For today’s early stage startups, branding is all about connectivity. As digital communication rapidly evaporates the concept of distance, opportunities and challenges are both becoming global.
For early stage startups, this presents a unique conundrum: the internet offers easy access to clients around the world. But at the same time, it massively increases the amount of competition.
From a client’s perspective–and this applies to just about every industry today–the market is saturated with an almost countless number of firms promising essentially the same things.
Lacking clearly communicated differentiators, price becomes the USP. In the race to the bottom, businesses with the cheapest product succeed, at everyone’s expense.
The market is right out there, so close. But with legions of competitors offering cheaper alternatives, how can quality-focused startups succeed?
Branding as the key to early stage startups success
Having a great product or idea is only one aspect of business success. In a market saturated by competitors offering similar products, differentiation is the single most important determinant of success.
Also Read: 6 tried-and-tested branding tips for your startup
However, in the digital age, products and services are becoming increasingly complex, technical, and abstract. How do you convince buyers about, for example, the utility of one cloud storage solution over the other? Branding is the key.
By effectively communicating how their product is different, in language customers understand, and across channels they regularly use, brands can succeed in setting themselves apart from the competition.
Digital Marketing: leveraging the internet to maximise ROI
Early stage startups are almost always in a position where capital is limited. This means that marketing budgets are also either limited or non-existent. In this situation, conventional media promotions such as TV ads and product sponsorships simply aren’t viable. The internet, however, offers early-stage startups remarkable ROI through digital marketing.
Cost per click and cost per view campaigns can deliver individually targeted advertisements across platforms and across continents at a fraction of the price of a television ad.
Other digital marketing efforts, such as sponsored blog posts cost even less or might even be free. Digital marketing provides early stage startups with the only viable means of reaching out to millions of potential customers around the world.
Search engine optimisation: Improving visibility
Almost every single internet user in the world uses search engines to find content that’s relevant to them. Every year, Google handles over 2.4 trillion search requests, which works out to several searches per day, per person. Because search engines are by and large the main way that customers discover a brand’s digital presence, search engine optimisation, or SEO, is key. SEO refers to content practices that make a website more relevant from the point of view of a search engine.
Also Read: 5 branding mistakes that startups should look to avoid
Good SEO practices–such as writing original content, using graphics, and minimising page load times–can cause a brand’s search engine ranking to climb. By pushing content to the top of search engine listings for given keyword searches–SEO effectively translates into free marketing to a hyper-targeted audience–one that’s looking for precisely the solution your brand offers.
Public relations: Taking communication to the next level
In an early stage startup’s marketing strategy, traditional PR might get lost amid the plethora of accessible digital marketing opportunities. Digital doesn’t spell the end of PR.
Rather, digital communication has greatly empowered PR practitioners to present their clients’ messages to a far wider audience than ever before. Today’s PR companies aren’t just about press releases and industry connections. PR today is a solution-oriented business.
PR practitioners have the same digital tools available to them. However, a combination of market awareness and experience means that they’re capable of leveraging digital solutions to achieve profoundly better results.
This makes PR an invaluable asset for early stage startups: their founders can focus on refining and achieving their core business goals while their PR practice leverages their experience to magnify their message across digital and conventional channels.
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