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    Startups have a true collaborative approach. It’s a hands on environment - with everyone from the CEO to the HR manager chipping in to get the product going.  With all these competing priorities however, marketing strategy often gets missed and the product gets launched to often underwhelming results. So what are the key considerations for making your product marketing a success?

    1. Know your potential customers and develop your personas.

    Personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers.  They are based on research and educated guesses on your customers demographics, motivations, challenges and goals.

    Understanding your persona’s means that you can make better decisions on the strategies that you need to attract prospects, the content you need to convert visitors to leads and the offers you need to provide in order for them to become customers.

    Imagine the difference you will see by developing the strategy based on the people you want rather then a scatter-gun approach of traditional media.  Knowing where and how to launch your product becomes more focused.

     2. Utilise the Inbound Marketing Methodology

    While understanding your audience is vital to any organisation, using personas across the inbound marketing process can make your strategies take off.

    The premise of Inbound Marketing is bringing customers to you by providing interesting and relevant content.  It is entirely online – and moves away from marketing activities that ‘shout’ at prospects such as TV & Radio and which are expensive.

    Additionally, product-marketing strategies gain a number of other advantages:

    Flexibility: Strategies become flexible.  You can develop and test campaigns, easily develop new campaigns for new opportunities and best of all measure and make decisions on results. 
     
    Cost effective: While you will need to invest in marketing automation tools and content development there are cost saving to be made when you compare the costs of production and air time for traditional media. For start-ups using seed funding this means resources go further.

    3. Use consultants for strategy development

    While seed funding needs to go towards many activities, utilising external consultants can often save money, time and resources. Inbound marketing consultants for example will be able to more quickly and effectively work with teams to develop campaigns that will work. Leaving time for the business to work on other activities before launching.

    It's worthwhile being the new disruptive force by developing a deep understanding of your buyer. 

    inbound marketing eBook for Startups

     

    Sharyn Welsh
    Post by Sharyn Welsh
    September 22, 2015