StartupTalky

Tag: growth hacking

  • Nutritional Startups Experimenting With Innovative Growth Strategies

    The article is contributed By Pranay Jain, Founder & CEO, BodyFirst

    Food and nutrition were formerly exclusively of interest to fitness and health-conscious individuals. For many years, the idea of fitness was limited to enhancing one’s appearance through gym memberships. In the last two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has gradually redefined the concept of healthy living and emphasized the need for immunity boosters and supplements. What, when and how individuals eat are becoming the main themes of discourse in contemporary culture. The post-pandemic period is now experiencing an increase in the number of persons benefiting from different health and nutrition products, which corresponds with the increase in the adoption of a healthy lifestyle.

    The numbers from before the pandemic illustrate this pattern. The Indian gyms, health and fitness industry expanded by 11% between 2016 and 2020, with over 71,000 new fitness and health apps being reported by analytics firm App Annie during the same period. Consequently, fitness app downloads have increased by 156%, which translates to 58 million new active users in 2020. Even before the Covid disruption, the nutritional and fitness startup space had interpreted this opportunity to serve the rising number of health and fitness enthusiasts as a result of this shift.

    Influence of the Pandemic on Placing a Premium on Health and Nutrition

    The pandemic underlined the need for proper diet and physical activity. By emphasizing health and nutrition, the necessity to battle chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, stress, and anxiety has become a priority. A fresh emphasis on adopting a healthy diet has finally resulted in enhanced productivity, discipline, and an active lifestyle. By adopting a healthier lifestyle, one’s prospects of overcoming unforeseen illnesses are greatly improved. This idea has contributed to the expansion of health and fitness apps while boosting the consumption of nutritional and health supplements.

    Wearables Add Flexibility to Accomplishing Fitness Goals

    In the last five years, fitness wearables have been at the forefront of an industry-wide transformation, empowering their users to maintain their physical health and mental agility. These devices are no longer only data measurement accessories but are integrating data and usage metrics with other smart exercising devices, fitness and diet training apps, and mindfulness activity trackers. Startups are leading the way in bridging the gap between reality and fitness goals by digitally aiding their customers, regardless of their actual location, to meet the required activity or exercise goals. Virtual fitness experiences contribute to the novel aspects of the technology that are rapidly establishing a quantitative and qualitative benchmark for actual transformation. These creative solutions have already created the groundwork for accomplishing fitness objectives, using a mechanism and method that are both adaptable and achievable.

    Partnerships With Fitness Centres and Corporate Wellness Initiatives

    Fitness and wellness firms have traditionally leveraged corporate partnerships as a growth strategy. However, the post-pandemic emphasis on fitness and nutrition has expanded corporate interest. This integration assists companies with benefits, health insurance programs, and employee fitness initiatives to manage workplace stress and enhance employee wellbeing. These holistic wellness initiatives provide workers with seamless integration and usher in long-term health advantages for the organisation. In addition to organizing random and tailored fitness events for intercompany participation, fitness brands also promote the adoption of fitness and weight management programs by hosting random and customized fitness initiatives.

    Enhanced Ingredient Awareness Influencing Consumer Preferences

    Ingredients are foundational to health and nutrition products and these are witnessing a surge in popularity among fitness enthusiasts. The emphasis on product orientation and specialization is one of the most important marketing techniques used by fitness brands. Most fitness brands provide health and nutrition items that are loaded with multivitamins, vital minerals, omega-3 fatty acids, and other supplements. Multivitamins, essential minerals, Omega 3 supplements, and probiotics are, thus, some of the most prominent fitness and nutritional ingredients.

    Increased product awareness among the consumers has shifted the spotlight to brands that emphasize innovative ingredients in their products. This strategy is reflected in the approach in which customers choose brands that are transparent about the relevance of product ingredients in achieving their fitness and wellness goals. Nutrition experts and fitness coaches are more likely to promote brands, whose products are based on scientifically validated and properly researched ingredients. Products capable of bridging the protein deficiency gap by restoring the adequate nutritional balance in the diet will ultimately gain more acceptance and adoption among fitness enthusiasts.

