Startup marketing tools every small business can use – part 5

by Jeffrey Walker | May 16, 2014

The process of growing a startup has come a long ways in the last 10 years. Unlike the old days when putting up a new business would require considerable amounts of market research, an elaborate business plan, a long and complicated product development cycle, a beta testing process, and product launch (and oh, did we forget to mention fund raising!), innovators today can literally launch a new product in a matter of days.

In this series we’ve explored some of the powerful marketing tools that help make these fast-paced launches possible. MailChimp is the path for getting your email marketing campaign started and moving into high gear. Unbounce helps you throw up a landing page and to test two or more versions to find which converts the most customers. ShortStack lets you build, manage, and promote Facebook apps to develop your customer base. And in yesterday’s post we learned how LaunchRock saves you lots of time and money by using the “launching soon” page to test if a product idea is a good one or not.

And so in this final segment we just want to circle back around to the fundamental questions we started out with to make sure we develop a connection point between the marketing tools we’ve discussed and their application to the real, everyday needs of the struggling startup or relatively new business. How do we implement an effective marketing strategy for the small business? How do we put into practice a set of guidelines to build our brand, sell our services, and gain new customers? At this point we want to provide a few final takeaways to help you to start actively thinking about the marketing gameplan.

If someone was to stop you in the elevator and ask you the following questions, offered courtesy of Constant Contact, how would you do? Would you be able to clearly articulate your online marketing strategy:

• How will new customers find your business online?
• How will you stay top-of-mind and build relationships with new and existing customers?
• How will you get customers to come back and do business with you again and again?
• How will you encourage them to tell their friends/connections about your business so you reach new customers?
• How will you evaluate your success and make smarter choices?

Each of these questions must have a correspondingly clear answer that is put into practice:

• Do whatever it takes for your business to be found online
• Make sure you find a way to stay in contact with new and existing customers
• Create a strategy to do repeat business with your customers
• Encourage people to engage and interact with your business online
• Use analytics to measure your success

Marketing success does not just magically happen. It takes a combination of planning, strategizing, the adoption and use of the right tools, and a disciplined approach to doing whatever it takes to please your customers. Fortunately, there is a fairly simple axiom that always holds true; namely, that whenever your customers are happy, business success won’t be far away. So, in a nutshell, just aim to please your customers! Once you go out of your way to make them happy, everything else will fall right into place.