How to Create a Marketing Plan for Startups

Table of contents.

startup business marketing plan

Creating a killer marketing plan doesn’t have to be expensive. However, it requires your time, effort and creativity. You’ll need to encourage innovative thinking among your team to generate the best ideas. 

Building your brand is a perpetual process that starts on day one. We’ll share 13 startup marketing tips and explain how your marketing plan relates to the sales funnel. 

Attracting customers is just one of the biggest challenges startups must overcome . Others include finding funding, learning how to run the business alone, and achieving a positive work-life balance.

How to create a marketing plan for startups

When you’re starting a business, expenses can feel overwhelming. However, an excellent startup marketing plan doesn’t have to break the bank. Here are 13 marketing tips that can help you establish a solid framework. 

1. Define your end goal.

Just as you wouldn’t embark on a road trip without knowing your destination, you must define your marketing and business goals before you can achieve them.

To reach your target audience and successfully convert leads , you need a well-defined approach with specific objectives. When creating your startup marketing plan, you must determine your short- and long-term goals and consider how you’ll achieve them.

For example, in the shorter term (the next six months), you may want to use social media marketing to increase followers by 1,000 per month and find ways to generate website traffic. Your longer-term goals (two to five years) may include expanding, increasing sales, opening a new business location and growing your team.

When you have end goals, you can use key metrics to gauge your marketing strategy’s success or failure.

2. Determine your target market.

No matter how excellent your marketing plan, product or service, customers are crucial to your business’s success. But who are these customers?

You must identify your target audience so you can structure your marketing strategy to meet their needs. Here are three ideas to help you pinpoint your ideal customer:

  • Identify your target prospects’ essential demographics, such as their age and location.
  • Analyze your target market’s personalities and behaviors to create customer personas for informing your marketing efforts. 
  • Establish your brand’s message, following your research.

Your product or service must satisfy your target customers, and your marketing messages should convince them that your offerings are essential.

Collect survey data via email, text and website forms to help build your customer personas and pinpoint your target market.

3. Conduct keyword research.

Keyword research is a crucial element of any digital marketing strategy. You must determine the keywords that best define your business and the keywords your target audience will search for online. Keywords are essential to your startup’s marketing strategy; you’ll use them on your website, blogs, social media channels and advertisements.

4. Develop KPIs and metrics.

You must determine your key performance indicators (KPIs) and core metrics to gauge your marketing campaign’s success. If you record baseline metrics early on, you’ll have a way to measure future growth or declines.

Ensure that your metrics and KPIs are specific and measurable. For example, instead of saying you want to grow your social media following, aim to gain 1,000 new followers every month. Or, instead of promising to build an email marketing list , say you want an average email click-through rate of 4 percent.

The precise metrics that determine success will be unique to your business. However, you must establish these metrics early and continually assess your results. As your business grows and becomes more successful, consider reevaluating which KPIs and metrics make the most sense.

5. Establish a marketing budget.

Before you can develop a marketing strategy, you must determine how much money you can realistically dedicate to it. If you’re in the startup phase, there’s a good chance that your budget is slim, so you’ll need to use it wisely. If you’re a small business owner, a business budget template can help you get started. Once you’ve determined how much money you have for marketing, you must divide it up based on the best marketing strategies for your business.

For example, if your target market is younger and interacts with your product only on social media, consider allotting a significant chunk of your budget to your social media campaigns. If you notice that your blog is your most powerful marketing tool, you may want to dedicate more resources to hiring expert writers.

Consider conducting a marketing analysis to better understand your customers, decide on your strategies, and determine how to spend your marketing budget.

6. Create a website and a blog.

Increasing brand awareness online is crucial. While your industry and target market will help determine the extent of your online presence, a website and blog are likely excellent tools for establishing your startup as a credible organization. Depending on your budget and skill set, you can build and manage your website yourself or use one of the best website builders and design services .

But it’s not enough to create the website and blog; you or a team member must continually update them and produce fresh content. For example, your blog should have a consistent posting schedule and produce valuable content. 

7. Find the right social channels for your startup.

Many startups recognize the power of affordable social media marketing. However, only a few understand the importance of using the right channels. Each social media platform serves different personalities and audiences, who engage with each channel differently. You must determine which platforms work best for your startup.

