Whenever a Startup is asking for our help in marketing, we first try to understand his needs. Of course the number one thing they ask for is to “let it grow”; meaning they are looking to increase something, whether it be sales, downloads, leads, traffic or anything else that might help lead the product to success. The second thing is assessing the right service that will do the trick in order to make it grow. While it may sound pretty easy to choose the right service from a box full of great services, but the truth is that to choose the winner service isn’t such an easy task.

Why? You’re probably asking and it’s a good question. The answer is that startups are very different from each other and a service that fits one startup doesn’t necessarily fit the other. Think of it as some kind of tailor made clothing shop where you need to match the right suit to the right body.

So what are the right measures for the right startup? Or how do we choose what is the right startup marketing strategy for our next potential client? Let’s step into the munchkin cave to see what the options are.

Clarification: the Ranky-squad does endless creative growth activities for worldwide Startups. This is just a mere part of them!

First tell me what your product is, then I’ll tell you who your clients are

The First thing to do, even before choosing the right marketing strategy is, of course, to understand the product; to see how good it is and what is its growth potential. Of course, everyone wants to be the next Dropbox or Hotmail and to mimic their growth hacking success but naturally only a few can and have the potential for doing that kind of growth hacking, the viral way. It’s impossible to predict if a product will go viral and this is why the viral way is never the core of our strategy.

The best way to understand the product is by chatting with the founder/s, they are sure to give all of the information needed to comprehend what their product does. They will tell you how great it is and how it should be the next BIG thing, we just need to listen and ask the right questions. This will help us later when we research for competitors and try the product ourselves.

Understanding the client needs and goals + understanding the client product = the beginning of our startup marketing strategy.

So what can we offer and what are the best services to offer in order to achieve our goals?

Your Service Goes {Here}:

Let’s pretend that money isn’t an issue and it doesn’t make the world go round. Let’s say we are living in a utopian world where budget isn’t the issue and we can offer whatever we’d like as long as we will achieve our goals and return positive Return On Investment (ROI). In that case we will divide our strategy in to 3 parts, depending on how much time we have:

* Make it quick.

* You tell me.

* Take your time.

Make it quick! (Please):

Startups live on the edge, they need everything fast and now, if it is the first seed in startup life he will probably need leads, traffic, brand himself or anything else that will increase traffic to his website.

In that case PPC will be the perfect way to achieve the mission. PPC is quick for meeting your goals, if you want to get it quick and now, consider PPC as your plan.

The process for setting up a PPC campaign is done by researching, planning and building the campaign. It could take up to one month for all those actions and then you are ready to go with the strategy. The goal is usually to bring as many leads as possible and with PPC you can do it just after clicking on play and running your campaign. Of course there is a lot of optimization involved in this process, and this is done while running the campaign and collecting the stats on the go.

Sometimes, the goals of those PPC campaigns and remarketing are just to increase traffic or branding of the product, meaning we would like to display our ads to as many users as possible so they will click and get to know the product. For branding we just want them to get familiar with the brand. So that next time they think of a product similar to the product we are advertising, they will think about our product.

Bottom line, if you want all of this quick and fast? PPC is the answer.

The You-Tell-Me

So a new Startup wants to market his product, they have an awesome idea and they’ve already raised some funds, yet they’re not sure what and how to do it, or how long they want to do it.

In that case we can help with many creative ideas. If we have a couple of months to increase traffic and whatever the goals are, then best thing to think about is Content Marketing with a touch of PPC marketing. If you’ve read up until here, you understood what PPC can do to the product, but Content Marketing is quite a different strategy.

With Content Marketing we can bring traffic to the website, with a good landing page we can make the user leave us a lead with contact details and we can also make him download the product.

In a nut shell, with Content Marketing one distributes content to blogs and magazines and makes recommendations about products and services, the recommendations link back to the startup’s website and if the landing page is good enough, the conversion rate will increase. It is also possible to complete the Content Marketing with PPC Remarketing so visitors will continue to see banners and advertisements of the product all over the web.

Bottom line, if you have some time and you want to grow and increase (sales? Conversions?), Content Marketing together with PPC is what you are looking for.

Take Your Time

Usually we meet startups looking to marketing their product and have time to spare, well not all the time in the world but a few months at least to start and see results. They understand it might take time but they understand this is a long run strategy that will lead their product to the high levels.

This is classic, we have time, we need to build a strategy and we know what the goals are. In that case we will use the help of all the services above plus SEO, for organic growth.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the most affective, but slow process. In the short run we are talking about changing many technical issues on the website, fixing titles and texts and adding some relevant information. It might take at least 3 months before starting to see some results and this is why we recommend combining all of the above services together. PPC will make it quick and Content Marketing will build the brand and awareness but SEO, in the long run, will robust the product presence and make it stable for a long time to come.

SEO process will help the website to stay in its place, as long as we take good and white SEO actions the website can stay in first place for a very long time. With SEO it might take some time to accomplish our goals but once we are there it will be difficult to move us. You see, not as PPC, once you stopped the SEO process you will stay there and your audience will keep on finding you organically, it sometimes happens that after a long time your website will drop in ranking yet you will still stay there to tell the story.

Bottom line, if you have time and you understand it’s a process that in the long run will return itself. SEO is the best solution for you and together with PPC and Content Marketing your brand will get the presence and attention it deserves.

So to sum up everything we spoke about above, this is how you should choose the service that fits to you:

Those are examples of the services our beloved munchkin as to offer.

So what do you think is the best service for your Startup?

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