“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” ~Peter F. Drucker
The above mentioned quote is enough to understand marketing. So, we can say that a marketing strategy is nothing but the way or the plan to reach prospective customers and turning them into customers of their products or services. A marketing strategy covers four “P”s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. But the question is why at all a business or a start-up needs marketing strategies? The answer is because a well-defined marketing strategy promotes overall development and leads to an increase in the business sales and marketing which directly impact the revenue generated.
But for start-ups, marketing is challenging because of the limited resources that they have of money, time or talent and it is even more important because unless people know about the start-up and what it offers, they won’t buy the products or services. Now the question is how much important? Let us look at some of the statistics:
Out of 1000 surveyed businesses, it was found that 56.9% of start-ups had a dedicated marketing team, 20.8% had at least one person dedicated to marketing.
75% of customers have judged a business for the quality of their marketing website.
Out of 1000 businesses that were surveyed , 78% stated that they would want to invest more in digital marketing, 73% wanted to invest more in their social media and 57% plan to increase their investment in email marketing.
What roles do Marketing strategies play?
The role that marketing strategies play are as follows:
Build awareness
Make people interested
Create product/service demand
Make them take action
Importance of Marketing Strategy:
Marketing strategy combines all aspects of the customer journey and gives visibility to each department.
Marketing strategy helps to gain a competitive advantage as it provides an organization an edge over its competitors.
Marketing strategy helps in developing goods and services with best profit making potential.
It helps in discovering the areas affected by organizational growth and thereby helps in creating an organizational plan to cater to the customer needs.
It helps in fixing the right price for organization’s goods and services based on information collected by market research.
It ensures effective departmental co-ordination.
Marketing strategy helps an organization to make optimum utilization of its resources so as to provide a sales message to its target market.
It helps to fix the advertising budget in advance, and also develops a method which determines the scope of the plan, i.e., it determines the revenue generated by the advertising plan.
Different Marketing Strategies to grow a start-up:
Traditional Marketing:
Earlier information wasn't as easily accessible and readily available as of now; so traditional marketing refers to brand promotion on offline channels that were around before the rise of the internet. It relied on outbound tactics such as print, television ads, flyers, radio spots and billboards.
Outbound Marketing:
This is an annoying version of the traditional way of doing marketing whereby companies focus on finding customers through advertising.This marketing method is named so ("outbound") because it involves pushing a message out to consumers to raise awareness on products or services — regardless of consumer interest. Some of the examples include cold calling, email blasts, purchased lists, and print ads etc. It is basically a more aggressive form of marketing which may bring sales on the spot but has a lower ROI than inbound marketing.
Outbound marketing is often considered to be a poorly targeted technique as it cannot be personalized to specific customers.
Inbound Marketing:
Inbound marketing is a strategic approach to create valuable content
that aligns with the needs of target audiences and inspires long-term customer relationships.
The majority of inbound marketing tactics fall under digital marketing, as consumers are empowered to do research online as they progress through their own buyer's journey.
How does inbound marketing work?
Inbound marketing is built on three pillars:
Attract:
Initial goal is to create valuable content and experiences that resonate with your audience and attract them to your business.
Engage:
The next is to engage them through conversational tools like email marketing and chat bots, and of course continued value.
Delight:
Finally, you delight them by continuing to act as an empathetic advisor and expert.
Content Marketing:
Content marketing is one of the key marketing strategies that can attract your target audience. It’s a form of educating your customers about the products and services you offer and related topics in your industry.
Your audience learns how to solve specific problems while you generate leads and increase sales.
It involves creating, publishing and distributing content to your target audience through free and gated channels such as: Online paid advertising or sponsored ads, websites, digital flipbooks, social platforms, blogs, videos etc.
Actually content marketing is more than just content. The process begins with creation (based on a solid digital content strategy) and is followed by promotion, measurement, and constant optimization. However, there’s a learning curve to it in which the secret ingredient is patience.
Few types of digital content marketing are as follows:
Blog posts: Blog posts help you
Promote internal and external content, include product or service information
Educate your audience regarding a topic from your niche.
Increase website ranking and boost landing pages for free
Infographics Infographics are a great form of visualization between images and data. They are engaging and easy to understand, as they are constructed based on short text, numbers, data, and graphics. You can share them as a single standalone piece of content or include them in blog posts and sustain an idea even better. Podcasts Some people are really good at multitasking, so they are able to work out while also stimulating the mind. Podcast is the perfect way to serve them informational content. A 2020 survey shows that 37% of U.S. adults listened to a podcast in the last month. Moreover, this percent has tripled over the past decade.
Videos
Nowadays online video marketing drives a lot of engagement. Statistics show 96% of people watched an explainer video to find out more about a product or service. Video marketing is a powerful way to boost conversions and improve ROI.
