New companies need to carefully think about their marketing strategies to capture customers, but this is definitely not an easy task, especially when considering that you are competing with not only the incumbents but also with millions of other marketing messages that are targeting the same customer as you are.
Due to the tremendous amount of data available, digital marketing is a very powerful tool to enable startups target their right audience at the right channel and at an affordable price. According to Elena Sava, a digital evangelist, "I advocate leveraging digital tools in every marketing strategy (...) used smartly, small players can compete against the big players that have a hundred times your spending power ".
However, this does not happen in every industry and is still way below the potential it could achieve. Elena interviewed three startup experts and found out that those in the retail environment are usually more used to designing a go to market strategy, including a digital plan. On the other hand, technology startups tend to primarily focus in the product and only after they finish it they start thinking about promotion and sales. In both cases, entrepreneurs fail to understand the impact that Digital Marketing can achieve in their companies if implemented since the beginning or used at its full potential. One of Sava's interviewees, Ksenia Tugay, who was Director of Marketing at Mass Challenge Switzerland, confirmed this point of view saying that “I have not yet heard of an early stage startup that has invested into digital marketing (...) apart from probably website development.” .
Potential uses for digital marketing include increase awareness, understand the best channels to talk to your customer, help to design/prioritize products features by testing different alternatives with customers or just brand building. Nevertheless, new companies overlook the potential profits these tools could bring to the business when exploring the digital world. Tugay mentions that “very few startups leverage ‘cold calling’ and some are completely ignorant regarding ‘newsletters. Usually, they leverage LinkedIn and Twitter, however, they are often confused about choosing the best channels to communicate to their target audience (unless, of course, they have a marketing professional on the team)”.
When analyzing the startups struggles, Sava said that "the feedback from our experts was loud and clear". She pointed out that "while startups are capable of defining a value proposition, they have difficulties on defining a ‘Go to Market’ strategy and a marketing strategy, including social media. They are struggling to select the best channels to be activated and distribute their message."
Therefore, the coming entrepreneurs should value the potential of digital marketing, use it since the early stages to help define the right Go to market strategy and even leverage this powerful tool to shape the product according to the target customer preferences.
Source: https://www.gbnews.ch/digital-marketing-startup/
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