Learn How to Market a Startup Product

Rolling out a new product in the market requires one to be both innovative and brave. Apart from this, you may need to work on CPR, CTR, customers, growth hacking, and vital marketing before even launching.

Marketing a startup product starts from an ideal customer profile and advertising the product to those customers creatively.

You may rely on ads, websites, social media posts, and SEO for creating a voice for the launch. However, it takes research to learn about trends, technology, economics, and marketing statistics before beginning.

Most startups are a one-person team in digital marketing; therefore, you don’t have to spend a ton on online promotion. Learn how to market a startup and make sure your startup products are successful.

Initially, you may feel the startup and the intended products to be fragile and responsive selectively, so it is essential to work carefully. This is the stage when most entrepreneurs give in to fear and abandon it. Statistics suggest that around 22% of startups fail due to marketing problems.

If you don’t want to be in this, then thorough research should be done to make your product the next big thing in the coming years.

The goal of marketing is to make your product stand out for the customers to invest in it. Effective marketing for the product is crucial to prevent making the general mistakes that may put your product into the backseat. Let’s learn in detail how to market a startup product.

1. Define ICP

You cannot sell a beauty product to someone who does not use it. Advertising to the wrong audience will not be beneficial for the brand and the product. This is where ICP comes into the picture. The ideal customer profile is the environmental, behavioral, and firmographic attributes of the customers who will grow to be the most valuable assets.

ICP helps determine the accounts that will align with the marketing, sales, service, and advertisements to a high value. Moreover, you may share your product ideas to convince everyone to invest in them. This requires you to learn their language and speak those ideas in the same for better understanding.

The customers' in-depth outline provides insights on how to acquire the best marketing tactics and strategize them according to the targeted audience. This is the foremost step a startup takes in marketing a new product to reach the right audience.

Validate profile

It is the first step to get into the details of the ICP framework. A startup needs to focus on listing, researching, outlining challenges and strengths, and document them for validation. You may have to start by listing all the profiles of the customers and analyze them. 

Besides, add details such as location on this list. Find the common denominators between different customer profiles. Look for the areas that may have a collective impact on these profiles. Moreover, research on cultural impacts, economics, growth rates, locations, and other affinities to select the best fit for your startup project.

When the research is complete, start working on validating these profiles and differentiating the key people you wish to target. This also requires you to decide whether you need a sales manager or content manager to target this audience. 

You may choose to approach the customers directly or approach an individual connected to a larger targeted audience. Finally, you may categorize these groups depending upon locations, unique links, and expected behavior.

Find people online

Most of the new customers for your startup product will learn about it from the online channels. Before your product launches, these channels may serve a great deal in finding people. You may consider case studies and look into other similar niche products to learn about a similar audience.

It is an easy way to get insights into consumers' core groups and use them to your advantage. Moreover, learn how you can leverage both on-site and off-site SEO with these simple Tips on Building Your Business’s Online Presence.

This will boost the startup and will be an initial point of contact with the selected customer bases. A blog, online profiles, and social influencers may be ideal in finding and approaching such profiles. You may include these online profiles in your marketing strategies.

Conduct interviews

Surveys and interviews are a great medium to get insights directly from customers. It is an authentic way to learn more about the online profiles and how they will behave after the product launch.

You need to have a basic questionnaire for the customers. These will be essential in determining the ICP precisely and work accordingly. Such surveys may have questions such as the customer’s long-term goals and their pain points. Moreover, you may learn how the product will add value to their life.

It also provides an insight into how a customer buys the product and the main channels of information for them. You may add these surveys on the landing page of the product website to see the hype.

2. Define a set of marketing channel

After an in-depth analysis of the ideal customer profile and surveys, define the marketing channels to reach the audience. There are various options in digital marketing to choose from in content and visual form. Moreover, the company needs to be dynamic in marketing a startup product to ensure maximum reach.

Your marketing approach may change, and modify with the new market trends, so be ready in all areas. Besides, these changes may not be a part of an old book and require an open mind to work in your favor.

Here are some of the best marketing channels for your startup product:

• PPC Marketing
• Social Media
• Your website
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• SEO

Channels based on ICP

As 9 out of 10 new startups fail, you must consider the marketing channels based on the ideal customer profile. Moreover, stick to a marketing plan that focuses on increasing revenue from the ICP and starts a campaign surrounding the needs. This is where optimization of channels with the knowledge of ICP works without steering you into the wrong path.

Besides, you may use your intuition and experience to choose such marketing channels. Even when you are promoting a new product that is already there in the market, your approach must be unique. Highlight the new features for the audience to make them curious.

Social Media Marketing is the best marketing channel based on the ICP.

Based on budget

When starting a new business venture or a new product line, it may get overwhelming to decide on a budget. As there are so many aspects, one may go overboard or feel too confused to invest. You may get a budget or reverse engineer to suggest changes and keep a check on the account. It will prevent you from crossing the set limit.