  • Facebook: Facebook is a social media powerhouse. You’ll find disparate audience types, but you must seek out your target customers and use appropriate Facebook marketing strategies to connect with them.
  • Instagram: Instagram is an excellent marketing and advertising platform. Its algorithm is optimized for valuable content, so your strategy must include consistently helpful, high-quality Instagram posts .
  • X (formerly known as Twitter): Consistency is also paramount when you’re using this social media site as a marketing channel. The ultimate goal is to provide relevant content for your audience.

Evaluate and test various social media platforms. For example, business-to-business (B2B) companies can benefit from a LinkedIn business profile , home services companies can generate referrals from Nextdoor, and Pinterest can boost e-commerce product sales. 

Always use social platforms thoughtfully to avoid cringey brand fails that can harm your business and customer relationships. 

8. Cultivate relationships with influencers.

Influencers can be as crucial as customers. Getting influencers to market your product can build brand trust, offer social proof and boost sales. 

Evaluate influencers based on their audiences and personalities. Ensure their audience includes your target customers. Contact them to see if they’re interested in cross-promotional efforts with free products and services. An authentic, organic influencer relationship can raise brand awareness and propel your startup to a credible force. 

Watch out for influencer marketing fraud . Fake influencers often purchase followers to make their accounts look popular, deceiving businesses into unhelpful relationships.

9. Create ads that appeal to people’s emotions.

Emotionally connecting with customers builds brand intimacy. So how can a business connect with its target audience through emotional content? Consider the following emotions and how they can influence customer relationships: 

  • Happiness: Positive posts with smiling, laughing and happy customers can increase user engagement. Coca-Cola is an example of a brand that has leveraged this kind of emotional content to reach consumers. Its ads feature photos of happy people and taglines such as “open happiness” and “taste the feeling.”
  • Fear: Fear is an instinct that triggers reactions to threats and boosts our chances of survival. It creates a sense of urgency that prompts us to act or effect change. For example, public service announcements often employ fear tactics to prevent cigarette smoking and drunk driving. Use caution with this strategy to avoid upsetting and turning off consumers.
  • Anger: Although anger is a negative emotion, it can spur people to act. You may want to create ads that prompt your target audience to ask important questions, and sometimes, anger is a necessary part of this. Again, aim for this reaction sparingly and responsibly.

10. Build a referral network.

Word-of-mouth advertising is a powerful marketing strategy that helps build brand advocacy . Because people make purchases based on trust and credibility, you can take advantage of their networks to get referrals.

Getting a referral is a two-step process. First, you must deliver top-quality results to clients. In addition to offering a stellar product or service, you must communicate openly and often with customers.

The second step is to ask for feedback — both good and bad. To build customer trust, lead with transparency when you handle mistakes. Asking for feedback is a great way to learn your clients’ personalities and find out how satisfied they are. You can then use their feedback to build on your service for the future. 

11. Maintain a consistent brand and message.

Brand consistency is crucial for businesses of all sizes. Although your startup will undergo minor changes over time, consistency in your brand image and communication is vital, as it instills your credibility and customers’ confidence in your service.

12. Measure your results.

The only way to gauge success or failure is by consistently measuring your digital marketing ROI . How does your audience interact with your brand online? Do you have high conversion rates and low bounce rates? Are your Instagram posts driving more engagement than your Facebook posts are? Assess your strategy’s performance to identify areas of improvement.

How frequently you measure your results will vary by metric. You might need to check some metrics daily (such as website visits, total number of leads, and leads and visits per channel). In contrast, other metrics can be measured weekly or monthly (such as new versus returning visitors, click-through rates, and cost per acquisition).

After you measure your results, don’t hesitate to modify your marketing plan if needed. Your marketing strategy should evolve with your business. 

13. Assemble the right team.

Individual talents and skills are essential for business success. However, teamwork and employee collaboration can take your business to the next level. To develop an effective marketing plan, you need the right team. Whether you hire full-time employees or a marketing agency, consider these factors:

  • Identify the roles you need to fill to achieve your goals.
  • Determine whether you need individuals to work on a contract or full-time basis.
  • Interview each candidate for their strengths, skills and experience.
  • Conduct regular assessments of team members.

