Product Marketing Strategies Every Startup Should Adopt In 2019

In the erstwhile days before the world became a small town, businesses only had a local competition to worry about. There was the tea-selling family business around the corner, the newly opened magazine stall next to you, and a variety of other small businesses that served the local population. In short, you had a monopoly in your trade.

Now the scenario is different.

The internet is the global marketplace where a shop in Japan and one in your neighborhood is equally near and equally far. As a startup, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. How do you make your product stand out? How do you attract customers and inspire loyalty in them? How do you market without coming off as overly salesy? These are important questions especially since Nasdaq estimated that by 2040, 95% of purchases will be through e-commerce.

Drumroll, please. You use the following product marketing strategies every startup should adopt in 2019.

Product Marketing Strategies For Startups In 2019

Most of the strategies listed here might be the ones that you frequently find on marketing blogs. Do not skim over them, however. There is a reason these strategies are omnipresent. It’s because they work. So, read through each one carefully, and ask yourself: am I implementing this to its fullest potential?

Niche Down

Before we get down to anything practical, look at your customer persona and analyze if it is specific enough.

The internet has opened up a world of potential customers. Most startups use this blessing to keep compounding losses. How? By marketing to everyone.

Yes, that’s right. Everyone is not your market. And all your marketing efforts- paid or unpaid- are going to fail if you don’t correct this approach from the get-go.

Hence, niche down. Define your audience more clearly than you ever have. Instead of branding and marketing yourself as ‘an online clothing store’, why not go with ‘online clothing store with ethically made products’ or ‘online clothing store with formal clothing for females’? The more specific you are, the more easily your ideal customers will find you – and make a purchase.

Sub: Hello Customer!

According to DM News, the best method for generating leads is the regular, tried-and-tested email marketing! Out of all marketing strategies, it still continues to deliver the highest ROI.

Instead of sending out a generic email to all the subscribers in your list (and garnering unsubscriptions in response), how about employing e-marketing marketing tactics to reap results? After all, 61% of consumers want to be contacted by brands via email (surprise, surprise).

Personalization goes a long way in getting the subscriber to open emails. The resulting open rate can be as much as 26%. If you aren’t doing it, you can automate your emails which will boost revenue by 320%. And instead of sending out a one-size-fits-all email, if you take the time to properly segment your mailing list and craft relevant emails for each segment, you can expect a 760% increase in your revenue.

If you had to watch your mailing list reduce by the day, here are tips that will help you get back and win in the email marketing game.

Content Marketing

The 2018 Content Preferences Survey Report found that 71% of the surveyed users claimed that they parsed blog content while making a purchase. 40% of the respondents said that they went through 3-5 pieces of content before directly contacting a sales rep. ‘Content is king’ might be a cliche – but it’s still true.

The era of explosive blogging has passed, but when someone utters the word ‘content’, people still get a flash of a 1000 word articles. No, content is not only that you put on the blog.

It includes images, videos, BTS shots, memes, people/brands that you recommend, and even the testimonials and reviews you put out. In fact, 46% of people will place more value on customer reference than on media articles. Make sure to include as much video content as possible – since in some cases, it increases organic traffic by up to 157%.

The results of your content marketing efforts will not go to waste either. For every dollar, content marketing generates 3x the leads than paid advertising.

Social Media

‘If you build it, they’ll come’ is a myth in the realm of sales. If you don’t go to them, they’ll choose a brand who did. And having realized the truth of this, most brands have set up homes where their customers hang out all day these days- social media.

Online stores that are also present on social media have an average of 32% more sales than those without a social presence. You can use social media to build a repository of visual content which is an unfailing hit with customers. 43% of people actually want to see more video content from marketers. If you don’t want to flood your website with it, you can use social media to post it on the regular.

Also, instead of migrating to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, go to some non-traditional social media websites like Quora and Reddit. It is easy to find your niche audience on these websites while building authority and leadership at the same time. Plus, you really get to engage with your customers and discover their pain points which can help you in deciding which product to launch next.

Remarketing

If your focus on always expanding the horizons of your business without deepening your relationship with existing customers, then you could be missing out on a huge chunk of potential profit.

You see, 30% of people would rather return to a website they’ve purchased from in the past. This means that the sales journey is significantly shortened since you’ve already established trust with these people. They used your product and they know your brand now. The next time you offer them something, they are more likely to buy it. Use email marketing for implementing this strategy and you’ll rope in more sales than you thought possible.

It costs 5-6 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Loyal customers are worth 10x more after their first purchase. Go get ‘em!

At the end of the day, keep this in mind: have a relationship not a transaction with your customer – be human; be kind. The rest are just strategies and tools to implement these principles. Combined, your venture will go places and expand far beyond the vision you set for it.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.