Marketing Your Startup: Are You Doing It Right?

As an entrepreneur, you always need to deliver your best, especially when it comes to customer experience and satisfaction. A lot of factors go into creating satisfactory user experience, and effective marketing is one of them. For example, Jabong, with its “Be You” campaign, emphasised distinctiveness and individuality in fashion. While marketing gurus argued that there was nothing new about this concept, but this didn’t stop it from attracting the attention of Jabong’s target audience. The ad went viral, proving that the creative minds behind the campaign really understood their market and consumers.

New entrepreneurs can learn something from this. Defining your target audience is a crucial step in your entrepreneurial journey. Without doing this, you won’t be able to provide a product or service that truly reaches their heart. In terms of online businesses, we often forget the fact that investing in a strong marketing plan is the only way to reach your target audience. Unlike with offline stores, people won’t find your signage board and decide to step into your shop to try out things. As an online business, what you need to do is to gear up and come up with a marketing plan that doesn’t just talk about your products and services, but also addresses the needs of your potential customers.

Hiring a marketing firm

This is always a risky decision, could yield massive results, or drill a hole in your wallet in vain. Moreover, good agencies are rarely pocket friendly. What might actually reap results is developing an effective marketing strategy according to your business needs yourself while also keeping your target audience in mind. For instance, a high street brand’s advertising campaign that worked for your competitor might not work for you, because your needs and your audience might be totally different. Before you consider hiring an advertising or marketing agency, you need to thoroughly research what your customers are looking for and how you can provide this to them in the best way possible. “You need to collect the right data and turn it into knowledge. It will boost your confidence level and will help you stay goal-oriented,” says Pawan Gupta, Co-founder of Curofy.

Having a strong sales team

Investing in a strong sales team does not always end up in failure. You might find individuals with incredible talent and impeccable salesmanship who can help you achieve your targets. On the other hand, unless and until you really test their skills, you’ll never know if you’ve made a good investment. A good way to start is by carefully considering the kind of talent you would like to hire for your business development and how you would like them to sell your products or services.

Test the waters

You are a small business, and you really do not know what works for you and what doesn’t. Look at the different avenues available and experiment with different things. Just following something everyone else is doing is not going to help you discover any new boundaries.

If you are heading a small business, it’s best to start small. Analyse and test different ideas and measure their outcomes. Fix up a whiteboard in your office, and write down the things that seem to work and the things that don’t. This exercise will let you know when, how and on what elements should you place larger bets on in the future.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)