{"id":911,"date":"2013-09-26T17:31:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T17:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.markerly.com\/?p=911"},"modified":"2013-09-26T17:31:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T17:31:41","slug":"the-wildly-successful-marketing-secrets-of-startups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/the-wildly-successful-marketing-secrets-of-startups\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wildly Successful Marketing Secrets of Startups"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Typically, startups are lean with a limited supply of money, talent, and time, meaning
\nthey don’t have resources to throw around willy-nilly. While this can induce panicky feelings
\nfor a lot of business owners, the upside is that it automatically forces burgeoning startups to<\/em>
\nwield the resources they do have sharply and intelligently.<\/em><\/p>\n

This balancing act can get a bit tricky when it comes to marketing, because the internet
\nhas enabled an absolutely ludicrous array of options, opinions, and ideas to spring up. Get a
\nwebsite up! Contact investors! Use Pinterest! Start a YouTube channel! It’s easy to become
\noverwhelmed by the sheer scope of modern marketing and completely lose your head.<\/p>\n

But focus! There are simple rules to keep in mind to craft the best marketing plan
\npossible that fits your business. Any company’s product or service is built around a specific
\ntarget audience, right? No matter how long your company’s been around or how much money
\nit brings in, make sure your marketing is specifically targeted to your demographic as well, or
\nit will flounder. While keeping in mind that your approach should be tailored to suit your
\naudience, use these tips to make your marketing the best it can be!<\/p>\n

Follow Mint’s Shining Example<\/h1>\n

\"mintlogo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mint<\/a>, a personal financial management service started in 2006, was built around the
\nyoung professional demographic their chief marketer,\u00a0Noah Kegan<\/a>, thought was being
\nneglected, and they aimed their content marketing accordingly with huge success. Behold,
\ntheir secrets…Quality Content<\/p>\n

Take a look at their MintLife blog<\/a> yourself, and tell me if
\nyou don’t get sucked in by their entertaining, oh-so-easy-on-the-eyes infographics, and their
\nfriendly, direct, and helpful writing. Mint made sure to only engage quality writers and
\nillustrators, both in-house and freelance. A lot of companies trip themselves up by going for
\nquantity over quality and turning off many potential customers with low-grade content.
\nRemember that while quality content marketing may be a long game, it yields undeniable
\nresults.<\/p>\n

Variety of Content<\/h2>\n

Knowing well how to appeal to their customer base of young internet-savvy
\nprofessionals, Mint uses a variety of media to engage and hold their interest. Their blog
\ndoesn’t have just articles, but also videos, infographics, and slideshows, which keeps their site
\nfresh and a pleasure to share with others.<\/p>\n

Social Channels<\/h2>\n

To build up trust,\u00a0Mint spread their content out to well-known social channels like Digg<\/em>
\nand Reddit and even more commendably, did it well<\/em>. For the uninitiated, these social sharing
\nsites can be tricky to navigate and come out the other end with positive feedback, especially
\nReddit. Mint managed to pull it off by genuinely engaging with readers of both sites. (Hint:
\ndon’t be spammy.)<\/p>\n

Metrics<\/h2>\n

Mint also relentlessly used carefully selected metrics to track the reactions to their
\ncontent, and then used that knowledge to pursue what was working and drop what wasn’t.
\nThis means they were constantly improving on what they’d done before.<\/p>\n

But don’t make the mistake of thinking the benefits of quality content marketing is a
\none-way street. Content marketing benefits your company hugely as well, by allowing you to
\nengage intelligently and consistently with your community, and make sure you are always
\nthinking about next steps to self-improve and evolve.<\/p>\n

Quality content marketing is infectious. Heck, sometimes I’ll sign up for a service I might not
\neven use, just because of how appreciative I am for that company’s content. Simply signing up
\nfor their service makes me more likely to be a paying customer in the future or pass along
\nword of it to others who may convert to profitable users themselves. The same principle
\napplies to the pricing of e-books which (at an average of $3-4) sell for drastically cheaper than
\npaper books. Why is that? Even if customers don’t actually read the book, the low price means
\nthey don’t have much to lose in purchasing it, and just the simple act of acquisition means you
\nare more likely to spread the word to other potential customers.<\/p>\n

\"contentgoogleking\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Be Creative<\/h2>\n

Don’t limit yourself in the terms of how you interact with your user base. In a sea of
\nbusinesses and other startups jockeying for recognition, why should they choose you? Stand
\nout (in a good way) and your audience will be delighted with and appreciate your extra effort.<\/p>\n

Be Purposeful<\/h2>\n

As stated before, with limited resources none of your efforts should go to waste. Even if
\nyou HAVE oodles of resources, don’t be careless with them.<\/p>\n

Be Thoughtful<\/h2>\n

Consider your future courses of action carefully. Letting your ideas incubate and then
\nacting accordingly will benefit you much more than trying out new fads at random. Having a
\nsmart team with similar values and a solid grasp on what’s important to your company’s
\ngrowth really helps with this.<\/p>\n

Be Aggressive<\/h2>\n

Don’t be afraid to really put yourself out there. You have a lot of competition, after all,
\nand you won’t reach your goals by being passive in your efforts.<\/p>\n

Always Fine-tune<\/h2>\n

Pursue strategies that have proven results and prune out what isn’t working. This will
\nkeep your company a solid marketing foundation to build off of and keep operations efficient.<\/p>\n

In the end, it simply comes down to being a valued resource, which means being trusted,<\/strong>
\nreliable, smart, entertaining, and helpful.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span> Typically, startups are lean with a limited supply of money, talent, and time, meaning they don’t have resources to throw around willy-nilly. While this can induce panicky feelings for a lot of business owners, the upside is that it automatically forces burgeoning startups to wield the resources they do have sharply and intelligently. This balancing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[6,10,19,34,124,141],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.markerly.com\/pulse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}