Startups have limited funds, so you may need to get creative to build your team. For example, bring on an intern who’s a budding digital marketing expert or coding whiz. Use the resources at your disposal to gradually expand your team.

How your marketing plan relates to the sales funnel

When creating your marketing plan and its associated budget, you must include marketing initiatives and strategies to address every aspect of the sales funnel . This ensures that your business has a steady stream of potential customers and that you continually nurture prospects with relevant and engaging content to encourage them to purchase. 

Here are some marketing strategies for every step of the sales funnel.

Building awareness is at the top of the sales funnel. Potential customers likely haven’t heard of you yet, so you must do something disruptive to get their attention. This is called push marketing ; it usually involves paid advertising paired with content, although it can also involve search engine optimization. 

At this stage, you must get prospects’ contact information, such as their email addresses, so you can continue to reach them for your down-funnel initiatives. For example, you could place ads on Google or Facebook and drive prospects to a landing page or website where they could enter their contact information in exchange for a free e-book.

If your product or service is complex, consider creating a how-to guide in written or video form for potential customers to download or access. You can repurpose your blog content into a how-to format to save time.

Interest and evaluation

Now that your prospects know about your brand, you must feed them information over time that demonstrates the following information:

  • How your product can solve their problem
  • Why it’s a better solution than competitive or substitute products
  • Why it’s a good value

An email nurture campaign is an ideal way to give prospects this type of content consistently, either in the body of the email or with links to your blog posts, videos, case studies, infographics or webinars. 

Social media marketing is also an excellent strategy at this stage of the sales funnel because it allows you to distribute content to your followers while developing a relationship with them. 

In this stage, prospects are getting closer to purchasing. It’s time to provide information that counters their objections. During the intent phase, consider one-on-one interactions with a salesperson or customer service rep, who can answer specific questions and objections personally. 

For instance, if your product is expensive, tell customers it will last longer than competitors’ products, saving them money in the long run. Share testimonials, highlight good customer reviews , and display followers’ comments to present credible social proof to dispel objections.

This is also a good time to answer prospects’ questions via FAQ pages that proactively address common questions and concerns. For example, a B2B company could explain payment and financing terms and walk prospects through the purchase process and lead time.

User-generated content is an excellent way to share social proof that builds consumer trust and attracts new customer interest.

When a customer decides to buy your product, your work isn’t finished. You must ensure that your purchase-and-payment process is easy and smoothly executed to present a zero-friction approach to customers. Removing friction from the purchasing process will reduce abandoned purchases. 

To eliminate friction from the purchasing process, consider the following tips: 

  • Evaluate your checkout pages and ensure they work perfectly.
  • Examine your sales process to see if it can be streamlined.
  • Create post-purchase text or email notifications that thank customers and share shipping and tracking information. 
  • After successful product delivery, send emails requesting reviews and sharing any additional instructions. 
  • Set up an email series with upselling and cross-selling opportunities and customer service follow-up.

Use email marketing to recover abandoned carts by offering discounts and incentives.

Now that a purchase is made, you have a new customer. But remember, existing customers are more valuable than new customers, so it pays to do whatever it takes (within reason) to retain them. In addition to providing excellent customer service, strengthen your customer relationships by providing valuable content, interacting via social media and offering customer loyalty programs . 

Devoting resources to keeping your customers engaged and happy will pay off by increasing their customer lifetime value . 

Jennifer Dublino contributed to this article. 

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9 Steps to a Winning Startup Marketing Plan

“Marketing is expensive. And tedious. And not our focus right now.”

If any version of that statement comes up for you on the regular, I don’t blame you. Marketing can be really overwhelming—for any company, let alone a startup—and if you don’t know where to start… Well, it’s hard to start.

That’s why, in this guide, we invite you to pause the rush just for a little bit. This will give you the time and mental space to build a startup marketing plan. The good news? It doesn’t have to take months to get there. And your marketing plan doesn’t have to be a 75-page aesthetic presentation with fireworks at the end.

All it takes is a bit of intentional research, thinking, and documentation so you can drive the right people towards your business. Not just this month, this quarter, or this year—but for many years to come.

What Is a Startup Marketing Plan?

It can be tempting to go all in on other areas of your startup before focusing on marketing—fundraising and product development understandably seem more urgent.

