8 Digital Marketing Lessons for Rapid Growth of Start-Ups

Start-up has up in it!Bad Joke I know, but it’s a good omen! Now, what do you need more to upscale this up better than everybody else?

In this quick guide, you’ll get to know about why your startup is going to fail and, also in the middle, I’m going to put some valuable information about how to avoid this.

So keep an eye out for that information, and I promise that one day, you’ll be sharing your success story with the whole world.

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get on with it already.

To begin with, a flashy quote by someone about marketing who’s got a ton of experience inside and vast knowledge about everything on this planet i.e. ME.

“You’ll kill your startup yourself with the amateur marketing skills”.

Well, that’s a fact! 99% of the startup fails happen due to bad marketing strategies.

Bad marketing is more deadly than the premature ejaculation coz neither of the parties gets a happy ending.

Two things are common about every successful startup and, they are:
(1) Good Product.
(2) Great Marketing Skills.

Your product can be mediocre, but you simply can’t let the same happen to your marketing.

Well, I do not doubt your product and the knowledge enhancement it is going to do for the generations to come, but, think for a while that this world has 7 billion mindsets with almost 700 billion ideas running inside, all the time!

That data is valid for a fraction of seconds or minutes only, after that each of those brains tends to shift their focus towards something else.

What I’m trying to tell you is that before building a brand and, all the marketing skills for the same, try to construct and filter your ideas better.

It is a common thing among the startups that they stop believing in themselves and, always end up asking questions like, what’s so good about their idea and why they deserve to succeed.

Well, this happens when someone shows them the real horrifying face of competition in corporate life. (In Hindi: Aaina Dikha Dena)

If they had evaluated their idea during its infant stage using various test cases, they would have never lost faith in themselves.

This data shows that it’s okay if someone else out there is also doing the same, e.g. Flipkart and Amazon. But, what’s important is to market yourself with new and revolutionary marketing strategies (In Hindi: Item Purana Hai Par Packaging Nayi Hai).

So next time when someone tells you that your idea is mediocre and it is very likely that it won’t be a success, tell him that two people can do same thing but their style and customer quotient will always be different.

Word of mouth and customer satisfaction are the two terms that work better than any other earthly marketing strategy, unless, you’re working at NASA.

Peter Drucker, a world famous Australian Marketing Guru, has experienced the same and lived to tell the story as well. According to him, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

But, your business certainly cannot depend upon only this! So, here are the marketing strategies for startups that you need to follow so that your startup doesn’t become a sinking ship, just like Titanic!

Bad joke again, but, ha, it’ll have to become the Titanic first.

Let’s make it the Titanic without the sinking part, shall we?

1.) Think before Choosing any Marketing Medium.

One wise man named Fred Wilson has said some stupid thing that too in the most humongous stupid way possible. He stated that marketing is for those who have sucky products.

Although, this gentleman has made some fine remarks about marketing these days, but, you can’t make your business famous in a country or the world just by having a telephone at your desk waiting for the word of mouth to even spread through the street.

So what’s right?

The best thing to do is invest wisely in the marketing methods coz most of them don’t bring any expected results.

E.g. ‘Promote Me’ button on Facebook or paying some stupid SEO guy to use some inorganic methods to get you more likes on Facebook.

In these cases, the above thought always holds true.

Snapchat, Dropbox, Hotmail, etc. are among the many examples of the companies who’ve never spent a single penny on marketing.

Their products were so viable among the customers that there was never once a need for marketing.

According to a blog on VentureHarbour, a site dedicated to marketing innovations, it is clear that a startup’s ability to go viral depends on two things, one is time, and the other one is word of mouth.

If you place the number of users on Y-axis and time on X-axis, then you’ll get some astonishing results such as this:

If each of your users is lead generating then your graph would be a 45-degree straight line but, if your users believe in broadcasting good things, then, you’ll experience an exponential growth of your business.

Credits: Publitas

So before opting for any medium, think wisely whether it’s going to help you or not?

2.) Choose Your Target Audience, only.

What’s the problem with Facebook or Twitter promotion schemes, is that they don’t reach out to your target audience only.

They distribute the ads without basic filtering, and even though they charge you for the amount of likes or number of people seeing this ad, you’ll never be able to hit the head right where it hurts

So, even they see, or like your post, they can never be categorized as the quality leads.

I guess it’s better to use multicasting than broadcasting. (You’ll understand this only if you have paid enough attention to your Engineering subjects, otherwise, broadcasting means sending the information to everybody and multicasting means selective broadcasting).

3.) Content Quality.

And with the quality I mean, quality, not your lead generating 1000 page rubbish about how to stuff keywords in a way that Google would let it go.

Users will have to spend some time on your website if it were to become successful. The world is changing and, with the gibberish content like this nothing but, your bounce rate will increase.

Give yourself some reading time to read out the content that you want your users to read and analyze yourself if it’s worth sharing or not?

