First, congratulations on getting funding!
You’ve done a lot of hard work to get this far, but now you may be wondering, what’s next?
One of the first things you should consider is how you plan to market your product or service offering for long-term business growth. Here are some steps to get started with your marketing after you just got funded.
1. Get to know your target market.
The first step is to learn more about your market. At this point, you’ve probably already chosen your target consumers – or maybe they’ve chosen you. But how much do you really know about them?
In addition to looking at market size, competition, and your value proposition, you also need to consider consumer demographics, values, and buying behaviors, as this will all inform your marketing strategy.
The more you know about your target market, the more successful you’ll be with your campaigns. In addition to looking at general market trends, you can also use surveys and interviews as a way to gather more information about your ideal customers.
2. Identify what success looks like.
Once you know who you’re targeting and what they care about, you’ll need to determine how you’ll measure the success of your marketing campaigns.
Without goals or metrics to measure these goals, you’re basically marketing blind. For example, let’s say you want to launch a social media campaign. The goal of the campaign will help you determine what types of content to post and what metrics to look at to measure success.
Improving brand recognition and boosting sales are two entirely different goals that will require different strategies and success metrics.
3. Choose your tactics.
Now that you know your customers and what you hope to accomplish with your marketing campaigns, you can choose which tactics you’ll use to reach your target customers.
From email marketing to social media, there are so many tactics available to the modern marketer.
The key to choosing the right tactics for your startup is considering which of them appeal to your target market and provide the best return on investment (ROI) for your marketing spend. Start by doing some research into different tactics, how they can be used to reach customers, and how much they cost long-term. This will help you make a smarter decision about which tactics are most helpful.
4. Develop a budget.
Now, it’s time to develop a marketing budget.
While putting together your budget, start with how much you can afford to spend on marketing. Then, consider what will be the best use of this budget, taking into account the typical ROI for each of your marketing tactics. Make sure that you determine what percentage of your budget will be used for each tool or tactic before you start spending. Otherwise, you may overspend!
5. Get started!
Now that you know your audience, which tactics you’ll use to reach them, how you’ll measure success, and how much to spend, it’s time to get started implementing your first marketing campaign.
If you’re planning to run all your marketing in-house then it’ll be important to decide who manages each task. An alternative is to partner with a marketing agency for implementation so that your in-house resources can focus on other tasks that are vital to launching the business. These decisions always come down to resources, timelines, and budgets.