6 crucial marketing tips for startups to implement right now

Get valuable advice on how early-stage startups can nail their marketing and build better products.

The early days of a startup can be challenging. Not only are you trying to nail your MVP and buyer persona, but you’re also trying to figure out the best way to reach your target customers through different channels. 

The problem is that there are many channels you can try to market on and different formats your marketing should take - but which one is best for your startup? How do you launch campaigns on the best marketing channel without wasting a ton of money? Lastly, how do you measure success?

This article will give you 6 tips to nail your early-stage startup marketing strategy. Let’s dive in!

Marketing tip #1: Have a plan

“What’s your marketing strategy at the moment?”

When you ask most startups this question, a typical answer you might get is “We’ll just launch first and figure out marketing later,” or “We’re doing product-led growth so the product will do our marketing for us.” Both of these responses fail to account for one simple truth about early-stage startups:

Nobody cares about your product.

When you first launch, you’re competing against dozens of competitors with products that have different (and sometimes better) feature sets and price points than yours. Not only are you fighting to differentiate yourself from all those competitors, but in some cases, you’re also trying to take market share from a dominant player with a well-established customer base and track record. 

As such, you’ll need marketing firepower to cut through the noise and convince customers to consider your product. The best marketing plans have the following key aspects to them:

1. A clear picture of your ideal buyer persona: This means nailing down exactly who you’re marketing your product to, what challenges or pain points they’re facing, their Jobs To Be Done, their budgets and timelines, and in the case of B2B buying cycles, their authority to sign the deal. When you understand your target market’s motivations, concerns, and behaviors, it makes it easy for you to adapt your strategy and messaging to them.

2. A solid understanding of your product: Mapping your product’s features and benefits to your ideal customer’s pain points is the key to unlocking sales and growth. Each aspect of your messaging should attempt to show why your product is the best solution to a particular problem and why the customer should choose your product over a competitor.

3. A plan for each marketing channel: There are multiple channels your brand can engage prospects and customers on. These include your website, social media platforms, email, podcasts, forums, events, print, radio, television, and out-of-home spaces. Each marketing channel will have its strengths, weaknesses, pricing, and unique return on investment, and you need to thoroughly appraise each channel to determine which one would be best for your company’s needs and resources.

4. The right metrics: No marketing plan is complete without a set of SMART metrics to judge each campaign by. Each channel will have different ways of gathering its own type of data. For example, email marketing channels allow you to track open and click-through rates, while social media and other digital marketing platforms let you track reach and engagement. It’s up to you to determine which metrics matter most to your business.

Marketing tip #2: Experiment and iterate often

If you’ve spent any amount of time in tech or marketing circles, you’ll have heard of the concept of A/B testing. This involves changing one element of a marketing campaign to see its impact on results. As a startup founder, you’re probably already used to testing and iterating ideas quickly, and you can apply this mindset to your marketing effort as well.

Before sinking hundreds or thousands of dollars into a single marketing idea, it’s better to first test that channel, format, and strategy for a little while (with a bit of money) to see how it performs. Here are some different ways you can experiment with your marketing:

1. Email: You can test out different aspects of your email marketing strategy by segmenting your list according to intent or location, testing different headlines to see how they impact your open rates, tweaking the number of links in each email to test the impact on your clickthrough rate, changing the copy or imagery in each email, and so on. You can combine the winning elements from each of these tests into the final email sequence you send out to your list.

2. Paid ads: Paid ads are a great way for startup marketers to reach targeted buyer personas, but it’s easy to sink a lot of money into paid ads without the proper targeting, creative assets, CTAs, or destinations. To avoid this outcome, test paid ads with small amounts of money and gauge their performance before putting the bulk of your spend behind the winning ad set. Platforms like Facebook allow you to run A/B tests natively within their platform to determine which versions of your ads convert best. 

3. Sales page: This is a landing page with copy, images, and videos that attempts to sell your product to visitors. The right sales page can make you money on autopilot when properly optimized for conversions and paired with a paid ad strategy. You can tweak your landing page by changing the titles and headings, body copy, choice of imagery, placement of different elements, calls to action, and more. Use tools like Google Analytics and HotJar to determine which areas of your sales page drive the most engagements and results.

4. Social media: Social media provides ample opportunity to test out different content types to see what resonates with your target audience. You can experiment with different types of posts (e.g., sales posts, informational posts, educational posts, etc.) and tweak the time of day you post, the length of your posts or captions, and the frequency of your posts.

This covers testing and iteration at the channel level, but you can also test and iterate your marketing strategy at the strategic level. For example, suppose you review your digital marketing strategy and determine that social media marketing delivers a better ROI than email marketing. In that case, you can shift more of your budget towards social media and use email as a secondary channel. This focuses your marketing effort on the winning plays and avoids money leaks.

For example, if Instagram Stories are more cost-effective than a Facebook ad for lead generation, then you can shift a portion of your budget over to Instagram and save money while generating the same or even better results.

Marketing tip #3: Use the right tools

There are over 8,000 marketing technology tools on the market - and counting. As a startup marketer, there is now more choice than ever regarding which tool you can use to help you achieve your goals. But before splurging hundreds of dollars of your marketing budget on yet another SEO tool, social media platform, or email marketing tool, ask yourself the following questions:

1. "What role will this tool play in my overall marketing plan?" Every marketing campaign you run will have a specific goal you're trying to reach, and the tools you acquire should help you reach those goals faster. As a business owner or startup marketer, assess what value any new tool will contribute to your marketing mix.

