5 Effective Tips to Promoting Your Startup Online

Startups are at the forefront of progress and for a very good reason. They are led by young people who are willing to push boundaries and bring something new to the table. The number of startups is growing at a rapid pace, and some newcomers may not get the attention they deserve online. If you count yourself among the next generation of young startup founders, you need to be aware of what it really takes to thrive in your sector and why promoting your startup is so crucial.

Why Promoting Your Startup Is Crucial

Marketing is just as important as anything else when building a startup. In order for you to sustain your growth, you need to make sure your brand is getting noticed by your target audience, influencers, brand advocates, and potential investors. Many startups seem to overlook the need to spend on a marketing campaign. According to an article in Social Media Today, startups operate on a shoestring budget. With a well-structured strategy, however, you will be able to gain online traction and bring your brand front and center regardless of the resources you have.

For this, here are a few surefire tips that can help give your brand the attention it deserves online.

Analyze the Сompetition in Your  Market

The first thing you will need to do is to understand your competitors. How long have they been in business? What are their strengths? How do they deliver their brand message? What channels or media do they use for delivering that message? Doing detailed competitor analysis is crucial to understanding what strategy works and what doesn’t. It also allows you to identify bad practices to avoid without having to test the waters.

Other than that, you will also gain insights that will help you differentiate your startup from another. Take the time to list down at least two or three competitors in your niche. From there, figure out how they were able to develop a huge following on social media or secure the top spot in the search rankings. You may be tempted to replicate their strategy, but monitoring your competitors is also about building up a unique identity for your startup.

Promoting Your Startup – Take Time Building a Brand Kit

You can’t be authentic without proper branding. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of brands that exist in your field. If you want your startup to stand out, you will need to develop a unique identity. No business is the same, and every startup has its story, aesthetic, values, and philosophy that people associate the brand with. Before you get to the nitty-gritty of marketing your startup, you will need to develop a brand kit. This will include your business’s logo, brand colors, fonts, tone of language, and other important aspects of your brand.

Having a brand kit is important to maintaining consistency, especially since your startup is an extension of yourself. By infusing a personality to your brand, you make it easier for people to remember who you are and what you do. Consider your long-term objective for your startup. Will it be a family-oriented business or will it cater to executives in key industries? When it comes to personality, you may choose either being serious and corporate or playful and lax. Whichever way your brand kit goes, you will need to use it as a reference for creating your marketing materials.

Develop a Multi-channel Strategy

Consider yourself lucky to be in an era where it doesn’t cost much to make your brand well-known. For one, you have a number of options for communicating your brand. There’s social media, video, email, and SMS. Each one offers a unique set of benefits, so it’s best to include all of these marketing channels in your game plan. With a multichannel approach, you can expand your reach and deliver promotional materials straight to your audience across different touchpoints.

Even if some may not engage on Facebook, they can always read your newsletters and watch your videos on YouTube. It takes time and money to build a multichannel marketing campaign, but the results will be worth your while. You might want to develop a presence in every communication channel that’s within your reach, especially if your startup has an innovative idea that’s worth sharing.

One important channel that is often overlooked is a business text messaging app. This can be a great way to reach customers and prospects who may not be active on social media. A business text messaging app can also be a great way to stay in touch with customers and provide them with updates and special offers.

Build a User-friendly and Search-friendly Website

Although having a website is a part of a multichannel marketing campaign, the work that goes into building one takes more time, money, and expertise. The reason for this is that website development involves technical and creative work if the goal is to create a web platform that’s visually enticing, informative, and visible in the search engine results pages.

Unfortunately, 36% of startups still lack a functioning website, according to Fundera. If you include yourself in that number, then it’s time to enhance your online presence even more with a user-centric website. User experience is an important metric for knowing how well your website responds to every interaction. People want websites that load in real-time and are easy to navigate. It’s imperative to develop a website that’s fast and intuitive. You will also need a website that’s secure and viewable through any screen size.

Lastly, you will also need to make sure that your website reflects your overall brand identity. Apart from adding your logo and brand colors to the layout, you should also create an engaging About Us page. This should include the reason why you built the startup in the first place and what your startup aims to achieve. Building a great website is hard work, and not everyone with basic development training can pull it off. Unless you already have a background in web development and web design, you may choose to outsource the project to a third party.

Depending on your needs, you need to find a company that matches your overall goals. If you are looking to build online traction for your Australian startup, look for a company that provides the kind of search-optimized web design Sydney small businesses need.

Promoting Your Startup – Double Down on Content Creation

Much of marketing involves creating engaging content for your audience. These include social media posts, newsletters, blogs, and videos. People will want to know more about your startup, so you need to give them the right information. It seems easy on the surface, but it takes a lot of work to develop content that’s both informative and entertaining. If your startup specializes in providing tech-driven solutions to the agricultural sector, you can’t expect people to read through a long Facebook post.

Your message needs to be packaged in a way that entices your audience to learn more about your brand. Instead of lengthy and boring social media posts, you will have better chances presenting the same facts in an infographic or video. For blogs and email campaigns, you need to understand the kinds of topics your audience will want to read. Don’t just focus on the overused subject matter when you can add your own insights to a certain issue or problem.

If you are not sure what topics to write about, go on sites like Quora or join industry forums. You can also interview people in your industry and look for surveys you can expound on. It takes time to research interesting topics for the content you are creating, but when it comes to getting online traction, your startup has to double down on being authoritative and credible.

Promoting Your Startup Efficiently – Takeaway

There are no shortcuts to building a successful startup, and making the effort to promote it online guarantees your survival. It’s just a matter of using the right strategies and tools that will help you stay relevant and visible no matter how noisy the startup arena gets.