Three Ways A Marketing Plan Can Help Your Company PreLaunch
When I started my first startup, marketing costs were always high. We always had something to say and used different marketing channels to grow the business. It's the brand equity that is considered most valuable when I sell, otherwise we may have to close without an acquisition.
Since then, I've worked with many startups, and I've noticed that marketing often gets sidetracked when it comes to priorities. Founders are often out of work and busy fixing their underperforming products, fixing bugs, and finding partnerships. I tell them that if done right, it can be a great tool to support the launch and growth of a new business, even before marketing begins.
Design a marketing plan
A marketing plan is similar to a business plan. Defines marketing strategies, defines target audience and includes objectives, budget and actions. But a marketing plan involves more than just preparing for sales—a good marketing plan should include activities before, during, and after the latest product launch. Here are three ways businesses can use marketing plans.
1. Define your target audience
Marketing plans help companies identify demographics such as age, location, income, and job type, which audiences they can target. For every business I start, I write a concise and actionable business plan. It forces me to get out of the weeds and figure out where my business is, how it's doing in today's competitive landscape, and whether it's still targeting the right audience .
Think about who your audience is when filling out the plan. To better define your target audience, answer the following questions: What is the main product/service and solution your company offers? Who will benefit most from what you have to offer? What pain points are helping your business or obstacles to overcome?
2. To raise public awareness and interest
Marketing is about finding the right audience and delivering the right message at the right time. How and where to navigate is not an easy task. There are more marketing channels than ever, but each can help you reach your target audience. You need to think about what works best - maybe PR, search marketing, social media advertising or banners. Before subscribing to a channel, it is important to identify your core audience. If your business sells lunch kits for kids, your target audience might be parents, and social media, bloggers, and PR people might be the best way to reach them. If you're a construction company trying to reach homebuilders, it allows you to deliver one marketing message across multiple channels and platforms through mainstream trade publications or digital integration.
Once you've identified your audience, spend time looking at where your customers are consuming media (Google is a great tool for this). Then make it your priority marketing channel.
3. Increasing opportunities to find investors
We can't all be on the shark tank . But that doesn't mean we can't accommodate investors.
In addition to identifying your target audience, marketing plans can identify strategies for getting your business in front of venture capitalists, strategic partners, and other audiences that can help your business grow. By implementing targeted promotional efforts at trade centers, financial media and bloggers, the right plan can raise awareness of the startup that investors are looking at. For example, if your company takes off, prepare a press release and send it to investor-oriented blogs like VentureBeat.
Implement your marketing plan
Once you've completed the steps to create a marketing plan, it's time to develop your messages and get them out into the world. A press release may be the best way to do this. Banner advertising is another option. Or you can create a constant feed of content on your blog and promote it on social media.
Because each company's marketing plan is designed to meet its specific marketing and business goals, there is never a cookie-cutter solution. But once you understand this delivery method, the tools are there to help you execute your message and deliver it to your target audience. For example, in the past my company used tools like Help A Reporter Out, Canva, and Buffer to get their messages out to startups.
Marketing may sound complicated, but it is an important part of any successful business and is worth the time and investment. I have worked for many companies from start-ups to international corporations; I never take a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing because it is important to develop a plan that will help each company achieve its goals and objectives. The more a business embraces and tries to sell itself, the more successful it will be.
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