5 Steps on how to set up your Startup for success
By: Labake Tom-Aba
Tags: Management And Leadership, Business Strategy, Projects, Startup Marketing

I have been a huge fan of anything Startup, from working with great talents and ideas in accelerator, to meeting remarkable extremely gifted people. However, an idea that started of great can soon become a real depressant especially if you have recorded a remarkable growth rate and then afterwards plateau.

This growth challenge happens to every business, however the different between the company that survives and the ones that don’t sometimes depend on the Marketing approach or the quality of the first minimum viable product(MVP).

The first startup I worked for was a company that was in the recruitment space, they really did had a great product and that was where I learnt most of my skill as a generalist / executive. Even though we did not have a multimillion dollar marketing campaign, we were able to breakeven through the first five years, generating 6 figure revenue. However, this result was not generated over night. We had key metric we planned to achieve, milestone we planned to reach and yes, there were days we encountered setbacks, there where days people left the office with no clue of what was going to happen next. In the midst of all the struggle there were certain key things I took away which I would be sharing.

Setting up Infrastructure: When people talk about structure, it could be a simple thing as small as the process and structure of handling customers complaints, or a seamless way in which customers can make payment or shop online without going through multiple layers of process or verifications. Starting anything without infrastructure to support order or purchase could simply translate that the capacity to scale or handle several task one at a time may not be available. if you have a start a marketing campaign targeting one million people to sell a product and your capacity to fulfill this order is not in place, it means this is your are setting up your business for failure. There is nothing wrong about dreaming big, it just does not add up promising a thing and underdelivering. One time I saw an instagram campaign trying to get people to create a user account for a product, I was super excited to see the ad and on clicking the ‘learn more button’ I got a prompt that I needed to switch to a desktop computer. I believe that the user design aspect of this campaign was not thoroughly though out, as you all know instagram is better accesible via a mobile device. I believe what they should have done was create a mobile friendly aspect of the website before launching the campaign Creating an offer: An example of a good offer is Netflix’s plan, Although I hate the plan because at a time I had to upgrade to get access to content on my ipad while I was traveling, it simple provides access to a plan for different people with different needs. I don’t know how they figured out that people are logged on to different account (no thanks to data gathering). Their plan provides access to different people depending of how high you want the resolution of your screen to be.

Picture credit: Netflix subscription plan

3. Launching a “perfect” campaign: When I say a perfect campaign, I don’t mean that 100 page campaign of 100+ testimonial of how jack and jones bought your products and now it’s the best thing that happened to them. While I am not ruling testimonial out, there are better things to do than having people record a video where they are sounding like a broken record. Aside that, I see a lot of people run digital campaign using facebook and instagram without a proper funnel and channel and converting these leads to customers to make sales. The use of digital tools and media cannot be under estimated, however rather than focus solely of digital platform explore a variety of other marketing platform. You can also explore other advertising medium and multi-channel marketing campaign, find out how you can place your products in a physical store where people can buy directly from them.

4. Be creative: An average American would have seen the liberty mutual insurance advertisement where I man and sherif or police has a partner who is a bird, and the tagline of the campaign say’s pay for only what you need. When I cam across the campaign I did not initially understand why a person would have a duck as a partner. While I am not necessarily saying a duck is of no use, it simple means that with the insurance company ‘you are only charge for what you need” and no unnecessary overheat cost. It could also require delivery an advertisement for key people, rather than running a generic campaign. The take way, be creative with your marketing campaign.

Picture credit: Liberty Mutual Insurance

5. The power of repetition: As a certified scrum master one of the scrum process is iteration. The first time I cam across the word, it was a bit confusing, however after a much deeper search I discovered that it actually means the ability to replicate a process. Repetition is what separates the Professionals from the amateur. Too often times when people or company excel at a task, the reason is always as a result of the ability to perfect a particular task or they have a set of skill they have refined over and over again. The same thing applies to marketing for a business. As a child I always looked forward to coca-cola’s Christmas ad with Santa Klaus, where they take advantage of selling coke as a refreshing drink especially for festival season like christmas. Is coke an established brand name ? yes, however they always come up with the most innovative way every year to promote their brand. This single action of continously improving and refining a startup / business marketing process is one of the key factors that seperate a business that fails and the one who survives. Recently, I walked up to the beauty section of walmart and I wanted to pick up a product, however there were hundreds of brands to pick from, this include popular brands such as NARS, L.A Pro, Cover Girl, Clinique etc. I realized that the only reason I will buy a product I have not used before would likely be as a result of the ad I have seen or someone recommending it. Don’t just create a product and expect that everyone would know about it. Get out there talk to your customer let them know about the features and benefits of your products and make them buy it. Got only one buyer from doing such, repeat the process and you will see remarkable result.

Now, that I have shared these 5tips I hope you can go ahead and apply them to your Business.

You can connect with me on linkedin

Until next time stay safe

You can read my other article here https://labbytom.medium.com/the-power-of-resilience-in-times-like-this-5-ways-of-how-i-am-navigating-it-b6d1d08ded67

you can conncet also with me here

https://www.labaketomaba.com

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