If you are a small startup with a tight budget, you have one chance to do it right. And the right path is planning your marketing strategy. Everybody knows that bringing success to a startup is a hard work, really hard. And if you are not a marketer it will be harder to consider all nuances for promoting your business. But no worries. We will go through all essential steps to cover you on developing your startup with some useful marketing tips.

Sell a benefit and mark your USP

It is important to position your product or service with the angle of customer’s benefit. How your product or service will help your customers? How will you improve your customer’s life? These are the questions you need to focus on. Of course, it is essential that your product has a low price, excellent quality. But the first thing you need to focus on is the benefit you will bring to your customer. Position yourself as a brand which offers the best benefit. Besides, it is crucial for your business to identify what quality parts you from your competitors in the market. Make analysis and in-depth research, let your customers know what is so unique about your business. Finding this Unique Selling Point (USP) is one of the first steps you want to take.

Identify your Target and find the right places to reach it

Once you have identified your USP, you need to decide who will buy your product/service, in other words, you need to define your target. The huge mistake for any business is to assume, that anyone can be your target. NO! You need to be very concrete with this: clarify the age, gender, social position, geolocation of your buyers. The best way for this is to create a buyer persona. You need to know your buyer’s habits, interests and goals. After deciding on your target, you need to research where to reach those people. Is it the best way to reach them online, or near local supermarket, or schools? Be very specific!

Develop your brand and Online Presence

Developing your brand at first stage is crucial. Think about your product/service name, do research, use focus groups and brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. After coming up with the best possible brand name start creating your logo. It should be modern, attractive and don’t forget to use colors that best reflect your product or service. Your website and social channels are essential as well. Having a solid website with unique design and active social channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are to do things for startups. Make sure your website is fully optimized for Search Engines.

 Work on your Conversions

Let’s imagine you are able to drive traffic with paid ads. But how to convert those leads into engagement or conversions?  Use attractive Landing Page with appealing Call to Actions (CTA).  Analyse your website design with Google Analytics to see where are your visitors mostly click and what pages they are visiting.  In 2018 visuals will be on top of priorities. Videos, animations, infographics are insanely crucial for driving conversions. Adding videos which describe your product or service will drive your conversions by 80%. 74% of customers who watched a video of your product will make a purchasing decision. And this is not surprising because vision is our dominant sense, isn’t it? Besides, not only humans love videos, but also Search Engines. So including a good video to your landing page will also help your SEO.

Stay up to date

It is crucial to stay up to date with all trends and innovations. SEO techniques that you were using in 2017 will probably not be so useful in 2018. Always follow the trends, read all kind of possible information about marketing techniques. Design your own marketing techniques and tricks based on your experience. Most importantly interact with your customers and listen to their needs.