How To Market Your Start-Up: An Introduction

So, you’re a young tech company.  You have the technology down, the employees in place and you’ve set up your social media profiles – but you want to do something big to garner awareness and drive leads. These are all excellent and important goals – you just may not be not sure where to start.

At Lead Horse, we love tech companies – you embody every ideal necessary for a truly successful digital marketing campaign. You appreciate new technologies, are able (and willing) to pivot to find what works best, test more and, most importantly: grow– both in profits and in knowledge of your particular company landscape and audience. We love you guys, and we want to help – so we welcome you to our new blog series created specifically with you in mind.

Our series, “How to Market Your Start-up,” will go in-depth with important strategies you can implement to take your digital marketing campaign from Point A to new leads.

Before we get started: If you’re looking for one take away and don’t want to read any further, let it be this:

Think your campaign through before you begin – from start to finish. Be as specific as you can be. You don’t have to have every single tactic laid out (the ability to pivot is incredibly valuable), but know what your goals are, and have a specific idea of how you’re going to reach them – but be willing to make some changes along the way. 

This is the most important tip you’ll get throughout this series.

Another important thing? You may think you know your target audience, but you probably don’t – at least not as well as you think. You may think your audience likes country music, when really they spend more time with classical (okay, that may be an extreme example. But you catch our drift). This is just one of many things you can only truly learn through testing and trying new things – two things you’ll be equipped to do by the time this blog series is complete.

Before you get started reading (and creating your strategy), we suggest you have two things laid out and ready to go.

First: Your Goals

Set your goals – in as concrete of terms as possible. If you’re in the beginning stages of running a start-up, it’s especially important to see where things stop and go, as you’re likely looking to maximize a tight budget. If you don’t have enough data yet to set these goals, it’s okay to be more general as long as you refine along the way.

Some examples of important goals for your campaign:

• Improve Click Through Rates to by 3%
• Increase Average Order Value by $5
• Increase Brand Awareness, measured by more Retweets/Facebook Likes/Website Visits

Ultimately, this is all to increase your company’s profitability, so getting as detailed as possible will allow for more insight down the line into what works and what doesn’t.

If you’re not comfortable getting this granular (yet), at least have an understanding that is as specific as possible of what you want to get out of your campaign.

Second: Your Budget and Expectations

Start with two budgets (that’s right – two!). This is especially helpful if you don’t have enough data to clearly define your goals just yet. For instance, one budget can be allocated toward measuring a brand awareness goal such as gaining new website visitors while the other can be allocated toward acquiring new leads.  This allows you to learn and set a baseline for future campaigns and growth.

But you can’t proceed unless your expectations are realistic. You’re not working in a vacuum – you’re working in a competitive landscape.  Understanding the balance between what you’re spending and what you’re getting out of each strategy allows you to eliminate which tactics aren’t cost-efficient for your business right now. If the average cost-per-click on your PPC campaign is $20 and your average order value is $100, PPC may not be right for you at this stage in the game.

Next in the Series

By the time we’re done, you’ll have a better understanding of:

• Campaign Measurement
• Campaign Tracking and Technical Aspects
• Retargeting
• Content Marketing and Promotion
• Executing and Optimizing Campaigns
• Landing Page Optimization
• The Value of Real Life Feedback

Next week, you’ll be able to read all about campaign measurement. If you think of something else important you’d like us to cover along the way, give us a shout on Facebook.