The process of starting a business presents both great opportunities and roadblocks. When planning a new company or business, you will have the benefit of intrinsic inspiration (why you started the business in the first place) and likely not enough time, money or assistance to make it all work immediately. But small business owners: take heart. With the help of a digital marketing consultant, you can find value in the process of crafting a brand identity, ad campaigns and tangible business goals. When you have taken your first steps into a marketing strategy, you can then assess your performance and make necessary adjustments for the future growth of your business.
Every digital marketing firm will have different processes through which to reach the end goal of carving out a market presence. How does OpenSource Technologies tackle marketing for a startup? Each client has different needs and priorities for their business, so each marketing strategy plays out differently. However, OpenSource performs its digital marketing strategies based on a ten-step guide and template.
Step 1: Business Understanding :-
During this initial step, the key for the consultant is to get a broad, overarching sense of the client’s business practices and mission. If the startup is an education technology company, the consultant will get to know both the why and the how of the business – why this company wants to participate in the education industry and how this company plans to make its products and services available to schools and students. This step is about learning the client’s focus and vision.
Although the relationship between a digital marketing consultant and a startup is a business relationship, the interaction between the entities happens on a human level. The marketing team must be acquainted not only with the number-crunching realities of business models, app performance and profits, but also with the character and purpose driving the startup towards its ultimate goals. If the client has an existing app or campaign, the consulting team will check the workflow and business keys of that app.
Step 2: Understanding the Market :-
For a smaller business, knowing exactly how big your market is plays a crucial role in your marketing and business plans. Every small business has its limitations so trying to go for a too-wide scope at first can hinder the progress you could be making by focusing on a smaller, more contained market. Even if the client is developing a social media app, they would hinder their natural progress if they aimed to reach the same market as Twitter or Facebook. Establishing the parameters for a realistic market can be a great way to set a startup up for success.
During this step, you define if you want to reach a global or local audience – and which audience exactly you are targeting.
If the business has already launched, this step is a great time for the marketing consultant to collect data on the client’s existing market presence up until then.
Step 3: Defining Your Customer :-
By defining the client’s market, the consulting team is then ready to funnel that market down into real segments of potential customers. Demographics and psychographics play a key role in defining a startup’s customer. The question to answer during this step is – “who is buying your products and services?” and “what kind of person wants to buy into your business?” Having existing customer data to analyze proves useful during this step.
- Demographics: statistical, population-based characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, married status, sex, income etc.
- Psychographics: characteristics of a customer based on interests, activities and opinions, oftentimes associated with demographics.
Step 4: Competitor Study :-
During this stage, the consultant takes stock of the client’s competitors – other businesses that overlap with the client’s in terms of value proposition, mission, products, identity and so forth.
Some of the steps the marketing team takes during this step include generating a detailed dossier of the client’s three strongest competitors. The consulting team aims to define these competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities for the client’s business to stand apart from them.
Step 5: Setting a Unique Selling Proposition or “USP” :-
During this step, the client works with the digital marketing consultant to define the need that the client’s business or product fulfills. Here, both parties can clarify how the client’s business can address a specific gap or need in the market.
Every business has competitors, and knowing how your app or product differs from (and exceeds) other companies’ apps and products becomes critical when you try to sell yourself. A USP defines your business in relation to competitor businesses.
Your ‘elevator pitch’ acts as an essentialized statement of your USP. Coming up with a specific elevator pitch or USP takes time though, and the best ones have thought behind them. To start, you can imagine your USP as the way a customer might describe your business to a friend who has never heard of you.
Step 6: Building a Marketing Strategy :-
During this step, the consultant will outline various channels for marketing using the research built from steps 2 and 4. Each business will have different ‘ideal’ channels for optimizing viewership. The goal of this step is to develop a methodology for reaching potential customers and leads.
Step 7: Setting Concrete Business Objectives :-
Here, the digital marketing consultant and the client will convert their overarching vision and mission statements into measurable performance goals. Let’s consider an example where a client launches an app. During this stage, the client decides what they want to prioritize, whether that priority be increasing app downloads, generating revenue or having their ad campaigns seen by as many viewers as possible.
Defining advantageous business outcomes is crucial during this step.
Step 8: Marketing Tactics and Channels :-
Once the client has defined their business goals, then comes the time to implement those goals through various marketing channels. Using market research and marketing strategies from steps 2 and 6, the marketing consultant suggests channels that would best reach the target audience. There are various ways to reach potential customers outlined below:
- App Promotion: entails promoting the app on all app stores and search engines.
- Paid Promotion: includes running paid campaigns advertising the product on app stores and search engines.
- Social Media Marketing: creates content for viewing and sharing on various social media channels.
- Email Newsletters: sending promotional emails in bulk, particularly to those who have signed up for your emails.
Step 9: Budgeting :-
During this stage, the client will go through their budget with the marketing consultant. Both parties aim to justify where they are spending and assess the results coming from this spending. Then, once the parties decide the new budget, they then divide the budget into marketing campaigns conducted over different channels, four of which are described above.
Step 10: Assessing Measurable :-
Every marketing strategy and action must be measurable down to the last cent. The digital marketing consultant and the client assess the financial performance of their app and marketing strategies, and compare this performance with their initial goals. Since each app and business has different goals, metrics for “performance” will vary. However, software tools are always helpful in assessing the metrics of app sales, downloads, page views and so forth.
During this final stage, the client works with the digital marketing team to track performance, generate accurate data reports and then set new goals for future growth.
Market Your Startup or App with Confidence
Starting a business or app provides challenges and can at times be daunting. But with digestible and measurable benchmarks for a company’s mission and performance, a startup can turn their abstract goals into achievable realities. OpenSource Technologies appreciates partnering with startup clients, and can help you market your app or product step-by-step.
This Blog was originally Published by our company on LinkedIn. You can find the source below:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/carving-out-niche-confidence-step-by-step-marketing-startup-mittal/