Social media Marketing:
With over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, social media marketing is a great way to share your promotional content. So, find the right social media platform for your brand and take advantage of everything it has to offer. Social media marketing is a great mediator between your potential customers and your brand.
Before starting, see where you should invest your social media marketing budget and what type of ads these platforms can host. Snapchat, for example, is associated with youngsters, while LinkedIn is a platform for professionals. You have to use targeted posts and display ads to maximize online conversions with a buyer persona.
Email Marketing:
Email marketing can be part of an inbound promotion strategy, as well as an outbound promotion strategy.
It is a very effective way of marketing; the following statistics will prove this:
There are 3.9 billion daily email users, a number predicted to climb to 4.3 billion by 2023. (Statista)
Marketers who implemented segmented (personalized) email campaigns have witnessed a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor)
Over the last 12 months, 78% of marketers observed an increase in email engagement.
31% of B2B marketers recognized email newsletters as the best way to generate leads. (Content Marketing Institute)
81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute)
87% of B2B marketers say email campaigns are one of their top choices for organic distribution channels. (Content Marketing Institute)
90% of content marketers measure content performance according to email engagement. (Content Marketing Institute)
46% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. (Litmus.com) Inbound email marketing campaign focuses on building a relationship with the readers instead of spamming them with overly promotional emails. Send newsletters, feature launches, event invitations, or news from the industry. You can also use your email campaigns to remind people of your social media presence so that they could follow you.
Cold Mail marketing:
It is a way of communicating with a list of prospects by using email as the main way of communication. A successful cold email strategy is one where your prospect will not only read the email but receive some replies as part of the campaign.
Types of cold email marketing:
Media pitch email
Brand pitch email
Link building email
Content promotion email
Networking email
Sales email
Aggressive Marketing:
What is aggressive marketing?
Aggressive marketing is a way of communicating directly with potential customers and actively pursuing their engagement with the business. This is somewhat different from passive marketing, where information about a product is made available, but it is up to the consumer to take action if they want to engage with the business. Examples of aggressive marketing: There are several different examples of Aggressive marketing.
Cold-calling and email campaigns are probably the best examples.
Large banner ads, pop-ups and video ads on platforms such as YouTube are also forms of aggressive marketing, as they bombard the audience with information. These digital marketing materials are often segmented, and appear on relevant websites.
Another example of aggressive marketing is assembling a street team to hand out flyers or acquire email addresses. This can be a draining practice, but it’s a great way to connect with people who otherwise may not know about your company, if you can handle all the rejection.
Types of aggressive marketing:
Prospector marketing: This is the most aggressive of the four strategies. It typically involves active programs to expand into new markets and stimulate new opportunities.
Defender marketing: A defender strategy entails finding, and maintaining a secure and relatively stable market. This strategy entails a decision not to aggressively pursue markets. As a result, they tend to do none of the things prospectors do.
Analyser marketing: This type of aggressive marketing takes less risk and make fewer mistakes than a prospector, but are less committed to stability than defenders.
Reactive marketing: It is opposite to the prospector one. The only time when they respond to something is when they are pressured by the environment; otherwise, it has no plan, focus, or any type of real strategy.
Strategies of Aggressive Marketing:
Be proactive
Make effective content
In-depth analysis of the product
Know your product well
Take risk
Reach influencers and build relationship
Pay attention to the value curve
Know your competitors
Pros of aggressive marketing:
Aggressive marketing can elicit an immediate response.
Brand recognition may increase. Repetition will put you at the forefront of prospective customers’ minds – and help keep your company there.
Aggressive marketing can provide results with little planning.
Cons of aggressive marketing:
Aggressive marketing may alienate some prospects. While many people appreciate forward communication, others may be turned off by this technique.
Sometimes it may end up being flagged as spam as it often walks a fine line between business development and annoying advertising. (To avoid that communications should be thoughtful and personalized, or else there is always the risk of being categorized as spam or put on a do-not-call list. This can negatively impact overall email deliverability and decrease the chances of reaching these prospects in the future.)
Aggressive marketing sometimes lacks focus. If marketing analytics aren’t carefully monitored, it’s hard to know which strategies are working (or need improvement).
Influencer Marketing:
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that uses influencers to promote a brand to a larger market. (Influencers are nothing but opinion leaders with a social following base.)
Why is Influencer Marketing Important?
This channel gives you access to an enormous audience
It enables you to reach people you can't attain through traditional advertising. Statistics shows 80% of users have purchased something based on an influencer’s recommendation.
Brands that already employ influencer marketing have proven the effectiveness of this channel. 89% of marketers say that ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
This channel helps build trust for your brand and drives impressive results.
Types of Influencer Marketing:
Social media takeover:
This type works great in growing the follower base on social networks. Most often a brand lets an influencer manage their profile for a day.
Affiliate marketing:
It is a cheap and effortless way to generate leads. It pays each influencer for each customer who came from their website or social media account. Thus it saves time and effort as the company don’t have to waste time choosing influencers and negotiating.
