You’ve come up with an idea and you need to get the business momentum behind it. Where do you start when it comes to telling the external world, or your prospects and investors at least, that you exist? How do you, other than LinkedIn and your network of contacts, build your ecosystem, and drive traffic and credibility to create a momentum of your own?
Here are just five considerations when looking at embarking on your marketing efforts.
More for less: maximise your budget
There’s a perception that to manage a good campaign you need vast funds for marketing. The simple fact is you need some good ideas and effective implementation. You might be thinking: “I’m only just at the startup or scaleup stage, I don’t have money to invest in a senior marketing person”. Well, consider this: while a scaleup agency might cost the same as a junior hire, it gives you access to more of the skills you need all under one roof. The reality is, you created your business for a purpose and that story needs to be told, so it’s about finding the most cost-effective and results-driven way to do it.
Amplifying differentiation with the power of storytelling
Which brings me onto this very point. Business building is a lot about storytelling. When Salesforce launched, the reason the business flew, to begin with, is that it proclaimed the ‘End of Software’ via a pan UK-US PR campaign. Apart from being a brilliant idea, the concept would not have travelled without PR (and back then the seven-person team in Europe also didn’t have the monumental marketing spend it has today).
The message is master of all, and if you’ve come up with a business idea for a market need, you will have one. You may or may not need help to articulate it — which is where a little bit of external expertise and shaping comes in — but you will need help for it to be promoted, amplified and told in as many creative ways as possible.
Issues, not products harness media attention
Linked to the above, your product or service is not the story, but the issues it solves is. Either a really quirky application or a customer application will be the story to get you on the way. Journalists will not write about a new product, but they will write about a story of how AI is being used to calculate sperm count, for example (CommsCo is writing this right now, hence it being front of mind!). Sometimes you’ll need to gather some data quickly to assess your audience and have some data on why they might be in need of your business. Creating quarterly campaigns supported by these assets should be the bread and butter required for your marketing efforts.
Maximised impact and website traction
The result of amplification should bring your website to life, through backlinks and inbound marketing. A good agency or marketer will be able to advise on SEO and use your Google Analytics to measure impact — and, ideally, a little bit of external activity will go a long way to deliver peaks in activity.
PR to solve key issues
Finally, if your business is facing other challenges, like the hunt for good talent or funding, you might not have considered using PR to solve these. But a targeted and tailored effort can do both. Marketing and PR output is as good as the input it receives, so a good founder briefing to marketing or PR people can work wonders and generate the next stream of content. This can be a case of simply creating a thought leadership piece or an idea for a profile or founder, whether that’s a podcast or article.
Finally, nothing beats mutual passion and energy in your business. Recently, a small consultancy approached us for PR and marketing support, and they happen to consult in AI. Just a flurry of phone calls and outbound pitches secured them 10 external opportunities in 5 days. That will result in a sudden hike in profiles, backlinks and, obviously, awareness. Find a partner who really gets who you are and what you stand for. If they want to tell your story, then it’s not even about the money, because the magic has already taken over.
This is a sponsored article by Commsco. For partnering opportunities, contact [email protected] or [email protected]