But a startup marketing strategy will build an audience for every launch you’ll run, support your case in fundraising conversations, help you get more press coverage, and enable you to build a company that lasts.

In short: it’s the foundation for long-term success. Which is why you need to get started on it.

Psst...you want to discover the tactics for leveraging social proof to enhance customer perception and total contract value ? Our article has the details.

How to Create a Startup Marketing Plan in 9 Steps

Whether you’re a marketing team of one or have the resources to hire a bunch of marketing powerhouses, you can’t skip these steps to build a marketing plan. It will act as a blueprint for both the long-term goals you want to hit, and everyday tasks and activities. Let’s dive in:

Startup Marketing Plan Template - Close

1. Conduct a Market Analysis

“Whoever gets closest to their customer, wins,” wrote Bernadette Jiwa , a storytelling advisor and the author of 10 books on marketing and storytelling.

In other words, to meet the needs of your potential customers, you need to actually know what they need. Not just guess or assume, but be truly confident there’s a match between what your startup is doing and what your customers want to buy as a solution.

In fact, "no market need" is one of the leading reasons startups fail— 35 percent of startups reported it as the driver behind their failure.

The good news? That doesn’t have to be you. With market research, you can maximize your chances to hit the right spot with your ideal customers—both with your product and the way you market it to them. You’ll also have a better shot at attracting investors, finding gaps in customer expectations, and standing out in the market.

You can take two routes when it comes to market analysis, and it’s best if you can combine them:

  • Primary research: Original data you collect through experiments, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and observations
  • Secondary research: Existing data you curate from tools like ZoomInfo and Crunchbase , and resources like McKinsey , trade associations, journals, CDC , etc.

The goal is to assess your target market’s needs, challenges, characteristics, and purchase behaviors. As you run your analysis, take note of:

  • Any relevant demographics , like age ranges, job titles, income ranges, and locations
  • Words and phrases customers use to describe their needs or pain points
  • Products, services, and solutions they consider when looking to solve a pain point
  • Price ranges they find acceptable for specific solutions
  • Content consumption habits , like channels and formats they opt for when researching and/or learning

Also, don’t forget that if you already have a customer base, that’s a fantastic place to start exploring your market’s problems and decision-making process.

How to Create a Startup Marketing Plan - Conduct Market Analysis (80/20 rule)

Source: Unsplash

2. Define Your Target Audience

Your next step is to develop and document an ideal customer profile (ICP), or a description of a company that would get significant value from using your product, and provide significant value to your company. Take 5-10 attributes that represent your ideal customer. If you sell to B2B customers, those attributes might include:

  • Funding status
  • Company size
  • Type of customers they serve
  • Key decision makers

The idea is to have a set of guidelines that will guide not just your marketing efforts, but enable every team to focus on the same, ultimate target customer. For example, teams can reference it to:

  • Hire full-time or freelance pros, like marketing team members, SEO consultants, freelance writers, graphic designers, and more
  • Qualify leads against clear criteria to make sure they have the potential to convert and get value from your product
  • Plan future product updates and launches

ICP is usually used in a B2B setting—hence the focus on the company as a whole vs. an individual—but you can use it in conjunction with a buyer persona . It’s more commonly used in B2C sales and marketing, but it describes the individual that buys your product, so it can help you better understand the role, goals, pain points, and interests of the decision makers you market and sell to.

Want a ridiculously accurate, useful, and actionable ideal customer profile? Grab our ideal customer profile kit that includes checklists, questions, and templates to define your target customer with serious precision.

3. Run Competitive Analysis

“I want to blend in with my competitors,” said no sales rep, marketer, or entrepreneur ever.

Use competitive analysis to learn what your competitors are doing well and what are their blind spots—this way, you can build a marketing plan that brings you on your audience’s radar and helps you stand out.

First, make a list of your direct and indirect competitors . Direct competitors are often obvious: if your core product is an all-in-one ecommerce software, other fully featured ecommerce solutions are your clear direct competitors. But so are WordPress plugins, website building tools, and even ecommerce developers. Those would be your indirect competitors.

To find your competitors, lean on software review platforms ( G2 , AlternativeTo ), keyword research ( Semrush ), ads on social media and search engines, insights from LinkedIn, and your conversations with potential and current customers.

