Developing and executing a marketing strategy is just as important as the product development itself. For startups and small businesses, there are unique aspects that founders must consider in order to create a successful one for their companies.
According to our sources, Handmade Heroes founder Lynsey Lim and IQM Quantum Computers Head of Asia Pacific Business Raghunath Koduvayur, these differences range from budgeting to speed of execution.
“There are many differences as there are a lot of moving parts and uncertainties. In a startup, things are always changing around product, budget, resources, and customer understanding, to name a few. A startup marketing team is also trying to communicate to a diverse set of audiences, including customers, partners, investors and so on,” Koduvayur says.
“Tailoring campaigns to a niche audience maximises impact while minimizing costs,” Lim says. “Social media is also a budget-friendly tool; creating organic content aligned with audience interests, like blog posts and infographics, enhances engagement. Encouraging user-generated content and collaborating with micro-influencers further amplify reach and credibility.”
The two sources share in an email interview with e27 the strategy that they are using to market their products—and what goes behind it.
It started with understanding the factors that make a good marketing strategy.
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“A good startup marketing strategy maximises your strengths, rallies your organisation towards a common direction and should also work towards different target groups – investors, analysts, media, prospective employees and others,” Koduvayur says.
“Clarity in planning, thinking and execution with well-defined goals that align with the overall business plans makes for a good marketing strategy.”
“For Handmade Heroes, a good marketing strategy is one that is effective, ethical, and sustainable. It should be based on a deep understanding of your target audience, their needs, and their pain points. It should also be consistent in messaging and branding and have a long-term vision for brand building,” Lim says.
“A good marketing strategy should also be flexible and adaptable. The market is constantly changing, so your marketing strategy needs to be able to change with it. You also need to be able to adapt your strategy to different channels and platforms.”
Working on a marketing strategy
When it comes to building a marketing strategy, despite differences in execution, Koduvayur points out that there are principles that every kind of company shares, regardless of their size: Understanding customer needs, market research, business objectives, unique value proposition, measure, and optimise.
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“For example, at IQM Quantum Computers, we were very clear from the beginning that we wanted to sell our products to high-performance computing centres and national research labs. What made it difficult is the long sales cycles, complex product and customer readiness to purchase expensive quantum systems,” he says.
“In our marketing, we made strategic choices around – product marketing, branding, events, media relations, analyst relations and content marketing. These choices and disciplined execution have helped us accelerate our leadership journey from a small startup in Finland to becoming a global leader in quantum computing.”
As a company that sells skincare products through online channels, Handmade Heroes’s marketing strategy is built around two key approaches. “First, we prioritise content creation, crafting engaging and informative posts on social media platforms. This strategy helps us connect with our audience, share our brand’s story, and present our products in compelling ways.”
“Additionally, as we retail on Amazon.com, we’ve embraced pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This avenue enables us to extend our reach to a broader audience and direct traffic to our products. These combined efforts shape our effective marketing approach.”
Koduvayur and Lim share examples of successful marketing strategies from their own businesses.
“Over the last three years, our marketing strategy was to sell on-premises quantum computers to high-performance computing centres and national research labs. Our differentiators were systems with the best performance, full access to the hardware, co-located, which are upgradeable in the future,” Koduvayur begins.
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“We started with two marketers in 2020, and now we have built a team of six marketers (the company has grown from 20 employees to almost 300 employees). Still, almost all of our marketing work is done in-house with zero agency costs and very minimal paid marketing spend.”
Koduvayur highlights that the company’s strategy is tightly aligned with its business strategy to become a global technology leader. “We made strategic choices around product marketing, branding, analyst relations, investor relations and leadership communication.”
Lim shares how a successful campaign helps the company build an image of a skincare brand that fosters confidence and embraces unique beauty. “We mirror this in our campaigns, spotlighting everyday women as heroes of their lives. An instance is our ‘Heroes like Her’ and ‘Beauty Warrior’ campaigns emphasising self-care’s strength and the hero within everyone.”
An endless learning process
For founders who wish to learn more about creating and executing a good marketing strategy, Koduvayur and Lim share resources, tools, and opportunities that founders can use to learn more about this.
“Find good startup mentors, join an entrepreneurs’ network or mentoring programme … and hire a marketer as one of your first employees. Building a brand is equally important as building a great product, and you cannot build a successful startup with one without the other,” he explains.
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He also warns founders to stay away from “vanity” and irrelevant metrics. “At IQM, for example, we follow the social media metrics, but our marketing team is measured for sales. There is no shortcut to building a successful startup brand, and agencies alone can’t fix it for you.”
Lim sees learning opportunities that can be found in various online channels such as YouTube, podcasts, and webinars.
“Amazon Global Selling has an Amazon Seller University with vast resources and webinars to help new entrepreneurs learn,” she closes.
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Image Credit: RunwayML
This article was first published on October 12, 2023.
The post Unlocking marketing success for startups and small businesses: Strategies for excellence appeared first on e27.