Sponsored content:
For this, brands pay for publishing a promotional post on the influencer’s account.
Unboxing:
Brands often send gifts to influencers hoping that the social media star will open and review them. It costs next to nothing compared with the fees influencers charge for advertising. However, this strategy is quite risky.
Brand ambassador programs:
Some of the influencers love specific brand so much that they are ready to promote them for free. So, companies offer them brand ambassador programs and influencers recommend their favourite brands heartily.
Strategies of Influencer marketing:
Define your target audience
Set goals and KPIs
Find the right channel
Determine your campaign budget
Pick the right influencers
Set up the campaign
Statistics of Influencer Marketing:
Let us look at some of the statistics to understand how trending this strategy is for today’s world:
40% of marketers use influencer marketing to boost brand awareness
24% of brands repost the influencer’s content or encourage their followers to create user-generated content.
36% of brands use influencer marketing to generate leads.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Growth of brand awareness
Enrichment of content strategy
Generation of quality lead
Cost-effectiveness
Improvement of marketing strategy
Fulfillment of business objectives
Cold calling:
Cold calling is a marketing strategy where contact is made with a prospective customer or client with whom there had been no previous interactions. It gives you the chance to go directly to your customers instead of waiting for them to come to you.
Statistics of cold calling:
Let us look at some of the statistics to understand how trending this strategy is for decades:
82% of buyers say that they are willing to meet with a salesperson who contacts them with a cold call.
In fact 62% of buyers are hoping to hear from product or service representatives when they are actively looking for a solution.
75% of people contacted with a cold call end up scheduling a meeting or attending an event because of the call.
Strategies of cold calling:
Know your prospect well
Understand how you can benefit your potential customer
Interact with your prospect beforehand
Be very patient and persistent
Don’t attempt to sell in the first cold call
Use the right opener
Know the best time to call
Benefits of cold calling
Increased conversions
Identifying better converting targets
Gaining deeper insights
Master sales pitch
Gain relevant information and make human connection.
Disadvantages of cold calling
It can be annoying
It only works part of the time
Conversion rate is very low as the statistics show only 1% of answered calls converted to appointments
It cannot predict how many sales it would generate from cold calling
PR marketing:
This is a form of communication management that seeks to make use of publicity and other non-paid forms of promotion and information to influence the feelings, opinions, or beliefs about the company, its products or services, or about the value of the product or service or the activities of the organization to buyers, prospects, or other stakeholders.
Public relations (PR) is a form of marketing that is accessible to start-ups. PR tactics for start-ups often involve hiring a PR firm to tap into specialized expertise An effective public relations strategy can launch a new product by telling the brand’s story to generate buzz in the market. How Public relations differs from other marketing methods: Public relations differs from other marketing methods in that it is earned, not paid, promotion and coverage. PR tactics for start-ups and other bigger companies focus on spurring people to talk about the product or company by promoting newsworthy editorial or social content, taking measures to ensure that the tenor of the public conversation stays positive. When do PR tactics for start-ups come into play? When you are ready to position your company and product and are preparing to scale your customer acquisition, it is time to think about how PR tactics can help aid your positioning efforts. Many start-ups decide at this stage to engage the expertise of a public relations firm to leverage their expertise in building media relations and reaching certain influential audiences. Hiring a public relations firm:
Strategically, a PR firm provides your startup with specialized talent in marketing communications, specifically media relations and/or government relations. PR teams have the skills to help you best communicate with and through the media.
For start-ups, the one aim of public relations is to have people with high credibility, such as industry thought leaders or members of the press, talk favourably about your product or company. The idea is that this word-of-mouth marketing will then spread and help you reach and win over potential customers. A public relations firm may work directly with these types of influencers or the firm may try to create a more general “buzz,” with the intent of catching their attention, or both.
Choosing a public relations firm: Depending on your needs, make sure you find a public relations firm that is knowledgeable about your start-up’s market or adjacent ones. A good PR firm will have skills that include positioning, articulating your message, conducting market research and refining your audience—in addition to getting media and industry influencers to communicate your message. Ask the firm to show you what metrics they will use to measure the success of their work for you and to introduce you to the individuals who will work on your account. PR tactics for start-ups: Public relations firms may use the following PR tactics for start-ups and their products:
Writing press releases and blogs
Writing article pitches for journalists
Arranging interviews and appearances for company executives
Generating media interest (e.g., television programs, news)
Planning and executing outreach events for media and the public
Promoting your start up or product via social media (and handling any negative online responses)
Some other strategies are as follows:
Referral marketing
Event sponsoring
Promotions
Offering refunds
Customer loyalty programs
In short, a marketing strategy clearly explains how an organization reaches its predetermined objectives. But one should remember that
“Marketing takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master.” (Phil kolter)
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