Then, run a SWOT analysis for your most relevant competitors, which includes:

  • Strengths : Internal strengths that give a company a competitive advantage, like skills, expertise, resources, or unique selling points
  • Weaknesses : Internal weaknesses like a lack of resources, outdated technology, or insufficient training
  • Opportunities : External opportunities that can be leveraged for growth and success, like changes in the market, new technologies, a new product line, or untapped customer segments
  • Threats : External threats that can negatively impact performance, like increasing competition, changing regulations, or economic downturns

Check out the table below for an example of a SWOT analysis of a software company, and grab our free SWOT analysis guide and template .

Startup Marketing Plan - Example of EHR Business Searching for New Target Markets

4. Develop a Unique Brand Identity

Your brand identity is a set of characteristics unique to you—appearance, messaging, and personality—that help your customers form an image of you.

A strong brand identity is the one that would make your audience and your customers recognize your product and content even if you stripped your name from it.

So how do you form a brand identity that makes you magnetic to your ideal prospect? Here’s how:

  • Develop a unique selling proposition . Based on your research of your target market, customers, and competitors, identify the main differentiating factors your product offers. Make your USP short, sweet, and to the point.
  • Create a visual identity . This includes logos, color palettes (try out tools like ColorKit's free color palette generator ), website design, and typography. Based on your budget, you can work with a consultant or an agency, or hire an in-house design lead.
  • Develop your brand personality and messaging . What tone of voice and personality traits does your ideal customer best resonate with? You’ll use that across your website, social media marketing , blog posts, emails—everywhere.

Solidify your brand identity by documenting it and building templates based on it, so every team member can easily reference and implement it for a consistent brand image.

5. Define Your Marketing Strategies

The worst thing you can do in your marketing plan is building marketing campaigns from scratch every time you’re launching a product, a feature, or an update.

There are dozens of marketing channels and probably more than 100 marketing tactics you could try. If that sounds exhausting, that’s because it is—and it’s why it’s crucial to be focused, intentional, and clever about the direction you choose to take.

It all comes down to:

  • Who your audience trusts, like public figures, organizations, brands etc.
  • Which social media platforms they go to look for education, entertainment, or a combo of both
  • How they consume content, like long-form vs. short, listening vs. watching vs. reading, and so on
  • How your value proposition fits into those channels and formats

The best marketing efforts are those that will give you the results you want in your business. That could be as simple as having a company blog, nailing LinkedIn, and leveraging on-demand product demos.

Right now, it’s about narrowing down your options to a few that you can go all in on. You can always expand, scratch, or tweak your efforts later.

Let’s unpack specific digital marketing strategies in the next two sections:

5.1 Develop Lead Generation and Conversion Strategies

The tricky part about startup marketing (and often marketing in general) is that it can be tough to determine what it is exactly that gives you real results (read: actual, paying customers).

You might be getting lots of traffic and engagement and struggle to convert that into sales, or you might see solid sales numbers despite lower marketing results than what you wanted. You might even sit in a vague space in the middle and not know how to generate predictable results.

Best way to avoid this? Boil your content marketing strategy down to two areas before the purchase takes place: lead generation and lead conversion.

Uncover the secrets of 10X content marketing with insights from our AI article .

Lead Generation

Your lead generation efforts focus on reaching the right people and drawing them closer to your mission as a startup and, ultimately, your product. It’s about increasing the pool of people you can educate and engage with (because if no one knows you exist, even the best conversion strategies are irrelevant).

Here are some essential ways you can grow your traffic and generate high-quality leads from it:

  • Publish core pieces of content : Blog posts, podcast episodes, or videos that live on your website and use search engine optimization (SEO) to target people searching for answers and guides on specific topics every month
  • Use organic social media : Consistent social media posts that are in sync with your core content can drive traffic from LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok
  • Use community platforms : People lean on Reddit, Quora, and industry forums to find answers to their questions, so it might be worth building a presence there
  • Partner with relevant people and/or brands : If your target customers trust certain organizations or influencers, build partnerships and campaigns with them to reach their audience; examples are webinars or guest blog posts
  • Build original resources people would pay for : Use your expertise to create downloadable templates, custom tools, ebooks, checklists etc. and offer them for free
  • Use paid media : Leverage ads on search engines and social media channels to target specific interests, behaviors, and demographics and increase your reach

For real-life examples, check out our 22 lead generation ideas that brought Close 300k+ leads. Here’s one of them from our long-form guides:

Startup Marketing Plan - An Example of Long-form Guide from Close

Lead Conversion

Next, you’ll want to move those leads further down the funnel or even convert them into customers (if you offer a self-serve purchase option).

