Do you know almost 90% of startups fail during a specific period? But what are the things that drive it toward a miserable end? Well, there are numerous factors behind the failure of startups. If you need to identify that on a gross basis, "Executing Marketing Idea" will be at the top of the list.
Most companies underestimate marketing to reach potential customers. And guess what happens? Great product/service ideas turn into loss-making businesses!!
In this article, we’ve covered 21 proven startup marketing ideas so that you can optimize the accuracy of marketing execution and lessen the chance of facing failure. So, are you ready to design your startup marketing?
21 Startup Marketing Ideas in 2024
If you want to establish your brand as a successful one, you can follow these marketing ideas for your startup.
Related Read: 40 Proven Small Business Marketing Ideas to Boost Your Success
1. Get a Website
A website helps startups in many ways. It lets customers find you online easily. It shows you are serious about your business.
A good website makes you look professional. It builds trust. It helps you explain what you do clearly. Videos and images can show your products well.
You can share news on new arrivals through blog posts. You can even sell directly through your website. This reaches more customers than just a physical store. Explore more about it in our blog ideas.
Building a website is easier today. You can create a website for your startup even if you do not have any coding expertise. For example, Dorik, the best AI website builder, provides you full functional websites in seconds.
Related Read: How to Create a Website with AI in 4 Simple Steps
2. Reach Out to the Targeted Community
You need to specify your targeted group to expand the user base. It’s then possible when you truly understand your ideal customers. This comprehension helps you to create more user-interactive content – that’s the beginning of a sales funnel, right?
Dropbox used this marketing strategy successfully. They made an explanation video of Dropbox’s key features keeping the Digg community in mind. When they posted it on Digg, it went viral. This strategy helped them to go from 5,000 to 75,000 people on their waiting list overnight.
3. Utilize Social Media
There are about 4.48 billion people using social media worldwide. This number itself is enough to make you understand how important social media is for startup marketing.
You can easily build an audience base for your startup here and convert them into customers through a proper sales funnel. You may consider Paperless Parts as an example. This company began social media marketing by posting customer reviews on its Facebook page. After that, it also started posting “behind the scenes” type videos of the manufacturing process.
A proper content plan helped this company reach potential customers without investing huge amounts of money. Similarly, you can design your social media content plan with educative content, successful clients’ case studies, and many more to hook your targeted group.
Related Read: 10 Proven Social Media Marketing Strategy
4. Build a Reputation by Getting Featured
Building a good reputation is an essential marketing part for startup companies. An unknown startup can’t win people’s trust without a valid reason. This is where building a positive reputation becomes crucial.
Getting featured in a major publication could help you to build that.It also helps to get a massive spike in traffic if your company has a website. This massive traffic will surely convert some sales and increase your virtual credibility.
5. Create SEO-Optimized Content
Do you know 53% of shoppers do research before purchasing a product? Obviously, this research is online-based, and most people tend to make decisions from the first page of Google search results.
That’s why you should have a virtual presence with a well-furnished website and continually optimize your content to rank in search engines. Though it’s a lengthy process, it ensures your sustainability. The good news is that you can now create and optimize your content with AI.
SEO-optimized content brings more traffic to your webpage, and that’s the thing we all want.
6. Start a Referral Program
People tend to check reviews before confirming a purchase. The power of word of mouth is unavoidable if it comes from a trustworthy source. That's why referral marketing has become crucial for any company over the last few years.
You can get benefitted from referral marketing in many ways, such as:
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Generating new leads.
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Getting new customers at a lower cost.
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Increasing brand credibility.
To implement this marketing idea for your startup, you can leverage your existing customers and ask them to advocate your product through their reviews or testimonials. It'll help you to make a strong brand position as it proves that you've already solved others' problems.
You can offer discounts or similar things to your existing customers. This will motivate them to advocate for you in the long run.
7. Introduce Something Exclusive Beta
A customer's mind always wants to get exclusive feelings. We all strive to get access to exclusivity. In simple words, people like to have limited-edition things.
Offering something exclusive in the beta version is one of the common startup marketing strategies. It helps to acquire the first users and builds a loyal community. Slack implemented this strategy back in 2013 and gained a remarkable response.
8. Host a Virtual Event
Hosting a virtual event is an effective startup marketing strategy, especially for tech companies. It helps to introduce your startup in the industry, and there's a great opportunity to connect easily with industry experts. Most importantly, it helps you to optimize your marketing budget and spread your brand awareness globally.
Mabl, a Boston-based SaaS provider, took advantage of this strategy perfectly. They hosted a successful meetup with industry experts to build a large community.
9. Connect Your Brand with a Social Cause.
Creating social awareness could be a great way of marketing for startup companies. People like to connect with noble, social causes. When a brand connects itself with social issues, it gains trust and loyalty.
So, to skyrocket your brand success, cause marketing could be an effective marketing strategy. Several brands have tried this method for promotional purposes. The shoe brand TOMS is a perfect example of cause marketing. They ran a campaign named One Day Without Shoes. They declared to donate a pair of shoes to a needy child for every person who posts a barefoot picture with the hashtag #withoutshoes on Instagram.
Another cause marketing example is BoxLunch. It’s a pop culture retail store whose business model is entirely focused on cause marketing. According to their campaign, one meal will be distributed through local food banks for every $10 spent in-store and online.
