How Startups can Succeed with an Integrated Marketing Strategy

Startups are innovative disruptive forces that plug unique gaps in the market. However, most of them operate with limited budgets and resources (think of the bootstrapped startups in their nascent stages). Such constraints often cause startups to focus most of their resources – time, money, and talent – on product development. Unfortunately, crucial functions such as marketing often get overlooked in the process.

It is seen that 14 percentof startups fail due to poor marketing strategies. When startups strike marketing off their priority list, it creates an ‘awareness gap’, preventing their products from reaching the right audiences. To survive in highly crowded and competitive ecosystems, startups need to build brand awareness and familiarity through consistent communication across channels.We need an integrated marketing strategy for startups.

Leveraging marketing to capture customer mind space and spur growth

Marketing does not require you to burn through your pockets. Using the right tools and technologies can significantly bring down costs, amplify brand outreach, and increase the ROI of any marketing activity.Here are some key areas in marketing strategy for startups, where they can leverage technology for quick wins.

1. Deploy automated email marketing for personalised conversations at scale

According to Forbes, email is still one of the most effective ways to reach people. It also promises to deliver the highest ROI (42x) among all marketing channels. Using email marketing tools, startups can drive 1-to-1 engagement at scale and convert more prospects with no to low awareness about their brands into loyal customers. They can:

• Easily create attractive messages with email marketing templates and ready-to-use content blocks.
• Effortlessly optimise for mobile to ensure emails look good on every device.
• Inspire action through dynamic messages built with easy drag-and-drop functions and HTML codes.
• Hyperpersonalise interactions by segmenting target audiences and then recommending relevant content.
• Automate and schedule email delivery to improve operational efficiency.
• Maximise ROI by measuring the effectiveness of each email campaign.
  
  
  
  

  2. Rely on social media to build awareness and trust

Social media is an extremely powerful channel for driving customer engagement, simply because that’s where your audience -and market – is. In 2020, there were over 376 million social media users in India alone. Startups can use social media marketing tools to:

• Ride on the latest trends or topics on social media to create relevant campaigns.
• Improve cross-functional collaboration and streamline campaign strategy and planning.
• Createand schedule posts to consistently engage prospects.
• Gain insights into customer sentiment to inform their social media marketing strategy.
• Boost high-performing posts to increase brand visibility.
• Improve customer experience by routing sales and service-related queries on social media channels to the right teams for resolution.

  
  
  
  3. Use data to align advertising across digital channels

It is not like consumers do not want to see ads at all. In fact, 83% just want to filter out those that are irrelevant to them or ruin their user experience. If startups practise digital advertising in a data-driven manner, they can reach their ideal customers exactly where they are, and optimise spending by excluding unwanted customers. Startups can use integrated advertising tools to:

• Use customer data from any digital channel to display 1-to-1 advertising at scale.
• Build audiences across the digital display advertising ecosystem – Facebook, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. – based on audiences’ preferred channels.
• Optimise spending by re-engaging inactive subscribers and suppressing ads for current customers.
• Gain more customers by identifying their lookalikes on Google and Facebook.

  
  4. Use intelligent mobile messaging to keep customers engaged

Today’s digitally empowered customers are extremely mobile-savvy. It is no surprise that 70% of the total web traffic comes from mobiles. Startups can boost engagement via personalised mobile messaging that is consistent with marketing efforts across other channels. With the right mobile marketing tool, startups can:

• Use custom templates for multimedia, outbounds, and text-response messages to easily create SMS and MMS messages that captivate customers.
• Increase in-app purchases by sending push notifications around attractive deals and discounts.
• Trigger messages for transaction-related activities or time-sensitive messages such as shipping reminders or password resets using APIs.
• Target customers near their stores or other targeted areas with coupons and promotions by creating geofenced messages.

Marketing is essential for startups to build an identity and carve a space for themselves in new and old markets.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a one-stop solution that enables startups to interact with customers across channels. The solution offers a range of features that can help you to build a comprehensive marketing strategy. With data-driven custom dashboards and reports, Marketing Cloud also helps startups course-correct campaigns to align them with revenue goals.

With Salesforce’s small business solutions offering, startups can now take advantage of Marketing Cloud at a price that best suits their budget. Marketing Cloud is a cloud-based solution that can be used straight out of the box without the need to establish an extensive IT infrastructure. And with the Marketing Cloud mobile marketing app, startups can continue to engage with customers and manage campaigns while on the go!