Marketing tips to gain traction in year 1
In the first twelve to eighteen months of starting up the team is lean,time is short and the to-do list never ending, yet the focus needs to be on gaining traction to prove the model. So what are the best marketing activities to focus on during this time? Here are my top tips rounded up from years of working with startup brands on their marketing, and from doing it ourselves with social-sharing tool Openr.
Make your customer the centre of your world
Without customers, you don’t have a business. Thinking from customers’ perspective will tell you which features to prioritise, how to describe your business, where to sell it, even where to market it. So create a distinctive picture of their lives and needs, of who they really are. Don’t fall into the trap of targeting any customer, focus on the target segment that will be most likely to try your product now, in the early stages. Now you need people to love you or hate you — nothing in between.
Work and rework a clear and simple proposition
If your customer doesn’t understand what you do within twenty seconds then you’ve lost a sale. Yet the single biggest barrier to startup success remains the lack of clear proposition. The trick is to focus on doing one thing really well. Get clear on the one big thing you do, and become known for that. Don’t be afraid to work on it over time too. It might mean changing the line on your website a few times, but crack it and not only will you win that sale, but you also make it easier for customers to refer you to others.
Make every experience a great one (even if it doesn’t scale)
Marketing is not just the job of the marketing department. Marketing is everything that touches your customer — website, social, the sales team, your customer service — and you want it to leave a lasting positive impression. Offering surprisingly good customer service also makes you stand out, and right now you’re agile enough to offer the flexibility and personalised responses that make you really different.
Nurture your community — they’re your biggest fans
It is easy to obsess over gaining new customers, but repeat sales are where the true value lies. Achieving that means making your product really work at every stage. Often, that means understanding where they get stuck and how you can help. Early on we at OpenR spent a lot of time testing different ways from time-and-action triggered email, to webinars to how-to guides. Now we regularly have interviews, features and guest blogs from those in our community — all because we helped make Openr a habitual tool and created a sense of community around the product.
Never miss a chance to generate your next sale
Once you have an engaged customer base you have the opportunity to encourage referrals. Healthy snack company Graze paved the way with this referral marketing adding unique codes to their boxes giving customers’ friends a free box, with a £1 reward for them too. Get creative with how you incentivise your customers — and test different options. Try offering rewards or additional perks in return for tweets or facebook posts, or referrals — and make sure you make it all easily trackable.
Get collaborative
Perhaps the single biggest factor in the growth of Openr has been partnerships. We’ve done give-aways, competitions, content swaps, co-promotions, event sponsorship, and special offers as part of collaborative partnerships with complementary brands. Simply work out what assets you can offer to a partner or event-partner, and what you’d like in return, and seek out the right brand for your target customer to start a conversation.
Originally published at disrupts.co.uk on November 19, 2015.
