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Eight Practices to Promote Your Startup and be Remembered

Building and promoting a startup

Promoting businesses is essential, especially when they are startups. Unless people know about your startup and the product and services it offers, they will not purchase from you. Therefore, it is essential to resort to marketing methods to promote your startup and make it a familiar name among the audience.
At the inception of a startup, there are other aspects of the business that one has to think of. Unfortunately, this leaves very little time to develop suitable marketing methods to promote the startup and get people talking. Nevertheless, there are specific sure—shot methods to promote your startups efficiently.

What practices can be implemented to promote your startup?

All startups come with a distinct hunger for growth. The need for marketing or promoting becomes considerably lesser once you make loyal customers, who will promote using word of mouth. But at the beginning, startups need to go all out to make the brand familiar in the market. Some of the fundamental practices that you can implement in your startup are:
Sponsor an event
Traditional marketing methods are equally important in this digital age, especially for companies that are just starting. Therefore, sponsoring an event in the local area can help your startup the recognition it deserves. In addition, it is a highly effective marketing strategy for when you need to drive sales.
Since you will be coming across potential clients, customers, and investors, it is always recommended to and keep them handy. A business card is also a marketing tool that can bring more awareness to your brand. However, startups should sponsor those events that are relevant to their services. Otherwise, you will miss out on a massive chunk of the audience base.
Send emails or newsletters
Email marketing or newsletter marketing is a highly effective and affordable method of promoting your startup. Once you get the email address of potential customers, you can send them emails shedding more light on your brand. In addition, you can encourage visitors to sign up for your newsletter if you have a website.
Once you establish the base, you can ask for the email addresses of more customers who visit your website or your store. The key to successful email/newsletter marketing is to diversify content. For example, you can use how—to articles, infographics, and videos to promote your brand. People will probably opt out of the newsletter/email if the content is monotonous.
Start blogging
Blogging is a must—include marketing strategy that will get more exposure to your startup. It is also proven that businesses with blogs generate more leads than competitors who don’t have blogs. A blog establishes your company as a thought leader in the industry and will get higher organic traffic to your website.
The content in your blogs should be according to the likes and preferences of your audience. High—quality content and higher views will help your website land at the top of search results on Google. Higher ranking and higher viewership mean more visitors and potential customers of your startup.
Maximize promotion on social media
Social media is the most powerful tool that one can use to promote their startup. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram can be powerful channels to get more traffic and exposure. In addition, paid advertising on social media platforms can help you reach out to untapped audiences.
Social media has become the preferred mode of information consumption. As more users sign up daily on social media, it is only telling of the demand that it has. Therefore, startups must use social media to benefit and post engaging and relevant content related to their brand.
Use paid search advertising
Paid search has become a preferred advertising channel for startups. It enables business owners to get targeted traffic from search engines like Google. In addition, custom advertisements can be created where when someone searches for a related keyword, they can discover your startup.
Host a virtual meetup
Hosting virtual events and meetups will help in building a larger community. Not everyone can appear at offline events, so a virtual meetup is always effective. In addition, you can demonstrate the working of your product or service on those online platforms. Virtual methods of promoting your startup are an excellent and cost—efficient way of getting exposure.
Use user—generated content to promote your startup
You can shell out big bucks to produce social media campaigns in the initial phases of your startup. However, getting people on board who have tried your products and had a positive experience can be a good way to build awareness around your brand.
The best form of user—generated content is testimonials, where users can share their experience with the product. Even specific hashtags that give a unique identity to your startup on social media can be used. The changing trends will enable you to develop more exciting campaign ideas with time.
Offer a free or a trial version of your product
Another offline or online method of promoting your startup is to provide samples of the product or the service to the concerned customers. By offering such products, you let them test your products before making a purchase. Furthermore, if the quality is up to the mark, you are compelling them to become regular customers of your brand. As a result, a sense of loyalty toward your startup is created.

Five factors to look out for while promoting your startup

Promoting your startup and getting the recognition it deserves will take a lot of time and effort. You need to look out for a few critical factors while building your brand from scratch. Those are:
Hire when needed
Hiring employees as and when they come will not help your startup. You need to steer clear of hastily adding more members to your team without knowing their potential. Instead, for effective promotion, ensure that you have a team that stands by you in your startup journey's ups and downs.
Let success come steadily
Overnight success can be taken away as quickly as it came. So you need to be clear about your business goals, be persistent and build a team that can help you achieve them. Startups take their own sweet time to be fruitful, but it will be worth waiting.
Be aware of your competitors
Doing your own thing is essential, but seeing what your competitors are up to is even more necessary. Being aware of their strategies, goals, and subsequent moves will help your brand be ahead of them in the industry. Furthermore, you will develop the appropriate attitude to push your startup to be a success.
Don't chase the wrong channels
There are multiple channels through which you can communicate with your audience and do marketing. However, to save time and resources, you need to be aware of your customers’ preferences and the channel where you can get their maximum attention.
Prioritizing marketing strategies
Quite often, startups put marketing efforts in the backseat. When it's time to implement them, it is eventually too late. As a startup owner, you must focus on marketing as soon as you set up and further advance depending upon the latest trends. Marketing is what will help your brand grow to newer heights.

In conclusion

While these practices are generic in nature, not all of them need to work out for you. To achieve the best results for your startup, you need to look out for promising practices. The right kind of practices, especially cost—effective ones, can create miracles if appropriately implemented.

By B Naomi Grace

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