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    Brands Focusing On Garnering High Product Reviews With Satisfied Consumers

    Products that are high on reviews are expected to gain prominence as they are referred by satisfied consumers with word of mouth strategy being a strong driver across sectors. Fitness startups are introducing a diverse product line that is superior to market offerings and strives to promote health and educate customers to enable wise and healthy decisions. Multivitamins, essential minerals, Omega 3 supplements, and probiotics are among the most popular fitness and nutritional products. These innovative products utilise ‘enzyme technology’ which helps break down protein efficiently and enables the body to maximize the absorption of amino acids. This breakdown of whey protein into its smallest components avoids any digestive discomfort and caters to consumers who advertise the product among their circle of influence. Catering to consumer’s convenience, these products are also becoming travel friendly and are being made available in compact and ‘mini’ travel sachets to help consumers maintain nutritional requirements while travelling.

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    Conclusion

    Today’s constantly changing consumer preferences have been addressed by emerging technological advancements that will continue to influence the fitness industry’s growth trajectory. In conclusion, these rising opportunities to address customer needs will help startups redefine their approach with innovative growth strategies.

  • Smart Strategies for Growing Your Business

    The article is contributed by Gauri Bhatia – Founder and Director, The Unveiled Sagas.

    Everyone dreams of igniting inspiration through their career trajectory. I too, for that matter often boasted about having only ‘twenty-five rupees in my pocket’ when I started The Unveiled Sagas. My business partner was in a financial fix, and I being the (kind-of) only child in my family had lied to my parents to start my own business. Somewhere along the line, I feel we added all this masala to make our life seem only a little bit more dramatic.

    Eight years since, the dawning realization that life didn’t have to be that difficult has pushed me to take the simple(st) path, and I am here to tell you that no, the entrepreneurial journey is not filled with toil and heartbreak. It is simply a profession, just as easy as you make it.

    First and foremost – don’t do it because you hate working for someone else.

    Contrary to popular belief, you are not ‘boss-less’ or working on your own terms. You don’t make the rules, and you don’t have a ready team ready to drop everything for you. From working for one manager or one corporate, I have diversified my attention to working to meet my company’s revenue requirements, 110 clients’ needs, moral and political preferences, my team’s obdurate party needs and my friends’ social obligations. Not to mention, working for a start-up means that my parents can get me to run errands more often.

    Despite all of this, I cannot deny the eager anticipation that overflows when we close a big client, or when the client closes a big client because of our efforts.

    How do you optimize your journey then to ensure as smooth a ride as possible.

    Don’t be afraid to hire- or to build an office

    Optimizing cost convinced us to save on seats, and on people. For the first three years, we operated on on-call employees and garage-offices to ensure that in the time of adversity (case and point, the pandemic), our company should have clear and free-flow liquid funds.

    This was one of the worst decisions we’d ever made.

    I have nothing against freelancers and smaller offices, but operating with a team that barely saw your face deliberately questioned the strength of our company. There was a huge, visible difference between the first ‘manager material’ freelancer we hired, and the first ‘manager’ manager we brought on board. The first, was apprehensive about the opportunity- the second, aggressive and passionate about leading our team of barely three.

    Similarly, working from the garage or the extra room at home lead to an extinguished productivity, and burnouts that frequented us more often. Rather, purchasing even a flexi-seating arrangement at a co-working space boosted inter-employee morale and trust to a level that was immovable.

    Hire Young Blood

    An adamant advocate of freshers, I myself was an aggressive intern when I was in college, delving into 3 jobs besides my inter-college sports and academic career.

    Apart from that, a fresher is often moldable and flexible to learn. Experienced professionals often have a set mindset that launches them into a certain systemized career trajectory that can be inflexible. Ask a 20-year-old writer, however, to build a website and the only answer you’ll get is “I don’t know how to do it yet, but give me an hour and a Youtube connection”.

    Also, they love power, money, and authority. Their priorities are set right, and if not them, there is no hope to set the world right.

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    Diversify your corporate portfolio- and don’t be afraid of seeking ‘cool’

    Not only through your start-up and its internal clientele, but also through external portfolios. My business partner and I have had successful (and many failed) start-ups in travel, blockchain, manufacturing, skincare, marketing and AI.

    We’re blessed to have a diversified clientele that keeps us on our toes, enabling us to seek whatever seems ‘cool’- real-life experience begins where research ends, and there’s a different kind of flair in challenging your knowledge.

