brand identity. You need to define what brand identity means to you and your team. It goes beyond your name and logo — how you communicate your mission, values and the unique benefits you bring to the marketplace.
In my work with startups like Scailyte, my focus was on crafting a compelling and authentic brand story, showcasing the genuine interactions in the team, the company retreats, and, of course, the expertise and hard work at the company. My idea was to humanize the company, showcasing the people's characters inside while the team focused on single-cell science. That proved to be a success from the feedback of our team going to events and everyone knowing who we are and what we do.
4. Content marketing
I know firsthand that writing content is not the most glamorous thing you can do, mainly when focusing on attracting investors or increasing sales. However, this marketing strategy will increase your exposure for a fraction of the cost of an event or ad campaign while building your expertise and communication with your followers.
With many of my ventures, content marketing became the primary way to build authority and drive organic traffic while providing value - through blog posts, newsletters, videos and podcasts. Choose the medium that resonates with your personality and test it out. Focus on evergreen content that will stay relevant and attract traffic for a long time after the publication. Remember that content can be repurposed from blog posts to videos, podcast episodes, or email marketing campaigns.
Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy
5. Social media
In today's world, marketing is impossible without social media. Pick your poison and focus on the one where your audience is. Always weigh the opportunity cost — where your time will be best served. While managing social media for various companies, I've found that success lies in fostering honest communication rather than just broadcasting messages. Respond to comments, engage in conversations and show the human side of your brand. LinkedIn is fantastic for B2B networking and thought leadership, while Instagram and TikTok are better for visual B2C brands.
6. Performance tracking
Keep in mind that marketing is an ongoing process. You must track, measure and analyze your performance to optimize your marketing strategy and, ultimately, your business. Tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Mixpanel are part of my marketing arsenal when leading a startup marketing department. They help you see what's working and where a change in the direction is needed. Set up dashboards for metrics like customer acquisition cost, conversion rates and engagement levels, and use these insights to pivot your marketing approach. Set a hypothesis and A/B test it with a variation to see what resonates best with your audience.
7. Be ready to pivot
One of the most valuable lessons I've learned in my marketing and entrepreneurial journey is the importance of being adaptable. The marketing world never sleeps and constantly evolves with the rise of new technologies, platforms and consumer behaviors. I advise staying agile and open to learning, listening to the signals the data gives. From leveraging emerging trends like AI or Web3 to the latest growth hacking techniques, staying ahead means continually experimenting, testing and optimizing.
Related: How to Know When to Pivot and When to Persevere in Your Business
The marketing mastery journey is not straightforward. This article is my contribution to guiding you through the roadblocks in your startup journey, but it is not a follow-and-execute process.
It's about being resourceful, data-driven, and highly focused on your audience and its signals to you. The mentioned strategies can form the base of your marketing mix and help you set your startup's engine for growth and long-term success.
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