That means you need to product-focused marketing strategies, which includes:

  • Case studies : Showcase the journey of successful customers with numbers and real-life applications of your product
  • Product demos : You can offer an on-demand demo like we do at Close , or a recurring session like Figma’s weekly product demo
  • Automated email marketing : Send nurturing emails to hot leads, like those that signed up for a free trial, to engage them with the product, give them tips, and help them see their first success with your product (A.K.A., hit the " aha moment ")
  • A/B testing : Experiment with resources you use for conversions, like email subject lines, product demo length, or case study format to find versions that bring the most conversions

A quick recap on marketing strategies: you need both the lead generation and lead conversion strategies for a truly successful marketing plan in the long run. Start as simple as you need to—it will give you the data to reflect on and optimize later on.

5.2 Develop Customer Retention Strategies

A common mistake in startup marketing? Winning a new customer and not bothering with what happens after the sale.

As part of your marketing plan, make sure you’re engaging and looking after your existing customers. What’s the point in spending all that effort on lead generation and conversion, only to lose the customer a few months down the line?

As part of your strategy, consider these two approaches for customer retention :

First, build deeper relationships . Customers have trusted you enough to give you a chance, so make it worthwhile. What brought them to you? What support do they need? How else can your product, features, and future updates help them?

You can use your CRM to keep track of all interactions, customer service conversations, and other notes to give your customers what they need. This CRM information can then guide your marketing, sales, and customer support teams to create a delightful customer experience together.

And second, make it easy to be your brand ambassador . Happy customers are the best foundation for referral marketing. Build a referral program that rewards customers who send new leads your way—word of mouth is a powerful growth engine.

(Pssst: check out the seven best CRMs for marketers .)

6. Set Clear Marketing Objectives

Doing marketing without marketing goals is like driving a car with no destination while hoping you’ll end up at a beautiful place you vaguely pictured in your mind.

Skip the aimless drive with the help of SMART goals, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. It works when setting sales goals , and it works equally well when defining your marketing objectives.

A quick refresher on what each part of the acronym means in practice:

  • Specific : Focus on well-defined goals (like landing page traffic) vs. generic or vague (like brand awareness)
  • Measurable : Make sure there’s a way to measure your progress towards the goal
  • Achievable : Your goal can be a stretch, but it has to be realistic (if you generated 50,000 website visits last month, aiming for 300,000 the next month doesn’t make sense)
  • Relevant : The goal should be a building block towards the overall goals of the business
  • Time-Bound : Define a time frame and an end date for the goal

Here are a few examples of SMART marketing objectives you can lean on for inspiration:

  • Generate 100 new leads from LinkedIn ads (specific and measurable) in September (time-bound) based on our previous result of 85 LinkedIn leads (achievable), as they have proven to convert into high-value customers (relevant)
  • Partner with six tech influencers for product demo videos on YouTube (specific, measurable, and achievable) in Q4 (time-bound), because they reach software buyers in mid-sized businesses (relevant)
  • Grow email subscribers to 5,000 (specific and measurable) in the next six months (time-bound) from the current 1,500 subscribers (achievable) because subscribers that turn into leads tend to convert at a higher rate (relevant)

You get the gist. Take into account your resources (we’re tackling that in the next section) and bigger goals to set your marketing objectives—you can reflect and tweak them as you learn.

7. Define Your Marketing Budget

“But how much will all of this cost my startup?” The real answer is: it depends.

If your startup is well-funded, you might not be intimidated by any size of marketing spend to get the results you want. Bootstrapped startups, of course, will have a different story going on.