    Sampling through the clientele

    Our first ‘other’ start-up was through a client who wanted to diversify into manufacturing. We’d written a plethora of books and articles on the topic, but to live It first-hand was a different ballgame altogether. Convincing the client of our genius didn’t take much time- in a couple of months, we had attained a fund for marketing and hiring, and used our weekends to set up his factory and his ecommerce infrastructure.

    More often than not, founders love to stay within their comfort zones because of their mental block- “I can’t go international because I don’t have the funds”, “I cant expand my verticals because I don’t have the manpower”, or even “I cant get into manufacturing because I’m into marketing” (okay, the last one is me). Inhibiting experiences because of these small, mortal limitations is anticlimactic considering the profession that you’ve chosen. Entrepreneurs do what they want to, and then find a way to enable the journey.

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    Drop bad payers

    Mental health is above everything.

    Although I advocate the hustle culture, I firmly believe that incessantly torturing yourself is not the way to attain financial stability.

    Constructive criticism and hard to please clients often believe in your potential, and make you push yourself until you give them what they want. Compare them to people who suddenly turn into bad payers and over-critiquing audience as soon as the invoice hits their inbox, and you have a recipe for a migraine on your hands.

    I don’t often mind bargains, but after ten years in the industry and an optimized rate that I consider cheap, if I find someone who tries to cut corners, I prefer to drop them. Look for people who seek results, and not a deal, even if you are in an industry that essentially functions on discounts and quantity.

    Conclusion

    To end my argument, never forget that a start-up is the gateway to the limits of human potential, and containing childish whims like travelling the world, becoming a billionaire or even enabling world peace and hunger is nowhere near impossible. Be kind, seek innovation and test your limits.

  • Smart Strategies to Grow Your Business | Tips for Entrepreneurship

    The article is contributed by Mugdha Pradhan – CEO and Founder of iTHRIVE.

    In the contemporary world, the term “startup” is glamorized to another extent. Every person wants to become an entrepreneur without fully understanding what it means to start a business. Individuals look at entrepreneurship with rosy colored glasses and think of it as a medium to become an authority, rich and live life on their own terms. These outcomes are very much possible; however, it takes a lot of hard work to attain such freedom. One has to work without money for long hours before they can enjoy the empire. One has to convince people to use their product before building brand loyalty.

    So now the question arises what is the right way to become an entrepreneur and grow your business. Following are a few smart strategies to grow and sustain your startup.

    Solve a Problem

    It is important that one builds a product or a service that is genuinely going to solve a problem area. A very great way is to solve a problem that is close to you. When you do that, you’ll be able to convince the masses to use your product/service, and it will be more difficult for you to give up on it as it truly was helpful to you.

    Choose Teammates Carefully

    One cannot build a business alone. You will need a strong foundational team who believes in your vision as much as you, if not more. This team will become a brand ambassador for your venture in the initial days. Look for partners that complement your skills and get help whenever necessary.

    Plan for Failure

    Failure upon starting something new is inevitable, and it is important that one is prepared for that in order to adapt to the situation and learn quickly in such a scenario. It is also important to have Business Continuity Strategies in place by understanding potential hindrances in your business.

    Get Help

    When building something big, it’s naive to think that you’ll be able to do everything by yourself. Everybody has their limitations. Hence other than building your core team as advised in point number 2, it’s imperative to utilize your network and resources to their utmost potential. The key is to work smart and not hard.

    Find a Mentor

    One of the most cliche pieces of advice and yet often overlooked, a mentor can quickly take your career and business to new heights. More than a mentor, an advisory board is preferred. These advisors will not only know how to build a brand that lasts, but they will be your cheerleaders when the journey gets tough. Their advice will not only be optimistic but rather practical because they have experienced failure and difficulties in their journey too.

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    Minimum Viable Product

    It might be tempting to add multiple features/ products/ services at the time of your launch, however, keeping things simple often is the best approach. Minimum viable products work best as they allow you to get feedback from actual target users rather than you perfecting and solving imaginary problems even before launching.

    Test Your Product/Service

    A business is only for its customers. Don’t solve a problem or give out services that are not asked for. It might be surprising, but many can get ahead of themselves and try to launch a product that is not needed in the present. So before going all out, ask for feedback from potential targeted audiences to understand the viability of your product/ service.

