You might have just stepped into your entrepreneurial journey by establishing your startup. You might also have the most unique and incredible ideas. However, without sufficient marketing efforts, you won’t be able to create an impact through your business. You must employ a proper marketing strategy to achieve business expansion. Following are five guidelines that help you kickstart with marketing your startup:  

1. Build a marketing plan

Your marketing endeavours needs a plan in the first place. A well-defined plan is framed with thorough research and analysis. You can then build relevant strategies to fit with your target market in your marketing plan. 

Once you are ready with a well-designed marketing plan, now is the time to build detailed action plans to materialize each tactic you included in the plan.

2. Employ a digital-first strategy

A digital-first strategy helps your startup to use limited resources optimally. While the advertising and promotional strategies help you attract visitors to your website and social media channels, a digital-first strategy will help you convert visitors into customers and sustain them. Moreover, a digital-first strategy is measurable, highly targeted and cost-effective.  

3. Create a digital presence

Marketing your startup in today’s digital age is much easier. You can build a solid digital presence either on your own company website or through various social media channels. 

A dedicated company website gives you a sense of control by letting you make the rules. It becomes easier for you to decide how visitors interact with you, and you can keep all the money from sales by having your own website. 

Accessing social media is primarily free. Thus, it becomes extremely easy for you to exploit these channels for marketing your startup. You can build social media presence by setting up accounts on different social media accounts for your business.

You can choose to focus on those platforms that have the highest pull of your target market. Once you develop a bandwidth to handle multiple platforms, you can eventually start considering other platforms too. After all, it is much better to post regularly and create an impact on one platform than to serve poorly on multiple. 
You can also consider mapping out a marketing plan for each channel you are using. For that, you can evaluate your competitor’s page and take inspiration from them to better your online activities.

4. Deliver high-value content

While you might be exploiting different social media channels or your own website for marketing your startup, you must ensure the delivery of high-value content. However, what it means by high-value content? Content that is not dull or dreary but is relevant, adds value and spark an interest in your products or services. If you don’t have the expertise to create high-value content, you can employ content creation specialists to get the work done. Also, you can learn from other posts on various sites. 

While posting high-value content is crucial, you must post consistently to build engagement. 

For instance, you can consider posting 5-7 tweets per day, 1 LinkedIn update per day, 1-2 Facebook post per day, a max 1 Instagram post per day or 1-2 blogs per week. 

If it’s overwhelming for you, start with one platform at a time and then go on adding others as you can. However, a small tip: start with blogging on your website as it builds traffic and helps you convert visitors.  

5. Allot some budget behind your marketing efforts

While you choose to employ a marketing strategy for your startup, you should allot some budget for the same. As marketing is the core of your business expansion, you should treat it as a priority and invest some amounts to build a successful marketing strategy.

Conclusion

While your startup is in a developing stage, you should not leave any stone unturned with your efforts to expand your business. Marketing is the surest way that helps you expand and grow as a business. This article has explained five guidelines that help you get started with the marketing strategy for your startup. Follow these guidelines and get ready to achieve the success you crave for your enterprise.