Start-ups are often mistaken for small versions of large companies, which their founders often try to carry over and apply practices developed in large companies in their organizations. Unfortunately, traditional models, market products and comprehensive marketing activities do not work in Startups, so their creators have to look for more modern and innovative opportunities in order to reach customers.
In order to illustrate the complexity of marketing activities, it would be necessary to quote the worldclass innovator, Henry Ford: “I know that half the money I spend on marketing is thrown in the mud. The problem is that I do not know which half.” With difficulty founders of Start-ups must also face this; founders who have a certain budget and time have to find a scalable business model for their own businesses ensuring that it does not to lead their company to bankruptcy.
Marketing activities in innovative projects can be divided into two main stages. Those before achieving and after achieving product combination with the market.
In contrast to typical enterprises, a Start-up is still a learning organization which is looking for its place in the market and may repeatedly change its offer and business objectives. It must be fully focussed on its initial clients at an early stage of development, attract their attention and enter into dialogue with them. Feedback that can be obtained from consumers will help to confirm or disprove the hypothesis about the market and the needs of the market, and will illustrate how they use the product or service and to what extent it meets their needs.
Until recently widespread marketing was oriented towards increasing the number of impersonal transactions. Today such limited action is not enough. Modern marketing is focussed on building long-term relationships with customers, resulting in loyalty and increasing their value over time, which is crucial for Startups.
After interviewing the first buyers, all information received should be transferred like a funnel. First, they must be subjected to careful analysis and possible changes to the product, services and offers to the entire business model must be made based on their results. This process should be repeated several times until the number of customers begins to grow geometrically, and the curve of the graph over time will begin to resemble a hockey stick. This will mean that you have managed to achieve product combination with the market and you can go to the next layer of the marketing sandwich which is scaling the business.
The early stage of company development also allows you to gain your first “evangelists” of the product, who subsequently will be carrying the good news about.
Achieving one of the most important milestones of product development, which is combining the product with the market, does not mean that you can no longer be open to voices and customer feedback. This constitutes one of the main differences between the modern and the traditional approach to marketing. Until recently widespread marketing was oriented towards increasing the number of impersonal transactions. Today such limited action is not enough. Modern marketing is focussed on building long-term relationships with customers, resulting in loyalty and increasing their value over time, which is crucial for Start-ups.
Customer loyalty and brand recognition can be built using marketing content. Content marketing builds brand awareness and is based on acquiring potential customers and building relationships with existing customers by providing them with valuable content such as advice on the sector or industry, training materials, infographics, etc. Articles and content are made primarily on the company’s website, and also in professional websites as guest or sponsored entries. Content marketing also contains elements of viral marketing because valuable content can be released by our readers, which increases the range of our materials.
Modern organizations use technological tools that support their marketing activities, enable contacts with customers, their understanding, as well as matching ads to specific groups of customers.
The first group of such tools are applications to monitor the internet and social media.
Currently, more than 3 billion people use the internet, each minute more than 3 million content is posted in social networks i.e. Facebook and Twitter that is “liked” or “retweeted” more than 4 million times, while sites such as YouTube and Vimeo publish more than 100 hours of video. Therefore, the internet is the largest goldmine about customers and their opinions today. In order to cope with the enormity of information, you can use network monitoring tools that keep you informed of references about our company or our competitors. Thanks to this application of mechanisms, we will be able to immediately respond to our customers’ entries, as well as acquire new ones.
Another group of products that help maximize the effects of marketing activities are applications such as Marketing Automation which involves the use of specialized software to streamline the sales process, aiming to increase the effectiveness of the campaign by collecting and processing data on potential and existing customers. Marketing Automation software “captures” the customer during his or her first visit to the site and starts to track that action, so that it acquires information on selected topics, i.e. interests, age, gender, demographics, etc. After processing this data, a personalized marketing message is directed to them.
New technologies offer us many opportunities to support marketing activities, we should select only the ones that give us the best results. Therefore, all operations should be measured by factors such as ROI (Return On Investment). They can also be monitored by individual segments and groups of our customers. They serve such factors as CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) or customer value over time that will show us which groups of customers are most profitable. However, no matter what marketing methods and tools you choose, you must remember one golden rule. avoid investing money in any marketing activities which you are not able to measure.
New technologies offer us many opportunities to support marketing activities, we should select only the ones that give us the best results. Therefore, all operations should be measured by factors such as ROI (Return On Investment).
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