    A lot of us are reading the same books and following the same advice from traditional leaders. However, we need to follow the current trends and use a platform where most people are active. Such platforms can be Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Instagram, or even clubhouse. Remember, your product has to reach the audience before the audience can reach your product.

    Marketing/PR

    There is a common misconception that customers are attracted to good products, and hence one should focus on perfecting their product/service, and word of mouth is the only marketing one will need. While word of mouth is still one of the strongest marketing ways, marketing and PR have become quite necessary in a world where products are in abundance. PR strategies like garnering coverage in a digital or physical newspaper or a magazine can be very effective in increasing the reachability of your business.

    SEO

    SEO consistently is becoming important in the contemporary world of startups. Aiming to use appropriate SEO when posting digitally helps a long way in broadcasting your name in organic sales.

    Strong Sales Funnel

    While marketing and SEO can increase your organic sales, reaching out constantly to your customer base and getting leads is important. A strong sales funnel, and sales target will help you create a plan to grow your company at a steady rate.

    Create a Blue Ocean in Your Market

    The term “blue ocean” was coined in the entrepreneurship industry in 2005 to define a new industry with hardly any competition or barriers in the way of innovators. When a new or unknown sector or innovation appears, it creates a vast “empty ocean” of business options and opportunities. Hence try to create a blue ocean in your market and solve a problem that no one is solving.

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    Conclusion

    Apart from these tips, remember to keep trying new things in your entrepreneurial journey. All of the above-mentioned strategies were once a breakthrough idea in the startup world as well, so keep on learning and inventing; moreover, defining your “why” will keep you in the game even when the road gets tough. I hope these strategies help you during your venture.

  • 7 Best Growth Hacking Techniques for Startups in 2021

    Many business owners around the world have discovered that the key to success is not just on the merits of the idea or quality of their product but also on their ability to attract customers. If you can’t attract your customers, there

    With new startups being launched every day people are spinning around to try growth hacking strategies where the companies analyze and evaluate their customer base and then tirelessly pursue growth with that knowledge.

    Growth Hacking is an innovative and unorthodox way of getting massive results by eliminating old conventional methods. The ultimate goal of growth hacking techniques is to promote your product without putting additional input of your time and money. But before we start exploring the best growth hacking techniques for your startups, we need to first understand what growth hacking is.

    A great explanation of Growth Hacking for beginners

    What is Growth Hacking?
    7 Best Growth Hacking Techniques For Startups

    Conclusion
    FAQs

    What is Growth Hacking?

    Growth Hacking
    Growth Hacking

    Growth hacking is simply a marketing strategy that is based on market research and experiment. It is used to find out the most cost-effective ways to grow your business.

    In the process of growth hacking, you have to include different types of metrics such as data, design, development, engineering, analytics, and statistics. The reason why it is called Growth hacking is that this is the best marketing strategy a growth hacker can use to find the most groundbreaking, creative, and fast way to grow a startup.

    There are best growth hacking strategies used by Startup growth hackers. Some of them include blogging, guest posts, reverse engineering, A/B Testing, SEO, email marketing, video marketing, viral marketing, and other kinds of content marketing techniques.

    The term “Growth Hacking” was officially used by Sean Ellis, the founder of GrowthHackers, in 2010.

    Growth Hackers Website
    Growth Hackers, one of the best software for growth and marketing processes

    He defined a growth hacker as

    “A person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth”.

    Most of the time, Growth hackers are a crossbreed of marketers or coders or a person who has a deep knowledge of technology. They are the people who look at the conventional query of “How do I get customers for my product?”. They answer with viral factors, landing pages, open graphs, and email deliverability. A growth hacker should have problem-solving skills.

    Now you understood what growth hacking is. So let us see some of the ways how you can use it effectively to attract customers. Here we bring you a curated list of the 7 best growth hacking techniques for startups.

    7 Best Growth Hacking Techniques to boost your Startup

    Listed below are some Growth hacks which, if applied perfectly, can bring you a lot of customers.

    Have A Clearly Defined Goal

    As a Startup Growth hacker, you need to define your goal first. You have to identify the purpose of implementing business techniques for growth. You will also have to research your target market so that you will be able to know if you are doing everything right or not.

    Have a clear unique goal so that it can be further broken down into small achievable micro-goals. For example, goals like, how many customers do you need per week? Or how many leads do you need in a week?

    Defining your goal clearly will make it achievable as well as help you to get closer to success.