Here are some core marketing expenses you need to consider to define your marketing budget:

  • The cost of people : Core staff salaries and/or agencies, consultants, and freelancers like writers, PR reps, SEO consultants, etc.
  • The cost of tech : Marketing tools for social media management, design, email marketing, automation , CRM, video hosting, online forms, content optimization, etc.
  • The cost of media : Paid ads on social media, YouTube, and/or search engines

If you already have revenue, some experts suggest you should spend between 6 percent and 20 percent of it on marketing. If not, Baremetrics suggests to keep your marketing spend below or around $1,000 per month.

While that won’t cover the cost of salaries and consultant fees, you can start without those and focus on using powerful tools to create and optimize content—and your own, internal expertise to generate content that hits the mark. As your revenue grows, you can invest into team members and experts that will help you scale that

If you aren’t sure this can work, hear it from Close’s Steli Efti:

And if you wonder whether you still need a marketing plan even if your budget is near zero, the answer is yes! It will help you make the most of your marketing efforts now, and help you scale them in the right direction in the future.

8. Define Metrics and KPIs to Track Progress

The best thing about a startup marketing plan is that you can connect the results you get to the activities you did. If something’s working, you can double down on it, and if something is not, you can tweak your strategy or eventually discard it.

To make that possible, you need key performance indicators aka KPIs. Avoid the urge to make this more complex and fancy than it needs to be. Here’s what metrics to track:

  • Organic reach like website traffic, specific pageviews, views on social media
  • Organic engagement like time on page and pages per session for the website, likes, comments, shares, and saves for social media
  • Paid ad metrics like click-through rates and conversion rates based on the ads’ goals
  • Visitor-to-lead conversion rates for different gated resources you offer
  • Email open rates across various sequences, like welcome, onboarding, nurturing, etc.
  • Email click-through rates for different links and call-to-actions
  • Sales conversion rate for each channel

The goal is to see what your return on investment is and whether your marketing efforts contributed to your business goals.

9. Create Implementation Timelines and an Optimization Process

Finally, you need to make sure your plan sparks action week after week, month after month. This means you need two things:

First, an implementation plan . Create timelines for each strategy you outlined earlier, and use your SMART goals to be as precise and realistic as possible.

For example, setting up a company blog with the first ~10 posts can be a month-long project and a priority, along with setting up a basic social sharing strategy. In the second month, you can build a welcome email sequence for new subscribers and map out a workflow for a recurring weekly newsletter, while continuing to publish weekly articles on the blog.

Use a project management tool to break these projects down into discrete tasks, assign responsibilities, and count on them to be done.

Startup Marketing Plan - Use Project Management Tools, and Not Stickers Like on This Image

And second, an evaluation and optimization process . Determine the frequency at which you’ll reflect on your marketing results and plan your next moves.

For example, you could have a check-in with the key people on a regular basis. The question you’re looking to answer is: where are our current results as they relate to our SMART goals? Based on the answer, you can tweak planned activities for upcoming weeks, or add new ones to your roadmap.

Let’s say you’ve learned that an email sequence has a fantastic click and conversion rate, but less people are opening it than you predicted. You can tackle this by A/B testing subject lines, preview text, or email frequency to see how it affects opens and if the clicks and conversions stay high.

Rinse. Repeat. Win.

Want a Thriving Startup? A Startup Marketing Plan Is a Must-Have

Let’s recap what makes an impactful startup marketing plan:

First, you need a deep understanding of the market you’re serving: not just your target customers and the pain points you’re solving, but your competitors as well. This lets you build a unique brand identity that attracts the right prospects.

Then, you define marketing strategies and goals that contribute to your overall business objectives. This way, you’re making sure you’re not wasting your time, money, or energy on activities that won’t make a difference.

And finally, you need an implementation plan and a way to reflect on results, so you can keep improving your marketing efforts and generate leads, sales, and repeat customers for a healthy, thriving startup.

P.S. Happy customers are those that trust you to look after them in every scenario, before and after they buy from you. A CRM will help you do exactly that—it holds all the info you need about a customer, from when you first market to them all the way through to conversion and beyond. See what’s possible with a 14-day free trial of Close.

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  1. Startup Marketing Plan

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COMMENTS

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  2. 17 Startup Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business

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  5. 9 Steps to a Winning Startup Marketing Plan

    A startup marketing plan is a map of activities that helps your startup reach its business goals. It includes core information about your target audience and market, your branding, and marketing strategies that will help you reach the right people, turn them into leads, and convert them into customers.