Startups vs established company marketing | Is there or should there be a different approach?
I am not a marketing expert in any way, I just want to put a question I had out there.
Although it's possible for startups to take marketing ideas from major players, can they really work ?
Startups that are in the process of making often can't be fully sure if there is a market share for what they are building. Hence why they sometimes have to pivot to establish product fit. What have you seen or experienced works for startups that different from the norm ? Would love to hear your views.
Startups should really focus on organic traffic in the beginning. Especially, if there is a low to no budget for advertisement yet.
There are many free tools, tips, tricks, and even videos on how to grow through SEO & Socials.
Totally agree. We tried brute-forcing our way with paid ads and it was a disaster.
Nowadays we invest in content marketing and social media marketing.
It may take longer to see results, but this approach is more sustainable and pays off handsomely over time.
💯
Starups and Established companies both have different problems:
1.) Established companies already have good amount of awareness.
2.) They can afford/sustain super high cost of media budget.
Startups can't follow same path. Depending upon situation they are in:
They can start with just focused on Sales to only Bottom of the funnel marketing content.
One of the classis extreme example is: Siebel vs Salesforce. Hiring protestors, and all taxis in Siebel conferance for press release and awareness.
Hey @marketingchai, I wasn't aware of the Siebel & Salesforce, yup thats extreme.
But more importantly Thanks for your insight that there is a difference and that startups have to approach at the bottom of the funnel to start rising up 🌱
Hey there! I have been doing marketing for about 7 years (Buffer and ReferralCandy), and I personally think there are quite a lot of differences between marketing for different company sizes.
For example, while it is important to invest in seo early, it doesn’t make sense to do it before you have found the right product or market to work on.
My friend and I are working on Dashibase (https://dashibase.com/), and I'm learning that my experiences at more established companies are not always applicable to new companies, especially pre-product/market fit.
And as always, what works for others might not work for you. Context matters :)
Hey Alfredlua,
Thanks for the SEO example, this is exactly the type of subtle distinction that I have come across as well. I think startups really have a chance to start with a great grassroot marketing based on their product niche. This I feel is can be very exciting as well confusing to figure out. I suppose that the gift and curse of doing a startup but yeah Thank you for your sharing your experience and all the best with Dashibase 🚀
You're welcome, Arun! Yeah, I would say, in the initial phase, it's probably more sales than marketing. Good luck with whatever you are working on!
Hi Arun, I've love to share my experience - I've worked inhouse for a startup and joined whilst the founder was trying to validate.
Yes, in short, the marketing is different. And it will depend on the following:
And then in terms of traction channels. It's likely you'll be using a range of unscalable channels (e.g. those without compounding/scaling abilities) whilst you work out which growth lane to focus on.
I hope this helps from a strategic perspective / from someone who set up marketing for a startup :)
To get started an innovative way that I have seen to grow with your minimum viable community and build in public by sharing your process, this works as marketing without marketing to show that you are building something with avid sense of making an impact and the transparency allows for the community to push the product informally.
Hey Arun, I think the bigger issue is, can a startup market their product without having identified a market to market it to?... As you said, a minimum viable product should help startups identify whether or not there's a market for the product they're building. If they haven't identified their market, they probably shouldn't keep building (unless they're purely doing it for fun).
In terms of marketing strategies for established companies vs startups, I think the key difference comes down to budget. A startup can mirror a similar approach to an established company, and it could indeed work, but the magnitude of the success is likely to be limited if the startup has a smaller budget.
Hey rmondo,
I couldn’t agree more. The concept of MVP and MVC is a Startups starting point the everything that comes later. As you said if that the market can’t be found then it’s probably a sign to stop or to pivot.
All marketing some level of budget is required and as you said smaller Startups have a much smaller budget. In addition to that I would like to add that engagement is one marketing effort that can be used that doesn’t require a budget but time and dedication.
This may be the secret to success for Startups. Thank you for your comment on the topic 👍