Investing in Future Startup Entrepreneurs? Focus Instead on a Killer Marketing Plan

“Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.” -- Mary Kay Ash

Isn’t this one of the greatest quotes you’ve heard lately, and so true! These days, everyone is hoping to become an entrepreneur. Needless to say, you’ll find many young entrepreneurs thriving with great ideas looking for ways to launch their first startup. You can’t blame them. A stage where the product-market is yet to be found and testing is still unbridled, the journey is still a challenge. Remember there’s no golden ticket to success when starting a new business.

• Too often, there’s a possibility of startups failing in their first attempt by 75%, statistics based on a Harvard Business School study by Shikhar Ghosh.
• In another study by Statistic Brain, “Startup Business Failure Rate by Industry,” a failure rate of over 50% of all companies in the U.S. was estimated for five years, and 70% after ten years.

What went wrong?

Running a business without a strategy is equal to breathing air without oxygen. A major reason why even a startup needs to have a concrete business strategy framework they can to follow. Most often these entrepreneurs lack focus, motivation, lack general and domain-specific knowledge and at times take too much pride that further leads to failure. At another data-driven analysis of 101 startup postmortems by CB Insights, significant reasons were quoted where factors such as lack of business model, poor marketing strategies, and poor products were pointed out. Dwelling on a bad business strategy can sap resources and kill your startup idea. Even so, it can leave employees frustrated due to a lack of progress. As Miyamoto Musashi, legendary Japanese swordsman says,

“Perception is strong and sights weak. In strategy, it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.”

To run a good startup, you must position yourself as a business strategist, an entrepreneur looking to pursue the destiny envisioned. If you’re all set to jumpstart your entrepreneurial journey, here’s a helpful pitch deck tips you need to follow right now: -

1. Create a defined goal

Nobody embarks a road trip without setting a destination, it is practically impossible. In the same manner, you need to create a defined business goal.

• How do you relate with your target prospects on social media platforms?
• Is there a strategy to increase the traffic on your profile?
• How do you define on planning the relevant strategy on generating leads for your business?
• What are the goals you wish to accomplish in three years, five years or perhaps ten years?

Do you have all these sorted out? If not, when do you plan on doing them? There are multiple business strategy framework and techniques a startup can use to analyze their competitors.

2. Identify the right social media platform for your startup

Multiple startup entrepreneurs understand the power of social media marketing, yet very few understand its importance. Each social media platform serves a different and unique purpose. You just need to identify your kind of customer and audience, then engage with them differently.

• Instagram acts as a great tool for native advertisements. The algorithm developed here is optimized for valued content. If your content is valuable, you’ll naturally gain followers of your target customers.
• Facebook. Everybody knows Facebook as the powerhouse of social media. You will find all kinds of audiences over here, but you’re not looking to build a business with all of them. Thus, you need to determine the right kind of audience and try to reach out to them.
• Twitter is one of its kind. Talking of consistency, you need to start with twitter for consistency in business.

3. Your target audience - have you defined them?

How do you expect to send the right message to the right kind of audience without defining the target audience? Despite having a great business plan, product, and service it is futile to define the success of your business. To get started, you first need to: -

• Scan for the basic demographics of your target prospect such as age, gender, and location.
• Based on research made establish your brands’ message.
• Learn the art of relating your audience by analyzing their behavior such as shopping and pricing preferences.

4. How consistent are you with building a brand and sending out the right message?

Consistency, a startups brand, and message cannot be overemphasized. It is often assumed that consistency is majorly focused on the larger enterprises. It is wrong, consistency is equally important even for startups or smaller businesses. It is a major key skill that can instill confidence and credibility for your customers over a period.

5. Build a professional relationship with influencers

Customers are important and so are the influencers. They’re those sets of people your target audience wishes to listen to daily. These influencers could be anyone from radio personalities to hosts of YouTube channels.

6. Develop a referral network

Being a business strategist it is evident you understand marketing effectively. One of the most powerful techniques of advertising is word-of-mouth, especially for a smaller business. Not to mention, people make purchases based on trust and credibility. Referral works is a two-way process: -

1. Deliver top-quality results to clients and customers.
2. Ask for feedback, remember asking for feedback is a great way to establish credibility and learn about customers’ expectations and their needs.

Build your killer marketing plan so big that it excites everyone to thrive toward your vision.