In the competitive startup arena, visibility and strategic marketing are not just beneficial—they’re essential. Shockingly, nearly 20% of startups falter due to weak marketing strategies. With stakes this high, selecting and executing the right B2B marketing tactics becomes crucial.
But sometimes, knowing where to start can be difficult, especially when you don’t have many resources (human and budgetary) to begin with. That is why choosing the right tactics that will be effective for your business and take you to the next level is essential.
Here, we dive into seven (plus a bonus eighth!) tactics that can significantly uplift your startup and steer your journey toward success.
1. Content Marketing: The Endurance Race
Content marketing is a very effective marketing strategy. It is particularly vital for startups aiming to establish domain authority and trust. You can attract potential customers, nurture leads, convert customers into loyal advocates, and establish thought leadership within your industry through insightful, valuable content.
But you need to deliver valuable content. This content must be relevant, tailored to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and address subjects with the expertise required. When all of this is met, startups can effectively raise awareness and build trust among potential customers. If you thought that ChaGPT could create your overall content, think again. AI can be a good assistant and increase productivity, but your content needs to come from the field. Your expertise and real knowledge of your subject will make a difference.
Content marketing involves crafting a solid content strategy, defining objectives (SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound), and creating an editorial calendar to ensure you’re addressing your prospects’ needs throughout the entire buyer’s journey, including the awareness, consideration, and decision stages
Also, remember that content marketing is a long-term strategy, not a quick dash.
It can be referred to as a marathon compared to a sprint, requiring a commitment to long-term strategy and consistent output. Consistency and patience pave the way to organic growth and lasting impact.
2. SEO: Maximizing Visibility Without Breaking the Bank
Pairing content marketing with SEO can be very powerful. It boosts your online visibility, propelling your website up search engine rankings. This dynamic duo is essential for startups looking to grow organically and in a sustainable way. Effective SEO hinges on understanding your audience and crafting content that resonates and ranks.
SEO involves optimizing your site’s content, structure, and on-page elements, such as meta tags, as well as building quality backlinks, internal links and much more. While you can lay the foundations yourself, this requires expertise that must be continually updated as SEO evolves over time. Typically, support from an expert—whether it be an agency, a freelancer, or an internal dedicated collaborator—is necessary.
SEO is crucial for organic growth. It means that, when well done, this will deliver results for a long time, increasing the ROI of your marketing campaigns in the long run.
3. Performance Marketing: Quick Gains With a Watchful Eye
Performance marketing can be a powerful catalyst in the early stages of startup growth.
This tactic encompasses all pay-per-click (PPC) channels, including Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads.
It’s a fast track to visibility, perfect for bridging initial content and SEO gaps, drawing in individuals actively searching for products or services within your sector.
When you’re an early-stage startup, performance marketing can help boost growth quickly and balance your gap in content and SEO.
While performance marketing offers rapid growth opportunities, it demands careful management to avoid overspending and ensure a positive return on investment (ROI). Precision and prudence are essential; a misstep in targeting or budgeting can quickly diminish returns.
Start with a well-defined strategy, ensuring every dollar spent works toward your growth goals.
Ensure to define your objectives before anything. Are you trying to drive leads on your website or convert them?
Also, ensure you have the right landing pages and visuals for a good ROI. Don’t rush this tactic. Ensuring you’re targeting the right audience signal is key to driving suitable leads to your website.
Avoid agencies that take a percentage of the budget spent: you must commit them to decreasing your CPL rather than incentivizing them on the money they spend. And trust me, it is easy to spend money on these channels; increasing ROI is much more difficult.
Also, the problem with this tactic is that it requires money to fuel it. Running out of funds and needing to decrease your marketing budget will directly impact your results. It is also something that investors take into consideration, so be cautious with it.
4. Social Media: Cultivating Community With Care
Social media’s power is undeniable, yet its mastery demands discernment. Indeed, its power comes with a caveat—it’s time-consuming.
Startups must judiciously select platforms that resonate with their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and where their audience prefers to engage and invest time in crafting content that speaks their language.
In B2B marketing, it is usually Linkedin, X, or Facebook. Choose one platform, then expand. Define also the type of content you’ll post on the different platforms. Whether LinkedIn for thought leadership or Facebook for company culture showcases, your social strategy should be an extension of your brand’s voice and vision and depend on your audience and how they use these platforms.