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    Incorporating sharing into its functionality

    One of the essential business techniques for Growth Hacking is to develop your small startup by incorporating sharing into its functionality. Sharing, here means that your content can be directly linked to social media platforms, granting your users to do the work of marketing for you.

    When people support something via social media, they are recommending it to their friends, increasing the chances that someone new will discover and check out your page or product.

    One company that implements this growth hacking strategy very successfully is Pinterest. This is an era of online marketing and you can use this as an advantage for your business. If your content is too good and has the power to go viral then you can easily build trust with your audience. This will also increase your social media engagement in long term.

    Affiliate Marketing Program

    If you want to get traffic to your website with a low budget, you can develop an affiliate section and invite people to register there. Once they register, they will be able to promote their affiliate link with their audience and make some money.

    This is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow a business. All you have to do is share a small part of your profit after you have a lead. Many big brands are using this strategy to grow their business like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc.

    In this process, you don’t have to worry about the traffic or audience because the affiliate marketer will promote your site to their audience. There are so many tools available that will help you to track the sale of each affiliate marketer and automate the distribution of commission. Some of the best Affiliate Management tools you can use are:

    • Everflow.io
    • AffTrack
    • Post Affiliate Pro
    • ImpactRadius
    • Refersion
    • LeadDyno

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    Incorporating Features into the Product to Encourage Sharing

    Incorporating CTAs into the product or content will serve as a physical reminder for existing customers to spread the word about your product, and this will naturally attract potential customers.

    If your company makes a certain product, one great way to aid in spreading its popularity is to incorporate a mechanism into the product to encourage them to share it or to create a companion product that encourages distribution.

    You can also offer rewards to your existing customers who share your content or refer your product with their friends. This way you can double the sale in lesser time. This method of marketing is called referral marketing and it is one of the most rapid methods of growth hacking that helps you to grow your business in a very short period of time.

    The Freemium Model

    One of the foremost ways to convert a potential customer into a paying customer is to offer free services or products and then market your main product through the free product.

    The free and paid products you offer should go well together with each other so that when people sign up or receive your free product or service, they also want to pay for the priced product or service.

    For example, Grammarly lets people use its app or extension for free but it keeps reminding the user that they can pay for their premium service to get an extra feature.

    Grammarly
    Grammarly

    This business model is called a Freemium model in which a company has both, a free and a premium product for the user. You can also offer a product at a lower cost to your target audience and then market your main product with the help of the first product.

    You now know that person is using your product, so he/she may get interested in your main product too. This is a method that is used by many Digital Marketers.

    The best thing about it is that it helps to get a large amount of traffic to your product or service. Once the sale is done, you can up-sell a high-ticket product. It is the best practice to take feedback from your users and make it the best product available in the market. it will help you to build trust among your audience.

    Piggybacking

    One of the innovative ways to grow your customer base quickly and easily is to piggyback on a company that already has tons of users. Piggyback marketing is to deal with a non-competing brand and advertise both the brands with the same piece of content or using other brand’s audiences to generate leads.

    Piggyback marketing
    Piggyback marketing

    If you are a new startup and you don’t have any target audience or customer base, you can piggyback on a company that is related to your business but is not your competitor. Piggyback is a marketing strategy used by some of the popular brands to get the adherence of the audience.

    One of the best examples of Piggybacking is PayPal. After piggybacking on eBay, PayPal got the attention of the users.

    Partner with the existing company

    If you are not in the favour of getting a piggyback ride with the other company then an easy way out is to make partners with an existing company advertise your brand.

    Partnering with a company will give you free marketing to the group of customers that they attract. In exchange, you will have to market their product or service to your audience.

    There can be some financial bonus involved in partnering with a company. These schemes will ensure that your company grows and reaches the perfect category of audience.

    Conclusion

    These were some of the Growth hacking techniques which companies use frequently to boost their sales. A startup can easily apply the same to market and grow their business.

    Growth hacking is a long-term process. So, even if you don’t see any solid results in the first few days, be patient, because if you have done it right, they will surely show some results.

    FAQs

    What is a growth strategy?

    A growth strategy is a plan of action that allows you to achieve a higher level of market share than you currently have and expanding your current user base.

    What does a growth marketer do?

    A growth marketer runs constant, iterative tests throughout the funnel, and uses the results to craft data-driven strategy updates that lift key performance metrics of the company.

