Over 50% of startups fail in the first 4 years. Of all the small businesses started in 2011, only 4% made it to the second year while only 9% made it to the fourth year.

You don’t want your startup to have the same fate, right?

Nobody wants to start a business that will eventually fail. Circumstances lead to failure.

Lack of marketing strategy leads to failure.

The list below has some of the most effective marketing strategies for startups that are sure to help you succeed – eventually.

1. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is the best strategy to promote your startup.

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing where you target influencers in your target market. These are the individuals that control your market, have a strong influence on your customers, and they have a massive following.

You sell a health supplement and Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) tweets about your supplement, you know the outcome, right?

Johnson is an influencer in the fitness industry. He has over 70 million Instagram followers and 55 million Facebook followers. They love him. They do what he says. They buy what he recommends. They dress like him. They follow his fitness tips. And so on…

You got the idea.

Similarly, Katy Perry with her 95 million twitter followers can change the fate of your product and startup.

So how to use it?

Follow the steps below to create a powerful influencer marketing strategy for your startup.

1. Understand your target audience. Create buyer personas.
2. Identify influencers in your industry. These should be people who control the minds of your target audience.
3. Connect with the influencer. Follow, comment, subscribe, and try to stay close to the influencer. The idea is to make him used to your name and the brand. Be the first one to comment on the new blog post.
4. Alternately, you can directly contact the influencer and ask for a promotional tweet, video, blog post, etc. This is a rather expensive approach. Influencers are expensive as hell and they are choosy. They do not promote anything you through at them.
5. Track and monitor the progress of the campaign. Does campaign increased sales, conversion rate, or revenue?

It seems to be a lot of work and yes, it is but it is the best startup marketing strategy that works in every niche.

2. Social media marketing

Not considering social media for reaching your target audience is the biggest mistake a startup could ever make.

Because 2.34 billion people on this planet use social media and the number is expected to reach 2.95 by 2020. This is the best way to reach your potential buyers.

Here is a simple way to create a social media marketing strategy.

Step #1

Do research. Find the social networks that your target audience uses.

Not all the people use all social networks. For instance, LinkedIn is used by businesses while Instagram is used mainly by those interested in images.

You need to find the social network that your target audience uses.

This is something that cannot be done without asking them. Consider conducting a survey or maybe interviews to see what type of social networks your potential buyers prefer using.

Step #2

Define goals.

What exactly you plan to achieve from social media?

Are you interested in increasing sales? Getting more subscribers or you are interested in brand awareness.

Create SMART goals that are:

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Realistic
5. Time-based

It is recommended to write goals.

Step #3

Create an editorial calendar for posting on social networks.

Ask yourself following questions.

• What type of content your target audience loves? Images, text, videos, infographics, podcasts, case studies, etc.
• What should be the posting frequency?
• Who will create the posts?
• Who will manage the social accounts?
• Will this type of content help achieve the goals?

Based on the answers, create an editorial calendar. CoSchedule has a perfect social media content template.

Step #4

Automate. Monitor. Track. And tweak.

The starting point is to define key metrics for measuring the success of your marketing strategy. How’d you know if your social media marketing strategy is really working.

Define metrics to track performance such as engagement or conversion.

Use tools like HootSuite or Buffer to automate social media posting. Use Google Analytics to track conversions and/or engagement.

This will give you an idea of how things are working.

Tweak the strategy if it is not working.

3. Content marketing

Over 70% of marketers plan to focus on content marketing in 2017 and beyond. There is a reason why.

Content converts.

The internet is all about content (text, videos, images, etc.). Think of anything.

Your best video, the viral post that you recently shared on Facebook, the blog post that you commented on, the image that you shared on Instagram, are all the types of content.

Your startup will cease to exist on the internet without content and content cannot be generated without a content marketing strategy.

Follow the steps below to create a potent content marketing strategy for your startup.

1. Create buyer personas. Define target audience, the biggest challenge they face, how your product solves the issue, and try to understand your audience in the truest sense.
2. Define goals for your content marketing. Are you interested in brand awareness? Do you plan to increase sales by a certain percentage in next months?
3. Market research will reveal the type of content your audience loves the most. A survey will do the job.
4. Define content type, posting frequency, types of posts, and other aspects by creating an editorial calendar.
5. Create awesome content that adds value and gets the job done in the best way possible. Use Skyscraper technique to create content that stands out from the crowd.
6. Convert your posts into videos, slideshows, podcasts, infographics, PDFs, and other types of content and share them with your audience.
7. Track conversions and engagement to see how good or bad your strategy is performing.

Conclusion

So you have the three best marketing strategies for your startup, what’s next?

Choose at least one of them and get started with it.

Master the strategy and get serious about marketing. You cannot outperform your competitors without marketing. Period.

Eimear is the Marketing Manager for Powerpoint Engineering. She has managed the launch of four new websites during the last year and knows how important planning is for the success of each site.