If you are embarking on a journey to start selling a service or product, you may be confident in what you are offering to the public, but you are unsure of how to reach them. Just like the business plan you have put together, your startup will need to have a marketing plan. Here are three ways that you can build a marketing strategy for your startup.
Marketing Strategy – Build a Customer Profile.
Attempting to start up a business takes discipline, and that includes developing and executing a marketing plan. Your first task as you build your marketing plan is to create a customer profile. Your profile will be the measurement you use to judge all subsequent marketing strategies. Here are some things that should be included in your customer profile.
- Customer age range.
- Customer income.
- Customer gender.
- Customer interests.
- Customer buying power.
- What your customer wants from your product or service.
Once you have developed your customer profile, you can hone it buy gathering information through customer surveys. If you are starting up an e-commerce business, you can gather demographic information at checkout and use tools like Google Analytics to determine how your customer arrived at your website. Having a clear idea of who your core customers are will allow you to build a brand around what your customer wants from your startup. Having demographic information also will enable you to know where to put your advertising dollars. It may be that print or radio ads reach your target demographic better than pay per click or search engine optimization, or vice versa. Knowing your customer is the first step in having a successful marketing strategy.
Marketing Strategy – Know How to Reach Your Potential Customers.
Let’s say your company sells golf carts to people over seventy living in retirement communities; you would not want to allocate a lot of money to banner ads and pay per click on social media platforms. Advertising on a local radio station or billboards in the community might make more sense. Conversely, if you have are selling refurbished laptops to Millennials, you would want to be sure your website has content that speaks to them and is optimized for mobile devices. Knowing where your customers live on the internet, or in the real world, will give you a better chance of getting your startup off the ground. There are a variety of tools on the internet that let you determine where to market to your target demographic. One of the oldest, but most effective tools used to reach a customer is still email. Offer a newsletter on your website, and you will instantly have both the customer’s email for future offers and demographic information. Email sill one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to reach your customers.
Marketing Strategy – Your Website Matters to Any Demographic
When it comes to inbound marketing, the number one thing is your company’s website. Regardless if customers arrive at your site through a search engine, or they read the web address on a business card or advertisement; your website needs to grab the customer’s attention. Make sure to use bright, vibrant colors and imagery that fall in line with your branding. Dull colors and uninteresting images won’t make the customer want to explore further. Make sure that you have engaging, relevant content that is easy to find and understand. Customers won’t stay on your website long if they find it hard to navigate. Make sure your company uses a host for its website who has fast load times. Customer attention spans grow shorter every year, and they expect your site to load instantaneously.
Starting a new business can be both exciting and nerve-wracking, but if you follow these three tips, you are on your way to having a strong foundation for your marketing strategy.