2. “Can I get the same functionality of this tool elsewhere at a lower cost?” A lot of times, you’ll find that you can substitute paid tools for free or low-cost options that don’t break the bank. Or, you can skip the expensive monthly subscriptions to your favorite tools and find a lifetime deal to an alternative tool on sites like AppSumo. This extends your marketing budget as far as possible.

3. “Will this tool integrate easily with my other tools?” Your different tools need to play nice with each other. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to maximize your benefit from either of them. Look for tools that integrate with your existing tech stack, such as Asana integrating with Google Drive, Slack integrating with Dropbox, and Zapier integrating with your WordPress website or social media accounts.

👉 For the full list of tools, check out our guide to the best marketing tech stack.

Marketing tip #4: Don't put off SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It involves optimizing your website and content so that search engines like Google rank your website at the top of search results for specific keywords. This can lead to increased brand awareness, more website visits, and conversions.

There are three types of SEO: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. On-page SEO involves creating and optimizing content to increase organic search traffic. It includes:

1. Targeting the right keywords in your URL, title, and description

2. Optimizing your titles and headings in each blog post or landing page

3. Linking internally to your other content, and

4. Setting canonical tags where appropriate

👉 Confused by all these terms? We’ve got you covered! Check out our SEO guide for startups to quickly get up to speed.

Off-page SEO is about building links and gaining visibility outside your website. It includes:

1. Guest-posting and posting to social media and online forums 

2. Earning PR that links back to your website

3. Setting up your business on Google My Business for local visibility

4. Leveraging influencer marketing to spread your content far and wide, and

5. Syndicating your content to other platforms for greater reach

Technical SEO delves into the nuts and bolts of your website to tune it for maximum search visibility. It involves: 

1. Improving your site’s load speed

2. Installing the correct SSL certificates

3. Making your content crawlable to search engines

4. Removing duplicate content

5. Using a responsive design that adapts to different devices, and

6. Setting up redirects to avoid visitors landing on outdated or non-existent pages

Since SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing tactics around, it's crucial to have a strong SEO plan from the get-go. But SEO is a long-term strategy, and most startups don't have the bandwidth to keep up with it. That's why some startups outsource SEO to a third party to handle everything from keyword research and optimization to link building, so you can focus on running your business.

Marketing tip #5: Loop your customers in

Marketing is a two-way conversation. As you spread your message to your customers, it's imperative to listen to and incorporate their feedback to improve your marketing and product development. But how exactly can you do this?

One way is to use NPS surveys. An NPS survey is a way to gauge an existing customer's sentiment about your product and how likely they are to recommend it to their friends, family, and colleagues. You can run an NPS survey after an existing customer has used your product for a while and ask the right questions to get more info on your product experience. You can also reach out to people who've written about your product on their blog or social media and ask for testimonials.

Testimonials are helpful for two reasons: as social proof and as seeds for your marketing copy. Placing customer testimonials on your website shows newcomers that other users have had positive experiences with your product. They're also an easy way to create headlines for your sales pages and social media posts.

Another option is to create a "Help Center" on your website or a social media community for your product. This allows customers to report bugs, ask questions, and discuss product features. The line between marketing and customer service is getting blurrier each year, and it’s essential to find ways to leverage customer service to improve your marketing.

Marketing tip #6: Draw insights from data

As a startup marketer, gathering data and tracking how people interact with your product helps you understand how effective your marketing and product development strategies are. 

You can collect website analytics to track how many visitors come to your website from different marketing channels, how long they’re spending on different pages, and which pieces of content are converting the best. You can then compare the cost of acquiring a customer from different channels (say, search vs. social) and optimize your spend accordingly.

You can also collect content analytics to understand how people engage with your blog or social media posts. By tracking shares, mentions, and engagement across social, you can tweak your editorial strategy to produce more of what people resonate with.

Data sources and tools

You can track all this data using tools like:

1. Google Analytics: This is free analytics software that displays your website traffic, visitor flow, bounce rates, and more.

2. Search Console: This is a free tool from Google that helps you monitor your website's search statistics and find broken links. You can also use it to submit a sitemap to Google.

3. Mailchimp: This is an email marketing platform that allows you to create custom email sequences for your products or services. Use Mailchimp to build a list, send emails, and analyze your email marketing campaigns’ success.

4. Hotjar/Mixpanel: Hotjar and Mixpanel are tools for heatmaps and user surveys. They help you track users' behavior on websites and mobile apps.

Data is not a crystal ball

It's important to remember that data is just one way of understanding your target market. Just because you see data to support one plan of action doesn't mean it's the only solution that will work. Data can help you make better business decisions, but sometimes you'll need to rely on your own experience and intuition.

Improve your early-stage startup marketing strategy

To be awesome at product marketing and growth, you need three things: data about what people are doing, the ability to iterate with incredible speed, and the confidence to change direction when you see a better opportunity. 

There's no "one way" to do marketing for every startup. Experimentation is essential, and along the way, you'll make mistakes and enjoy big wins. As long as you learn from your mistakes and leverage your wins, you’ll achieve your marketing goals.

If you're a startup marketer or founder struggling with early-stage startup marketing, we've created a unique set of sprints for you. They're packed with tips and tricks on how to nail your branding, positioning, messaging, and content marketing strategy. Get started with the playbook today!