3 Smart Startup Business Tips You Need to Know
The business landscape in this day and age resembles anything but a box. With the popular culture favoring novelties of any kind (see: Deconstructed coffee and rainbow bagels – by God!), you might have to break a few rules to win over a culture that feeds off of innovation. If you’re looking to take your startup to the next level, follow these unconventional guidelines.
Tip 1: Promote on Unlikely Platforms
If you’re a B2B company, social media would probably be the last option on your list of marketing strategies. It makes sense that most B2B companies would overlook the consumer-filled realm of social media, since their target audience is supposedly inactive on such informal platforms… Right?
Not quite, actually. The companies you’re reaching out to might not be active on social media per se, but what do you think their employees and executives are doing when they go on breaks or clock out? These people probably check their phones for Facebook and Instagram notifications, just like you. In short, your audience is on social media. They’re just active on an individual level.
So, how can your B2B company capitalize on this? Get yourself on social media and build relationships with your clients through creative videos, giveaways, and sale promotions. Trail-blaze ideas that traditional B2B companies wouldn’t even consider. Remember, we live in a society that rewards creative innovation. Those who are afraid of breaking the rules will be fencing themselves out from a valuable and personal marketing outlet.
Tip 2: Recreate What You Hate
While conducting research on your competitors, try to absorb both the good and the bad. Too many new companies try to emulate the good but quickly dispose of the bad. Your competitors’ flaws aren’t just there to boost your ego, they’re key to your financial success. Pay the most attention to what you don’t like about your competitors’ platforms and then reinvent a better way to do it on yours. Soon, you will be set apart from your competitors for all the right reasons.
Tip 3: Cater to the Kids
Rumbling beneath the cheerful aria of popular culture are the groans of stubborn old-timers who will absolutely refuse to cater to millennials. Listen, technology is evolving at an exponential rate. We can either evolve with it or die. The companies that fall into the stubborn refusal to change will inevitably become obsolete.
The winning factors in this generation are always going to be novelty and convenience. If you choose to have one but not the other, then a fresher, more innovative startup will do what you refused to do. Even when you’re tempted think that there couldn’t possibly be a more convenient approach to handling your product, challenge yourself to think harder. Millennials or not, the entire developed world has experienced a complete paradigm shift in the way we receive information. Rather than condemning this new bias towards convenience, challenge yourself to rise to the occasion and cater to your customers in ways that other companies haughtily ignore.
Remember, you’re not confined within the four walls of a box. Due to the age of the internet, the mass market is much more complex and challenging than it was just two decades ago. You’re not dealing with a mere box. You’re inside a dodecahedron, with 12 faces, 20 vertices, and more than just a hint of edge. If you push yourself to think outside of this contemporary frame, you will indeed conquer the startup market.
Nothing is off limits.
About the Author
Anh is a Copywriter for the cloud call platform, Phonexa [www.phonexa.com]. She specializes in writing about SEO marketing strategies, business trends, and other up-and-coming topics in digital marketing and technology.