    What are the four major growth strategies?

    There are four basic growth strategies you can employ to expand your business are:

    • Market penetration
    • Product development
    • Market expansion
    • Diversification

    What are the best growth hacking techniques for startups in 2021?

    The best growth hacking techniques for startups in 2021 are:

    • Have a clearly defined goal
    • Incorporating sharing into its functionality
    • Affiliate marketing program
    • Incorporating features into the product to encourage sharing
    • The Freemium Model
    • Piggybacking
    • Partner with the existing company

    What are growth hacking tools?

    Best growth hacking tools are:

    • Expandi.io
    • GrowthBar
    • Landbot.io
    • Zapier
    • CrystalKnows
    • Airtable

  • 9 Battle-Tested Hacks to Market your New Startup Organically

    Tushar Jain shares his marketing strategy during the first 3 months of his starting OnPage Champ, which is an SEO tool totally focused on on-page SEO.

    If you have a product startup like on Page Champ, the easiest thing you can do in your early days is to build the product features. However, this is probably not the best thing to do. It is always easier (and fun) to build features and get excited about your startup.

    At the same time, it is extremely difficult to market and sells those features. And since that’s the hard part, many founders keep focusing on the former while delaying the latter without realizing that they are elongating their go to market period.

    “Thanks to it, I had 100+ beta users within the first 2 weeks of my launch, saving me crucial time in collecting initial customer feedback and building features that my users are demanding.” – Tushar Jain.

    Growth Hacking Strategies for Startups
    Connect One to One For User Interviews
    Build your Marketing List
    Explore Quora For Building Website Traffic
    Write Content in your Niche
    Write Content Outside your Niche
    Start Building A Personal Brand On Social Media
    Engage Actively in Social Media Groups/Communities
    Connect Aggressively
    List of Industry-Specific Directories
    Conclusion

    Growth Hacking Strategies for Startups

    Connect One to One For User Interviews

    Your first marketing effort should always be towards interacting with your user group. Not only will this validate your idea but also get you your first few users (and customers) when you finally launch your product/service.

    Therefore, invest time in finding such people on social media groups, in your friend circle or through referrals. The world is full of people who are open to help you out. Check with them if they face a problem and validate if your solution can help them. This will also serve as initial feedback on how difficult it is going to be to sell your solution.

    Talking from my experience at OnPage-Champ, I spent the first 2 weeks of my startup journey finding and interviewing my target audience and collecting their feedback. I started product development only when I was sure that my target audience is facing challenges write on-page SEO and my SEO tool can help them.

    For example, read the interview notes of one of my target user.

    Interview Notes From A User
    Interview Notes From A User

    And 2.5 months down the line, all my 20 interviewees became my beta users when I finally launched my product. These people agreed to be interviewed because they were genuinely interested in my on-page SEO tool. All I had to do was keep them engaged and well informed about my progress.

    Build your Marketing List

    It’s a no brainer that you need to have a landing page once you start working on an idea. However, many people miss collecting email IDs of their website visitors. Start building your list and keep sending them regular updates. Even if you don’t have an update, there is no harm in just saying ‘Hello’. Do this even if you are a couple of months away from going live. Once you are ready to onboard users, this list will help you get early adopters. In my case, 25% of my email list converted to my beta users once I launched OnPage-Champ.

    Explore Quora For Building Website Traffic

    Start with answering questions on Quora right from day 1 of your startup launch, even if your product/service is still not available in the market. It takes time to generate traffic online, and Quora can be your saviour. If you take a strategic view of Quora, you will have people already visiting your website by the time you go live with your offering. And that too for some of the most competitive keywords in the industry where you won’t be able to rank on top of Google as a new business. Quora works brilliantly for both B2B and B2C businesses.

    However, I have found it to be specifically helpful for industries where the buying cycle is not impulse-based and the user actually does some secondary research before he makes a buying decision. Here’s one of my answers that got an auto boost from Quora and generated a lot of traffic for my website.

    The quora achievement after few days of work

    Write Content in your Niche

    If you want to grow organically, you need to have a focused content strategy to feed your SEO campaigns. Since SEO takes time to deliver results, you should be invested right from the start to produce quality content within your niche.