4.) Understand the Customer’s Needs

To optimize your leads and turn them into your potential customers, you’ll have to first understand their needs and adapt some changes into your product according to them.

Because hey, the customer is God? And, the only thing we can do to a God is bow down and oblige. (“Indian Seculars” are exempted from that rule)

Always remember that you’re the “payee” and he is the “payer”, so you should better start listening.

A site doesn’t become successful only after A/B testing, instead, the real testing is done at the user’s end. To pass it, should be of the paramount significance to you.

5.) A Story in Making

Don’t try to tell everyone that you are the best in the market and everyone else is just too small in front of you. (Hindi: Sab Paani Bharte Hain Mere Samne)

Start believing in evolution from today and to make a brand you should first analyze your shortcomings.

Build your brand as you’re building up a character. People perceive your brand according to how you carry yourself, in the meetings, parties and even in the loo.

So make sure to be humble always and avoid any aggressive marketing schemes. These Do Kaudi ki Schemes (cheap stunts) may bring you immediate results, but they are just going to hurt your brand’s image in the long run.

Also read: The key for optimum branding skills 

6.) User Experience and Feedback

Well, user experience doesn’t always refer to website’s interface and how responsive is it really?

(To know about the difference between UI and UX, Click Me)

Going back to the layman ways, an experience of something means how good it feels after and while doing it, right?

Well, the same concept is applied here; the user experience is the users’ review of your product and he can also share that with you in the feedback section (if only you allow such stupid things on your website).

So don’t leave a customer hanging from the cliff while you go out hiking with your friends on his money, coz hey, that’s rude!

Make sure you opt for a stable relationship instead of a one night stand.

7.) *This one is a good point, haven’t decided the name though*

I’m just kidding!

The point that I want to bring your attention to, is the most important and least discussed among them all. i.e. Budget.

Most people believe that good funding and spending hefty amount of money on various ad campaigns will bring them tasty results.

But, that’s not completely true!

I’ve seen brands spending money like it’s nothing (Hindi: Paani Jaise Paise Bahaye), still, that didn’t render them successful.

So you have to keep revising your budget strategies according to the market, obviously, along with the product as well, because what’s good with finding worthless thing inside a gold coated million dollar wrapping paper( Hindi: Khoda Pahad Nikli Chuhiya).

According to a site named Just Creative, make sure to outsmart your competitor instead of running a marathon with him while knowing all the time that at the finishing line, either one of you, is going to lose all his money and, that “either” can be you as well.

8.) Challenge yourself and Your Competitor as Well.

Well, it’s not tough to pick a fight these days, but, what’s important is that whether you are you going to face your competitor or would just run off into the wild.

(PS: Running is good for health and ‘into the wild’ is a must watch)

We are not going to do that for now. We will train hard, fight harder, and, we will win.

But, to do that we’ll need material, a lot really! What’s the best place you suggest we can get material from?

Exactly, your competitor.

We are going to rob him off his tactics and strip him naked off his money. But, we are going to do that in the “politically correct” way!

So, what you need to do, is research about the market and how your competitor is performing so well in this domain, i.e. his tactics.

Well, for all I believe in is if you don’t know nothing about your competitor’s tactics, you’ve got no business in running up a business.

Everything is fair in love and war. This old but wise saying will come to your save whenever you need it. (Social advice: everything is not fair in love, ok?)

Now you got his tactics, know at what price he is offering the product to his customers and if you can cut down something there as well, Bingo! (Hindi: Jiski Thali main Khana Ussi main Chhed Karna)

This done, now the most important part is to challenge yourself.

Always remember, nothing is good enough! Even when your bounce rate is as low as 20 percent, it can always get better than that!

Don’t be too harsh on yourself, you cannot scale the mountains in just one day. Allow yourself and your employees to cool off a bit.

(Coz all work no play, makes Jack a dull boy, and you surely wouldn’t want to become like Jack from ‘The Shining”, again nice movie. Must watch!)

The Conclusion.

To conclude it in the few points would be tough, but, I would try my best.

• Use both free and paid advertising tools, as ads are important, not too many but enough to make your point. (E.g. Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter promotions, etc.
• Before rolling out your website, put significant efforts in A/B testing as it helps you with preliminary views of the user.
• Keep an eye out for bounce rate, conversion rates, responsive website design, etc. Or you can leave that to your SEO guy as well and over the period just walk up to him and say “I need results”, that’ll make your point.
• Optimize your efforts but don’t compromise with the customer satisfaction.
• Build for today, tomorrow, and future. That’s important as you are making a brand not tea, so, things are going to take some time and you need to assert yourself regularly to cope up with the depression each day is going to bring.
• Attend events and start socializing (I know that’s tough but Itna Sab to Karna Padega Na).

In brief,

Build trust, not a brand!
Don’t just learn things, start implementing them as well!
And, Dream on.