Startups make their way through the mainstream market with lots of pain, hassles, and struggles. However, when reaching out to the right customer base, they often fail to utilize their resources.
In this case, the most vital tool they blunder is marketing. In marketing, you need to invest hundreds of thousands of bucks to promote the products or services among potential customers.
However, selecting the wrong promotional channels, lack of engaging marketing content, investing time and money in less important places, etc., contribute to complete marketing disasters.
If you’re an entrepreneur, keep reading this post to see how to recognize and rectify marketing blunders while thriving in your dream startup.
5 Startup Marketing Blunders Entrepreneurs Often Make
To start with, let’s dive into the five common and, technically, the biggest mistakes marketers have to do away with in their startups. Without identifying them in the first place, moving forward will prove risky. Here are the five startup marketing blunders you must be careful of.
#1: Do You Have a Robust Marketing Plan?
Being ambitious about your startup is the driving force for your entrepreneurship, true. But what makes your enthusiasm and the startup itself stale down the line is a lack of a robust marketing plan. Dissecting what a marketing plan should be and shouldn’t make the real difference here.
For instance, if a digital marketing agency makes a puffed-up “oh, that sounds great” type of plan only, its products or services will have a hard time reaching the target audience. So, whatever your product or service is, make sure your marketing plan has the following:
- Specific Marketing Objectives and Actions
When we say marketing objectives, it must be for marketing only. Many marketers misalign a marketing plan with a broader business plan. This creates confusion among employees regarding what to achieve and what not.
Outline your marketing objectives that you want to reach through your marketing campaigns, promotions, and relevant actions. Don’t let the business goal overshadow the marketing goals.
For instance, your business goal might be “becoming a leading healthcare app service brand in the market.”
However, your marketing objective should be “getting one hundred thousand customers to download your app in three months” or “getting fifty thousand subscribers on your app’s YouTube channel in the first month.”
- SWOT Analysis
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s a very simple yet one of the most effective marketing tools to date.
You can simply take a pen and paper to write down what your business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are. Or you can sit with your team to do the same thing on a whiteboard.
However, one primary thing to fortify your SWOT is to do ample market research. Without substantial data on the current market, it’s hard to define a realistic SWOT for your startup.
- SMART Goals
Adapting to SMART goals is a brilliant part of a robust marketing plan. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
These elements directly monitor and drive quantitative actions to set and achieve your business goals. If you have each of these aspects aligned with your marketing goals, analyzing your achievement and future target will be much more contemplative.
#2: Do You Know Your Audience?
Well, you’re not supposed to know them personally. But when traditional marketing meets modern technology, reaching out to your potential customers is now easier than before.
And it’s the topmost thing you should care about. And this is where many marketers make mistakes. They rush their marketing campaigns or promotional activities without defining the target audience based on geography, age range,
Both online and offline, you must research your customers or clients. Depending on your product or service type, your customer base may vary from other startup founders. Nevertheless, you must find out who needs your product or service, people who can’t do without you. Trying to cover a broad audience mostly wastes time and money.
To find the right customers, email marketing, social media analytics, events and campaigns, web advertisements, and so on can be reliable ways.
#3: Is Website Design More Important Than Traffic?
Having an online presence is paramount in today’s business. That’s why you need to develop an interactive and informative website where your customers can find their desired products or services.
However, the problem occurs when you focus on perfecting your website, delaying the actual launch date. Here’s the statement: there are numerous website designs, but there’s no perfect website design.
What you must focus on first is drawing traffic to your website within a stipulated time. And the more delayed the launch is, the harder it gets to increase views on your site. Remember, you can always develop and improve your website’s look and user experience over time.
So, focus on putting the right products or services on your site and promote them through the right channels so it’s discoverable for your audience.
#4: Are You Selecting the Right Promotional Channels?
Advertising your products or services isn’t limited to wall posters, TV ads, radio ads, etc. There are tons of channels today to launch and promote your brand. Google, Instagram, Facebook, Blogs— you name it.
Nevertheless, while the benefits of social media marketing are many, often, marketing hustlers fail to realize what channels are the perfect platforms to promote their products. Hence, the right customers remain mostly unaware of the launch or promotions of their desired products.
If you’re promoting your products through all the available channels simultaneously, think again. You must consider the demographics of your target audience.
If you’re targeting teens, specifically those aged 13-19, you better opt for Instagram to promote your products. However, if you’re trying to catch their attention on Twitter or Blog sites, you’re less likely to hit the hot spot.
#5: Are Your Customers Satisfied?
If you’re letting your customers down, it’s an unforgivable blunder in your startup marketing. Ask yourself. Why would a customer risk their money and time buying your product only to receive foul customer service?
You may wonder how customer service plays a role in marketing. Well, it plays a pivotal role in marketing. That’s what should be one of the top goals of marketing— ensuring customer satisfaction.
Startups that only focus on getting away with average post-purchase services while making many bucks in their pocket fail miserably.
Studies say that customer retention is key to continued business. So, make sure there’s enough accessibility in every channel through which customers can reach you with problems, confusion, or queries. Tools like 24/7 chatbots, helplines, Contact Us pages, etc., help keep your customers well-tuned.
How to Avoid Startup Marketing Mistakes
Now that you know what mistakes compromise the marketing efforts of a startup, it’s time to get equipped with the right tools to avoid those mistakes. Below are five effective ways to avoid those startup marketing blunders that can save your dream project from turmoil.
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Keep an Extensive Strategy in Place
Marketing is a vital pillar of a startup, and it needs to be strategized from the beginning. Remember, a solid marketing and development plan requires enough time and resources.
You can’t rush your marketing campaigns and launches. Or else, chances are you will get nowhere within 3-5 years except for wasting precious time and money.
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Develop a Robust Funnel
To avoid wasting money on traffic generation through various promotional activities, you must develop and establish a robust funnel. If you have a website, make sure its content builds authority.
Besides, the website content must drive traffic from target locations to your funnel. To ensure this, you have to make sure your website contains quality content along with appropriate design and accessibility.
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Determining Major Marketing Initiatives
Getting drowned under too many marketing initiatives in your startup isn’t a good sign of a successful marketing plan. Any marketing initiative should focus on bringing a new idea that can solve any existing or potential problems. In a nutshell, you must focus on those marketing initiatives that only drive more revenue to your business.
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Marketing Campaigns Must Be Measurable
Investing in marketing campaigns mustn’t go unmeasured. You must maintain all data on expenses and revenues related to your campaigns.
For instance, you’re throwing a promotional offer for your product at a discount. Here, track how many customers remain loyal through this offer and become your premium or regular customers. Through this, you can make out the cost-per-trial in those campaigns for future marketing endeavors.
Final Note
No matter what products or services you sell to your customers, your marketing plans, goals, and objectives must be well-measured. A startup requires a great deal of resources, including money, manpower, skills, and time.
All these valuable resources will be wasted due to ambiguous marketing activities. Hence, learn from the common mistakes we’ve shared above to save your dream startup from disaster. Besides, be appropriately skilled in digital marketing tools to establish the authority of your business.