Strategies for Marketing Your Tech Startup

There have been few better times to create a tech startup than right now. The industry and consumers are increasingly accessible, with entrepreneurs able to operate from home and still reach consumers from across the globe.

There are also emerging exciting areas of focus, from artificial intelligence (AI) to financial technology (fintech) app development. Yet, while there are clearly great possibilities, success isn’t necessarily guaranteed.

Part of the challenge here is that it’s a genuinely competitive environment. To help your startup stand out from the crowd and connect with consumers, you need to develop strong marketing campaigns.

Marketing isn’t something you should improvise if you want to make an impact. You’ll need to adopt a range of strategies that are relevant to your industry, your business size, and your target audience.

Let’s take a moment to explore some of the key strategies you should consider for marketing your tech startup.

Set SMART Goals

Taking a generalized approach to marketing your tech startup is unlikely to be effective. That said, there are some generally accepted practices.

Tried-and-true lessons from small business experts are useful, including that you should never stop marketing, even in tough times. If others are cutting back on marketing, you stand to gain by increasing yours.

But by not crafting campaigns that are relevant to your company, you may wind up wasting resources and limit the impact on your growth.

For example, 66% of small businesses advertise on Facebook, but is that where your audience is? A relevant campaign will assess your audience’s preferred channel(s). More on that later.

One of the most important strategies is to create specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for each marketing campaign.

SMART goals give you targeted and actionable aims to strive for that are directly related to the needs of your startup.

There are various SMART marketing goals that can be useful for growing tech startups, including:

Revenue levels

Naturally, one of the key aims for a campaign is converting your connections with consumers into sales. As the SMART acronym suggests, it’s important not to shoot for the moon here but to be achievable.

Look at your historical sales data and do some research into similar businesses in the industry. What is realistic to strive for following a marketing campaign?

Reaching specific audience demographics

It may be the case that your current marketing efforts aren’t reaching the market segments you’d like to. Therefore, part of your SMART marketing goals could be to reach more of a specific audience demographic.

This target can be measured by collecting and examining data analytics related to audience engagement with your marketing materials.

You should also be specific by creating audience personas for your campaign, so you can adopt the most relevant tactics to reach these demographics.

Remember that your SMART goals shouldn’t be static. Once each campaign has finished, take the time to assess each of your goals.

Look at what tactics were successful and which didn’t quite reach the mark. From here, you can adjust your goals and the related strategies accordingly to influence your success.

Consider Current Trends

When marketing your tech startup, it’s important to consider the flow of current trends. This doesn’t mean you have to slavishly follow or replicate what’s popular at the moment, particularly if it clashes with your brand voice or values.

However, having a good understanding of what audiences are interested in and responding to right now can help you find relevant ways to strategize your marketing to leverage these.

Tech startup trends

It’s always worth examining what the current trends in tech startups are. Some startup concepts focus on finding creative uses for tech, such as drone photography and developing educational technology (edtech) applications.

Others — such as cybersecurity services and remote IT support — focus on users’ current needs in the digital landscape.

How can understanding these trends influence your marketing? Well, it doesn’t just have to mean you shift the direction of your business to fit with the types of services that are popular.

The trends for creative tech services can suggest you should lean into the creative aspects of your startup that could capture the public’s imagination.

Recognizing that some trends are related to current practical needs can enable you to focus your marketing on producing content that shows your services can be essential to users’ safe and effective online experiences.

Trends in marketing techniques

Keeping an eye on current trends in marketing techniques is a helpful way to shape your campaign. Trends are generally a good sign of what audiences are connecting with and startups are finding success with.

Some trends at the moment are related to specific characteristics of the media formats audiences engage with, such as the ideal length of videos.

Others may be related to how users are currently connecting with marketing, such as by email or using mobile apps.

It’s important, though, to look not just at the general trends in marketing techniques. Look specifically at those that are most relevant for your startup.

What marketing is impactful for your segment of the tech industry? What materials are trending with your target demographics? Analysis helps you to leverage trends more effectively.

Create Authoritative Content

Content continues to be king when it comes to marketing your tech startup. Firstly, producing a diverse range of content across multiple channels can improve your company’s visibility to both consumers and industry insiders.

Content can also be integral for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by giving you materials in which to place ranking keywords contextually.

One characteristic that you should be focusing on in particular throughout all your content, though, is authority.

Authority is vital for a variety of reasons. Especially for new players in the tech industry, you’re unlikely to have a profile that demonstrates to consumers and other partners that your products are based on reliable expertise.

Authoritative content is a tangible way to demonstrate that your company knows its stuff, which can build trust.

In addition, search engines like Google continue to use authority as an influencing factor in results ranking. Therefore, your efforts here can boost your SEO results.

So, what makes content authoritative? It comes down to making certain your materials are trustworthy, accurate, and of a high level of relevance. Creating blogs and vlogs on your specific area of product expertise is a good start.

However, you can also bolster blogs by supporting any claims and opinions with evidence from other sources with a recognized reputation. Insert links to research papers and content produced by already recognized experts in the field.

Authoritative content is also up-to-date. Make certain that the content you produce isn’t based on outdated ideas or research.

Remember to take the time to occasionally review your past content to establish whether it is still relevant to current knowledge and practices.

Making adjustments can not just boost the authority of your older posts but it also refreshes them, which extends their useful lifespan.

Lean into Social Media

Social media marketing continues to be among the most important strategies for marketing tech startups. This shouldn’t be surprising.

After all, it’s one of the primary ways people communicate in the digital landscape. Social media is particularly relevant to startups, as many consumers interact with brand accounts both to get information and when seeking omnichannel customer service.

You can also find that it’s a good way to network with other startups in your industry. As with all marketing, it’s important to be intentional in your approach.

Do you market research into when your target demographics are most likely to be active on social media and which platforms they tend to engage with most.

If you find you need to focus on multiple channels, using a social media management platform can be helpful. Automation allows you to schedule content in advance and post to all channels at once.

Automated scheduling also frees you up to actively engage with followers on social media, which demonstrates that your business is receptive and accessible. This, in turn, can help build your positive reputation.

Influencer partnerships are also vital in the current climate. Influencer partnerships can have multifaceted positive impacts. Firstly, they can produce additional relevant content on your behalf.

This can improve your authority, give you more materials for your search engine optimization, and extend your reach to a larger audience.

Importantly, the reputation influencers have carefully cultivated gives their opinions about your business an additional level of trust and impact among consumers.

Wherever possible, prioritize relationships with micro-influencers. These are content creators with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers.

They tend to offer a better return on investment (ROI) not just because they command lower fees than mega-influencers, but also because their audiences are more engaged.

Micro-influencers have often spent years gathering audiences who are interested in a specific niche and recognize the influencer’s expertise within it.

By finding micro-influencers related to your niche and developing relationships with them, they could have a powerful effect on your growth.

Conclusion

Growing your tech startup depends on your ability to meaningfully connect with audiences using strategic marketing tools.

There are various approaches you can take, from developing authoritative content to partnering with niche social media influencers.

Remember, though, that you don’t have to apply them all immediately. Particularly in the beginning, when you have lower budgets, you may need to prioritize those that are most likely to have an immediate impact on your business.

From here you can expand your marketing techniques as your startup grows in prominence.