    This will serve 2 purposes:-

    • Content within your niche keeps the user engaged and feel confident about the brand
      he is interacting with.
    • It helps Google see you as a source of authority in that niche.

    Therefore, focus on writing quality and authoritative content.

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    Write Content Outside your Niche

    Writing content within your niche helps you establish authority. However, writing content outside of your niche helps you drive relationships and generate engagement. This works beautifully well when your target audience face the same issues as you are facing and they are looking for solutions.

    As an example, I write extensively on marketing and growth hacks, both on OnPage Champ blog as well as on 3rd party websites. That’s because my target audience consumes similar content. And such content marketing helps me establish brand visibility for OnPage Champ before my target audience gets formally exposed to the brand. This post on Startup Talky is done keeping the same logic in mind.

    Start Building A Personal Brand On Social Media

    As a new business, most of us tend to consider social media marketing equivalent to pushing our company updates down the social media timeline. That’s not the right way to do social media marketing for a startup. If you want to grow organically via social media, understand that people on social media trust the people they know; not the brands they don’t know.

    As a new business, lead from the front and focus on building your personal brand amongst your immediate network. Do some storytelling, celebrate your wins, laugh over your failures, talk about your learning; and make a human connection with your network. While you do all this, place your brand strategically in this storytelling.

    This will make your brand more noticeable; at the same time drive traffic to your website.

    Here’s the detailed blog post on how I used personal branding to market OnPage Champ during the first 3 months of starting.

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    Engage Actively in Social Media Groups/Communities

    If you are not active in social media groups, you are missing on a big traffic potential. There are focused social media communities where you can find not just great advice but also your target audience. Identify such communities and contribute actively.

    Once you launch your product/service, you can always request these communities to try out your product and offer feedback. In addition to some great suggestions, you get initial beta users for your business. Here’s an example of how I requested for initial feedback for OnPage Champ in one of the Facebook groups. As a result of this single post, I got more than 30 emails verified users for OnPage Champ.

    Engaging in Facebook Group

    Connect Aggressively

    When you engage with people on social media or online communities, add them to your network. You don’t just learn from them, you can also turn them into your paid customers and brand evangelists. Send them personalized emails/messages telling them why you are connecting with them.

    Once you are connected, engage with them by posting/liking/commenting on their posts. I am not saying you to fake anything, but be genuinely interested in their work or the problems they might be facing. Just stay in front of their eyes, and your personal branding will do the heavy lifting for you.

    List of Industry-Specific Directories

    Get yourself listed on industry-specific directories (like a beta band, beta list, SaasHub for SaaS businesses). While some of the platforms allow work-in-progress products to get listed, others want at least a private beta before they accept your submission. Understand the guidelines of each platform and do the submissions accordingly.

    Again, the idea is to generate traffic to feed your email list or get signups for your product, by the time you launch.

    Conclusion

    While this post is all about marketing or marketing hacks for startup, I am not saying to ignore building your product or service. But understand that it’s your ability to sell that defines your success. Therefore, don’t wait for that perfect moment to start marketing. Frankly, that moment will never come. Especially when most of the businesses market digitally, the right time to start your digital marketing effort is always NOW.

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    FAQs

    What is growth hack marketing?

    Growth hacking is a relatively new field in marketing focused on growth. It started in relation to early-stage startups who need massive growth within a short time on tight budgets, also reached bigger corporate companies. Growth hacking may focus on lowering cost per customer acquisition, or on long-term sustainability.

    What is Startup Growth Hacker?

    In marketing terms, growth hacking means to implement non-traditional marketing strategies that are driven by creativity and data to get massive results fast, all the while spending little to no money on getting these results. Growth hacking is often used by early-stage startups that are bootstrapped for funds.

    What are the Startup Marketing Ideas?

    Some Startup Marketing Ideas:

    • Use paid ads to build a community.
    • Try social media to connect with customers.
    • Crowdfunding marketing, which can generate press.
    • Host a virtual meetup instead of a conference.
    • Use user-generated content to tell your story.
    • Create SEO-optimized content to attract high-intent visitors.
    • Implement a referral program.

    How do you start a successful marketing campaign?

    Steps To Launch a Successful Marketing Campaign:

    • Do Your Research.
    • Know Your Audience.
    • Put a Plan In Place.
    • Give Yourself Enough Time.
    • Ask For Help.
    • Evaluate and Adapt In Real-Time