2021 Tips and Tools for your Start-up business
If you are just starting up, don’t fret. Read this.
Photo by EKATERINA from Pexels
The difficulty for start-ups attempting to navigate this world lies in how complex modern day marketing has become. With everything constantly evolving by the minute, it can be near impossible for the solo entrepreneur to get the most of their time and money.
Marketing is one of the vital steps in your business plan that if you get right it should make the taking the next step seem a little less daunting. But picking the right marketing strategies for your business can be confusing.
In this blog, we share fundamental marketing tips and tools that can help you and your start up.
Define your objective
Defining your objective is all about understanding the marketing funnel where you’re at now, and what you need to do to achieve your wider business goals. From awareness of your business to increase your audience’s interest about what you do for them, consider your value proposition and finally conversion.
So what does that mean for you?
If you’ve just launched and no one knows about your business, although your ultimate objective will of course be sales, you first need to tackle the top of the funnel by raising awareness.
Why?
Think about it: if no one knows about you, how can they choose to buy from you? If no one knows what your value is to them and why you’re better than the competition, why would they buy from you?
Once you have achieved a certain level of awareness, you can move your core focus towards the bottom of the funnel and target sales.
Depending on the stage of your business, your challenges in the funnel may be different. It’s important to understand what these are to make sure you’re doing the right things for your company.
Photo by Julia Larson from Pexels
Understand Your Target Audience
There may be nothing more powerful in marketing than understanding what are your audience’s pain/need. Every human being in this planet is always moving in one of two directions when they make a decision; away from pain or towards pleasure. Build a Persona so that you can anchor your goals of your campaign objective. You can google this to find out how simple personas can be built.
Or you can follow us where we’ll be sharing more topics on drawing out pain points that’s relevant to core desires.
Photo by Dmitry Mashkin on Unsplash
Choose your channels
Every channel has its pros and cons, and each one requires a different set of tactics, so the key is to play to your strengths, pick your battles and only invest in the ones that will give you the results you want.
Social media is the most obvious place for most businesses to start, but keep in mind that each platform serves a different purpose. For example, if you’re in B2B selling software it would be better spent on LinkedIn. Focus on the quality of your content rather than the quantity of posts and create posts that your target audience can relate to.
Next big thing in social
There’s a new kid on the block for social media this year; Clubhouse app. It is an invitation-only audio-chat social networking app where people can listen in to discussions and conversations between people in a variety of topics.
Imagine it’s like running your own talk show. But for start ups, it’s a perfect space for you to learn, ask questions from the experts all around the world. A lot of the rooms there are designed to discuss about a specific topic. You’d be surprised how many experts in their own field are generous giving you their valuable inputs at no costs.
What’s also interesting about Clubhouse is that the app neither constrains nor restricts activity based on popularity or net worth. You don’t have to be a world-famous celebrity just to talk to people like JJ Lin on Clubhouse, for example.
Use the tools available online to your advantage
Content is the key when it comes to marketing, if your target audience is not able to resonate with your content they will lose interest in what you are offering and tend to deviate away into things that they would be more interested in. If you are unsure of what content to post, use online tools like Quora, BuzzFeed, Google Trends, BuzzSumo to help you to see the hot and trending topics in your industry. If you need to hear live opinions from experts and celebrities, good to tune in to Clubhouse app to get some great insights from the world’s experts.
Tools for posts, video, design
Often as a solo start-up, we don’t have deep pockets. Good news is there are a few tools that’s already available out there for you to use and start getting yourself visible.
Canva is a golden nugget if you need to share cool content on social medias and sublimate your slides. PixTeller is an option.
Need royalty free photos and images? Here are some cool photo stock sites: Pexels, Unsplash, StockUp, Gratisography, Adobe Stock, Shopify Burst, Death To The Stock Photo, 500px, Flickr, Pinterest, StockSnap, New Old Stock
A bank of photos and videos taken by drones: Dronestagram
Make great video teasers & video ads without mastering iMovie or Adobe Premiere: Biteable
· A stock photo of images in .png (transparency background): StickPNG
· Create amazing mockups online: Artboard Studio or SmartMockups
· Automate Ads banner production: Abyssale
· Automatically remove background from an image: Remove.bg
· Find the right fonts: Google Fonts, FontSquirrel, TypeNugget, TypeKit, Type Anything, Graphic Burger, and Dafont for the most eccentric … (What The Font and Font Face Ninja are cool tools too #inspiration)
· Some cool free stock icons websites (for a presentation or a showcase website): Flaticon, The Noun Project,
· Need an infographic to spread an idea? Piktochart, Easelly, VENNGAGE or Snappa
· Create videos to high-quality GIFs: Gifski
Prototyping tools
· Make your prototype quickly and for free: InVision, Proto, Moqups, Figma, Overflow or Sketch + Marvel
· Need to find inspiration and filter by types of websites, industry, types of pages, color? UI Temple & Lapa Ninja.
· Create a simple app, easily & quickly: BuildFire, Apps Builder, Bubble (templates for Bubble : Zeroqode), Dropsource, AppMachine or Lightwell
· If you really need a Dev, here is an unlimited solution for a monthly subscription: Devy.io.(Useful too: OuiCoding, Yeeply and Pentalog)
· Find an offshore Dev team: YouTeam
The lists can go on and on.
Play around with online tools to create your content. By constantly creating content and building that value that best represents your business, it will help you to get noticed by your target audience and other companies in your industry faster.
My post is up. Now what?
If your post does not emotionally resonate with your audience it will determine whether or not they will follow you. So remember, not only is your content information important but the way you say it, the stories you convey on your content are just as important.
It’s no secret that video is a powerful force that’s been growing in usage year over year. In fact, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands — that’s more than any other type of content.
In our next blog, we’ll be sharing about storytelling and how to get started with video marketing.
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