10. Try Crowdfunding Marketing
Have you ever thought crowdfunding could be a unique way of marketing? If not, then you can take NeighborSchools as an example. This childcare startup offers daycares from licensed and experienced professionals.
When they decided to scale up their business, they sought people who could invest and have belief in them for crowdfunding. With this tactic, they earned $3.5 million in seed funding and successfully grabbed the attention of major publications.
If your startup has an exclusive vision, why don’t you give it a try as your marketing strategy?
11. Offer a Free or Trial Version
You might have seen companies like Canva, Zapier, Dropbox, and many more offer free or trial versions to users. It's one of the proven marketing strategies for startups.
Offering a free or trial version can serve you in many aspects. It helps build a user base that may share your product with others. So you can get a word-of-mouth advantage.
You can also offer special discounts to this user base to convert into paid customers. This way, the customer acquisition costs will be reduced as you don’t have to spend money to gain a new customer.
12. Send an Email to the Right Audience
Sending emails to the right audience is also an effective way of startup marketing. But make sure you are sending it to the relevant prospects. If your company has a website, you can place a newsletter form on it. With this, you may easily get prospects' email lists.
Besides you can also make an email list of your existing customer to increase your retention rate. Please ensure to diversify your emails with educational or non-commercial content like blogs, videos, statistics, etc, to enhance the brand value. Sending sales emails rapidly could force prospects and customers to unsubscribe from your newsletter service.
Remember, whether it's your loyal customer or prospects, everyone demands positive value in their daily life.
Related Read: 12 Email Marketing Strategies for Beginners
13. Distribute Stickers
What is the basic goal of marketing? Reaching out to targeted prospects and creating brand awareness – right? In a word, it’s all about visibility to the targeted group. And here comes the free stickers distributing idea to promote your startups.
Alexis Ohanian, a founder of Reddit, spent only $500 when he launched this community site. It was the only initial marketing investment of the company. Alexis traveled across the country and put stickers on visible places like signs, poles, and even giving them away to strangers. This way, he impacted people’s psychology, and the result is in front of you.
14. Arrange Giveaways
You might have seen social media influencers create promotional content for brands and offer exclusive gifts to their user base. It gets hyped when the whole campaign runs through a contest. Arranging giveaways could be a little bit costly, but it’s a proven marketing strategy for many startups.
If you want to do similar things collaborating with influencers, make sure they have that audience base you target. Otherwise, it will end up with a money-wasting campaign. You can also host the giveaway on your website.
15. Be Your Products' Biggest User
Are you confused about this point? I promise you won't be – if you provide any service that involves user input. For instance, you can consider Quora to understand this.
In the very beginning, Quora had a smaller user base. A small user base means insufficient content. So, it demotivated others to join the platform.
At that time, Adam D'Angelo, one of the founders of Quora, stepped forward to solve the issue. He started to answer a stack of questions that helped to grow Quora's user base and content quality.
Being your product's biggest user also helps you to develop it as you start to evaluate it from the user's perspective.
16. Hook Your Customers With Cash Reward
Have you ever thought of spending money directly to acquire customers? You may indirectly pay that through ads. But what about spending it directly to customers instead?
If you need some clarification, you may take PayPal as an example. At the beginning of its journey, PayPal gave $10 to new customers and $10 to existing customers for each referred. They used this method to reach their target of getting a 1 million user base. And surprisingly, the average daily growth was 7-10 percent!
17. Connect with Another Brand
You may collaborate with other brands if your company is too small to build a large user base. It’ll help you to introduce your brand to potential users within a short period.
Android did the same thing by collaborating with KitKat when it released Android 4.4. This strategy helped Android to reach new customers, and the result is before you.
18. Gamify Your Service
Gamification is an effective way to hold consumers' attention and generate more sales. You may also use this strategy to enhance your user base.
For instance, Starbucks uses its mobile app to execute this strategy. It encourages users to purchase more and rewards them with “stars.” A user can use these stars later for a free coffee or food item.
19. Give Free Products
Who doesn’t like to get something extra? Offering a gift with any product encourages customers to buy more. That means an increased sales graph! That’s the thing every company wants, right?
You can provide a gift to your customers on every purchase. It will build a loyal customer base and encourage them to spread your brand through word-of-mouth.
20. Build a Community Using Paid Ads
Paid ads create a significant impact on building a community. An engaging community based on a targeted audience group is a proven asset for a startup company. It helps to spread your brand name to new prospects.
You can take Starburst Data as an example. It helps other companies to understand their website analytics. As a b2b company, it chose LinkedIn ads for its targeted audiences to build a community.
N.B. Please ensure value-added promotional content for your targeted group. Nobody wants to connect with something that they don’t find helpful.
21. Convey Your Story Using User-Generated Content.
User-generated content can be a game changer in your marketing strategy. From a buyer's perspective, it increases trust and credibility for a brand. This may boost your sales rapidly.
You may hear about Coca-Cola’s "Share a Coke Campaign." It’s a perfect example of user-generated content where people connected with Coca-Cola naturally and expressed their emotions with Coke on social media.
As a startup company, you can also design a similar type of campaign so that people get connected with your brand and share the experience with you through social media channels.
Conclusion
The success of a startup largely depends on the ability to execute a well-rounded marketing strategy. These 21 proven startup marketing ideas will help you to design your marketing strategy according to your product and ideal buyer persona.
Remember, different business has different ground reality. You need to optimize your strategy keeping that in mind. Best of luck with your entrepreneurial endeavor!