Moreover, after your startup is beyond the initial stage, it has stability and is hard to abandon. You may wonder if you require a lot of capital for marketing; however, you need to steer in the right direction.

• You can invest in email marketing if you have a low budget. It is one of the cheapest ways provided you make it engaging.
• On the other hand, if you have ample capital for investment, you can go for social media ads and PPC. As an example, Garnier Men Malaysia partnered with some top Facebook content creators for marketing their products. This ad campaign harnessed a 4-point ad recall in total.

Based on resources

Investing in the right channel as per your resources will save you money while being accountable for all the marketing expenses. A lot of individual channels in marketing are accountable and measurable. Therefore, you may employ your resources accordingly.

For instance, Facebook and Instagram provide you with the liberty to run ads as per your budget. You can select your budget and the actions you want to take. Based on this, you can get the desired results.

As it includes your money, brainpower, and manual labor for product manufacturing. It is crucial to use the best channel for marketing.

Also, keep a check on all the metrics to see which ones you may filter. Here’s the Complete Guide to Successful Branding in 2021 to give your consumers the best experience when they purchase your product.

3. How to market a startup using SEO?

Organic SEO that works without trying too hard or overselling is the best approach. Learn these 5 Helpful Tips to Take Your SEO to New Heights by optimizing multiple devices and adding valuable content.

Content plan

Content helps in creating product awareness and converting the readers into customers. Ensure your content is easy to read and is informative. Moreover, it should provide the customer with essential product insights in a simple way.

You may create a content plan with keywords, videos, images, and testimonials to positively impact the readers. All these factors help in optimizing the content and resonates more.

Research competitors

For instance, Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign skyrocketed the company stocks from $9.08 to $16.23. This 78.7% increase also won the company a Grand Effie” at the 39th Annual Effie Awards. Their ad campaigns ensure product success with an emphasis on product advantages. 

Moreover, the brand did not use any gimmicks or competitor bashing to create a brand name. They learned about the competitor’s schemes and how they reach the audience to voice the product. The campaign aimed at comparing Apple products with that of its competitor, Microsoft. Hence, simple competitor research did the job for Apple.

Content writing and optimization

Use tools such as Ahrefs to find keywords that are suitable for your product. Search from difficulty score, easy to rank keywords, and ones with more volume. Moreover, create a content planner with these keywords and organize the content using Google Keyword Planner tools. Optimize the readability and SEO of the content for better reach and ranking. You can also use various free keyword rank checking tools like the one from Search Engine Reports to keep a watch on the ranking of your targeted keywords.

Link building

Links add credibility to your posts and marketing channels. They generate traffic, increase the authority of the website, and impact the SERP rating. The do-follow links help in bringing users to your products from other websites.

Steer clear from paid backlinks and fake backlinks as Google finds them punishable. You can build authentic backlinks by using guest posts, Quora, commenting, press releases, and social media mentions.

Pro tip: Remarketing

The marketing content grows organically; therefore, you will not see any overnight wonders. However, this method is cost-effective and gives results. Remarketing deals with presenting your ads or content in front of those who have already interacted with your product or service. Hence, it is a way to recall your customers to make the purchase.

Statistics suggest that the average click-through rate of retargeting ads is 10X higher than the regular display ads. Hence, pitching those who have earlier interacted with your website can yield better results for you.

Pro tip: Update activity

Remove any content that does not have much exposure or did not perform as desired. This content purging will help you refine your account and update the activity. Besides, focus on publishing relevant content, add new metadata to old posts to revive them. Your site should be link-worthy and attention-grabbing.

4. How to market a startup using SMM?

SMM is quite similar to SEO; however, it requires a community and an influencer impacting this community. Creating a community may be free of charge, but you will have to pay influencers for marketing and promote your product. Moreover, it is necessary to work on your posts and learn How To Write Social Media Headlines That Get More Clicks. 

The community comprises customers who are all over Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. So, your product has to reach this community via SMM and the power of influencers. Social media marketing is potent in getting direct clients as they trust the influencers promoting your product.

Besides, you have to make sure your social media fits your ICP and buyer personas. This translates into creating SMM content targeted to these users and finding an influencer that fits the profile. You may choose a few platforms to promote your product instead of being everywhere.

Also, create a post calendar to be regular in reaching the audience and study the user pattern. This may help you plan the next content and get a better response.

5. How many people do you need?

This depends on the scale of your launch. You require experienced people to handle the marketing, create SEO and SMO marketing content, and promote the product on online channels. It entirely depends on you how you manage the manual power.

Depending upon your product launch requirements, you may hire a:

• Budget engineer
• Content strategist
• Copywriter
• Business analyst
• Developers
• Marketing agents or freelancers
• Professional who can run Facebook and Instagram Ads.

Conclusion

There you go with all the details on how to market a startup product. Look for voids in the marketing of other brands to fulfill those in yours. This will provide the customers something a little extra from the new product. Besides, you cannot be everything to everyone, so keep the ICP in mind while marketing the product.