Social media strategies often complement content marketing efforts, enhancing visibility and engagement across chosen platforms. It is a formidable tool to engage directly with your ideal customers or personas, understand their concerns better, and interact with them.
But this is also time-consuming. Use AI tools to support your social content production and publishing tools to schedule your posts throughout the week and at the right time. Look at when your audience uses the platforms to ensure the efficiency of your scheduling efforts.
Think about social media as a good business development tool. They are very efficient in reaching out to your ideal customer profile or used in ABM.
5. ABM: Custom Solutions for High-Value or Niche Targets
ABM is a tailored approach that can yield significant dividends, mainly focusing on larger accounts that demand more personalized attention. This strategy hinges on profoundly understanding your ICP, personas, and use cases and identifying your sweet spot within the market.
For example, if you are a SaaS startup offering a product to the top European banks, you can quickly identify the Top 20 banks in Europe to target them. Then, identify your persona within the targeted account. You can then target them through different marketing channels and formats with a personalized approach.
While ABM can drive remarkable results, it’s essential to weigh the cost of customer acquisition carefully to ensure it aligns with your overall marketing budget and goals. As a result, ABM is more likely to be interesting for startups that know their sweet spot already or very niche startups with a very well-defined market.
6. Email Marketing: Beyond the Inbox
Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective strategies available, yet its effectiveness depends on cutting through the noise. With inboxes becoming increasingly crowded, your emails must offer undeniable value to stand out. It means understanding your audience’s needs and preferences to deliver content that resonates and engages.
As an email marketer, think like a journalist and stand out with perennial topics, trends, and news. Define the right tone that will engage your audience.
Also, think about your different objectives and A/B tests to see what works. If your open rate is low, analyze which type of email subject works best with your targeted audience. Try segmentation as well to see if this improves your performance. If your open rate looks great but your click-through rate (CTR) is low, try to change the structure of your email information or the content you’re offering. Test multiple formats: with image, without, long text, short text. And don’t imagine anything; you can be shocked by what works.
Email marketing includes formats such as Newsletters, nurturing workflows, and invites and can be segmented by verticals, use cases, and more. Think thoroughly about your strategy here, and define your objectives, formats, and tone of voice.
7. Partnerships: Leveraging Collective Strength
Strategic partnerships can amplify your reach and credibility faster than traditional campaigns. Partnerships include multiple formats, such as referral programs, business partners, technology partners, and co-marketing ventures. The right alliance can open doors to new audiences and opportunities. Depending on your business and personas, these formats and involvement must be crafted strategically. Sometimes, partnerships are required, especially if you’re targeting big accounts that require reference partners.
A partnership is a long-term relationship. Consider nurturing these relationships and establishing regular meetings or cadence to make the collaboration live. Identify your interlocutors and set clear objectives to achieve together. Establish a partnership strategy to identify tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 partners and how much time you can allocate.
Prioritize partnerships that align with your brand and offer mutual benefits, laying the groundwork for long-term collaboration.
Identify the partnership format and the angle or market use case you will address together. In partnership, think about your interests but also theirs. You need a win-win situation for the partnership to keep going.
8. Bonus - User-Generated Content: Authentic Engagement
User-Generated Content (UGC) is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tactics for early-stage startups. But most of the time, this isn’t easy to get: either because you have few customers or either because they just started your journey with your product and are not ready to communicate with you, or because they are Enterprise customers who tend to be very careful with their communication and require long approval process before anything gets shared.
Offer them multiple options to interact with your brand to increase the chance of getting positive responses. It can be as short as a social mention or logo on your website or include a video or customer case. You can also have customer communication in your sales process to negotiate decreased rates. You can also incentivize mention. Referral websites such as Capterra or G2 include these offers.
> On the same subject: 15 reasons why you should spend more time thinking about User Generated Content
Think also about what your customers need. Why would they allow some time to communicate with you? Sometimes, they want a boost in their career, speak about the project internally, and understand their driver to offer them what they need.
The path to startup success is multifaceted, with each marketing tactic offering unique advantages. Combining these strategies can create a comprehensive marketing ecosystem that propels your startup beyond mere survival to thriving innovation. Remember, the most effective marketing plan is flexible, targeted, and aligned with your startup’s goals and challenges.
Contact Upki for personalized guidance on crafting a marketing strategy that resonates with your startup. Together, we can unlock your startup’s potential and pave the way for sustained growth and success.
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