Startup Success: Your Ultimate Marketing Checklist

For entrepreneurs experiencing their startup growth and change each day, knowing how to harness your company’s growth and market your newly founded brand as efficiently as possible can seem like a large undertaking. When you begin researching marketing methodologies for your new business, it can feel like information overload. It may turn up strategies that seem well-suited for brands with bigger ideas, bigger wallets, and a bigger staff. But marketing and promoting your startup doesn’t have to be complicated. You’re already past the hardest part of beginning a new venture – starting it! To help you harness the growth and excitement of your new venture, use this ultimate startup marketing checklist for new startup businesses to help you market your new business expertly.

Before no more ado, here are 7 Startup Marketing Steps and Tips for you.

1. Document Your Mission Statement & Core Values

As a startup just getting its foothold, you may agree to work outside your company’s expertise or sign a client who isn’t a good fit. You probably feel like you can’t turn away business at this point. However, underperforming for a client may damage your relationship and reputation more than saying “no” would.

To avoid losing sight of what your startup is great at delivering, take time to write a mission statement for your company. This is a good way to begin your marketing plan checklist because this mission statement will be the compass to guide you when you’re unsure if a project or a client is a good fit. Your mission statement can be revised as time passes, but write it, print it, and hang it up at your desk so you see it often.

If you have a team of people, consider establishing core values. The values can change over time, too, but use them to begin shaping your company’s culture and set expectations for your team.

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2. Build Your Brand Identity

The other important thing in your startup marketing checklist should be building your brand identity. Your brand identity means more than just your logo and other design elements. As you begin communicating with more customers, start to put thoughtful consideration into your brand identity. It’s better to begin documenting your standards and preferences for your brand as you go. Your brand identity can change over time, but if you plan on building your client profile and your internal team, it’s good to keep your output and messaging consistent.

Your brand identity includes your logo and design elements, like the color palette, and it includes the words you want your brand to use and avoid, typography, and graphics. When creating your brand identity, Column Five Media outlines the five keys to an expertly designed brand identity:

  1. Distinct and attention-grabbing
  2. Memorable with a visual impact
  3. Scalable and flexible to grow with your brand
  4. Cohesive and complementary to the whole identity
  5. Easy to apply and design

3. Develop a User-Friendly Website

Websites are more than a digital business card in today’s tech-savvy world. Today, people check out your website on their mobile phones while on the go, so make sure that people and search engines can understand what your website is trying to convey.

Your website should provide a good user experience and help convert users into sales. To do this, create a responsive website that will work well on different devices and load quickly. Think With Google provides a few marketing tools that will help you improve your site, with Test My Site specifically showing how to make your site more mobile-friendly and improve your site speed.

Suppose you’re not much of a website developer. In that case, this is an area of your new business that may be worth some investment into a web development company that can help you realize your website vision faster and more precisely than you can handle on your own.

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4. Create a Blog

Once you have an established brand identity and a fast, optimized website, create a blog for your company. A blog can be a great marketing channel for your company. As you learn about your customers’ lifecycle, you can create a content marketing strategy to help potential clients find your site and convert. As you gain more experience and collect more data, you can publish original case studies and white papers that will help you show off your company’s know-how and close more deals.

When you begin blogging, remember that every idea doesn’t need to be completely original and data-driven. You can use your company blog to share company updates industry news from thought leaders, and to collaborate with other businesses and organizations. If you don’t have someone on your team who can write, visit local freelance writers or search an online marketplace like Upwork or Freelancer.com to find a writer.

5. Be Social

Social media channels are a great marketing tool for startups because they are free and easy to use. However, using these channels effectively would help if you had a social media strategy.

To start, choose specific channels to focus on. You don’t need to participate in every channel invented. If you’re an e-commerce company, visual channels like Instagram and Facebook will be great, but if you’re a B2B brand, consider leveraging LinkedIn.

The leading thing brands forget to do on their social media channels is BE SOCIAL! If your Twitter stream is only about you, your products, and your blog posts, then you’re doing it wrong. Participate in relevant hashtag chats, ask questions to other thought leaders in your industry, share great content from other brands, and don’t ignore your customers – those who are singing your praises and those who are complaining. Above all else, be human.

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6. Be Social In Person

For-Profit Startup

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 56% of B2B marketers use in-person events as one of their top 5 marketing efforts. If you’re running a for-profit startup, attending and hosting industry conferences can be a great way to market your business to a captive audience. For a startup, hosting an in-person event or conference may not be the best use of time, but attending popular industry conferences to network and learn about other business strategies and upcoming trends.

Non-Profit Startup

If you’re a non-profit, hosting in-person events is critical to building awareness about your cause and developing relationships with donors. To host a non-profit event:

  1. Set one specific, measurable goal.
  2. Choose the right event for your mission, budget, and audience.
  3. Secure corporate sponsorships.
  4. Create compelling content to incite interest and invite people.
  5. Go green and use an online ticketing platform.
  6. Encourage ticket buyers to spread the word.
  7. Promote your event on your website, social media channels, email marketing, and print.

7. Measure Every Marketing Effort

Measure, measure, and measure!

As a startup, you must constantly measure and change your business strategies to increase workflow efficiencies. The same concept should be applied to your marketing strategy. Set marketing goals and measure your efforts against them. This will allow you to determine what marketing efforts are worth pursuing and which are worth changing or stopping as you continue to grow and experience success.

Don’t forget to share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section so that we can improve the startup marketing checklist for new businesses.

Conclusion

In conclusion, marketing a newly established startup can seem overwhelming due to the vast information and strategies available. However, it doesn’t have to be a complex process. By utilizing a comprehensive startup marketing checklist, entrepreneurs can efficiently harness their company’s growth and market their brand effectively, regardless of the size of their ideas or budget. Remember, the most difficult step of starting a new venture has already been achieved; the rest can be systematically managed with the right tools and strategies.

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