You have your product, you know everything about it, and you’re ready to get it to market. There is just one issue: you have no idea how to market.
Don’t worry, many entrepreneurs have been there before you, including me. This article — which is a deep dive off of a series of preparation questions all entrepreneurs should ask before attempting to launch a startup — will help you understand, prepare, and capitalize on your startup marketing opportunities on day one of your startup.
All you need to do is answer the following 9 questions.
- Who is your customer?
This is the beating heart of marketing, and if you take nothing else from this list, let it be this: Know everything there is to know about your customer, even if you have to conduct a market analysis, because everything your business does will stem from this knowledge. Know what they do, where they do it, why they do it, who they do it with, and why they stop. Where do they shop, what do they eat, how much do they make, and what do they spend their disposable income on? How far away from you are they? What social groups are they in? What economic factors hurt or help them? Everything. The more you know about your customers, the more effective you’ll be at advertising and marketing to them. You’ll spend less time guessing about what they want, running ineffective advertising campaigns, and launching doomed product development initiatives.
Figuring out who your customer is, and all of the other who, what, when, where, and why can be difficult. Here’sa great list to get you started. - Who are your competitors?
Sun Tzu once said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” You’re not going to war, but you are going to duke it out for some market share. Once you know your consumer, take a moment to dissect your competitor. Are they serving the same consumer as you? How are they doing it? Who supplies them? How many customers do they have? Will you be fighting them for customers, or will you be marketing to your own, unreached customer base? If you know how your competitor behaves, you’ll waste less time and money trying to drown out their voice with your own.
- How will you gain customers?Great, you know who you are marketing to, and who else is marketing to them. There is just one small problem: You don’t know how to go and get them!
If a new business owner simply opens their doors in the morning and expects customers to come in, they will need their “closing a business checklist” handy, because they will probably end up shutting down for good that night. After you exhaust your family and social circles, are you okay with going door to door and knocking? I’m not saying that’s what you should do, but you might have to. I had many a door slammed in my face during my first years in business, and it’s because I didn’t take the time to plan out the “how” of getting customers after I knew I who they were.
You can save yourself a lot of sleepless nights if you know where you’ll go hunting for new customers. Think about where they like to congregate. Join social circles of every make and model. Observe what your competitors are doing. Network. Believe it or not, I’m an introvert. My friends find that hard to believe since, when I go out, I always run into someone I know. That’s because, in my quest for new customers, I had to meet new people.
- How will you do your startup marketing and advertising?
Where you are located geographically may not matter if you’re running an online or SaaS-based business. The advertising channels you’re located in, however, does matter.
What are channels? They’re the mediums used to reach an intended audience, like radio, television, social media, magazines, newspapers, etc. Each has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Are you going to put signs on billboards? You may reach a lot of people in passing—even more during a traffic jam— but are those people your customers? Television is amazing but extremely expensive. Radio is cheaper, but will people stay tuned to hear your ad? Direct mail can work if done correctly, but no matter how good the ad is, it all ends up in the trash bin in the end. Want more help on carving out your market? This article provides a useful marketing carving primer.
- How much will you spend on advertising and marketing for your startup?
For many business owners, the most expensive part of their business is the advertising. Good knowledge of “who” and “how” will cut that cost down, but it can still be expensive. Depending on the channel and medium, it can range from pennies for flyers to millions for television. Take a look at how other businesses in your industry advertise. If they’ve been around longer than you, they may have an idea about what channels your potential customer prefers. Alternatively, they could also be neglecting customers in other channels, opening up a non-competitive advertising opportunity for you. Less competition usually means cheaper advertising opportunities, while more can drive up the price.
Since many small businesses don’t have a concrete idea of who their customer is, they’ll set aside an arbitrary number, like 25% of their revenue, for advertising. Then they’ll break that down to monthly intervals. Your number may be very different. In fact, you may not even have a budget for advertising. in which case, free tools like social networking and door knocking might be the way you go. Just know that, even if you’re not spending dollars on advertising and marketing your startup, you’re still spending time and energy that could be put back into your business to create owner’s equity.
- Who will do your marketing and advertising?
Will it be an outside firm, or are you going to do it yourself? If you’re going with someone on the outside, will you work with a big firm or a boutique? If you are just starting out, chances are you can’t afford big advertising guns. Not to worry, there are a lot of savvy boutique advertising firms out there that can help smaller operations. In fact, depending on your customer and the channel they exist in, you may only need help in one key area, like Pay-per-Click or search engine optimization (SEO).
Whether you’re working with a big firm or a small firm, what matters most is fit. Does the firm get you and do they get your brand? Your brand will be your separator, and the best advertising firms can help you define, establish, and leverage your brand. And no, more money doesn’t always mean you’ll get more of what matters in the advertising world.
- What results do you expect to see from your marketing and advertising efforts?
Some advertising firms have what they call the “Discovery Period.” Marketing companies have discovery periods precisely because many of the companies they advertise for can’t tell them who they are, what their brand is, or what they hope to achieve from a marketing campaign.
Save yourself some time and money, and be clear about your goals before you start spending on marketers or marketing. It’s enticing to shout “all I want are more sales, duh!” but sales are not the only objective of marketing a startup. When do you want those sales? From whom? New customers in new areas, or customers who are with your competitors? These are just two of the questions you should answer, as they dictate the type of ads you’ll make—courting a relationship with untapped influencers or posting a comparison of services to another company. Sometimes customers aren’t ready to buy your product, but, when they are ready, you want them to know who you are—that’s brand awareness. Knowing the objective for your advertising and how you’ll achieve it can make your marketing dollars stretch.
- What do you predict will be your cost to acquire a customer (e.g,. cost per acquisition)?
Yet another question a marketer will hit you with. Cost per acquisition, or CPA, is the breakdown of how much of your resources go into acquiring a customer. Investopedia defines acquisition cost like this: “The cost that a company recognizes on its books for property or equipment after adjusting for discounts, incentives, closing costs, and other necessary expenditures, but before sales taxes.” Take that concept and replace “property and equipment” with “customers.” Essentially, it’s everything that goes into getting that new customer, including incentives, discounts, new equipment that you had to purchase to pull in that customer, etc.
Another way to say this is, it’s not simply how much you spend to buy media, or print ads, or send out the emails; it’s the time that goes into creating that content, the cost of the tech needed to record your new video ad, and lead nurturing, planning, tracking, and follow-up— everything. When you sit down to add it all up, it can shock you just how much effort goes into acquiring new customers, and it’s one of the reasons that marketing and advertising is so expensive. You want to keep this cost low, if you can. - How do you plan to track the efficacy of your advertising?Once you’ve figured all the rest of this list out, there is still one very important piece of the puzzle: how will you measure if your advertising is working?
You can answer most of this question before you conduct your advertising, back when you select the media channel. Digital advertising has a bevy of tools to assist you with tracking leads, all the way from when they searched for your product or service, to the point they purchased on your website.
Other mediums, like radio, may require the use of promo codes. Special codes can be placed on print coupons. Television ads may push limited time offers. If you’re asking for people to call you, you may attach the ad campaign to a special phone number.
There is another reason you should spend the extra time and money to make sure your tracking is excellent: the data you will yield can greatly assist you in figuring out your customer, thus completing the advertising circle from customer to confirmation.
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