If you’re a budding startup looking to make a splash online, you may feel like you’re facing the ultimate uphill battle.
After all, there are seemingly millions of to-do’s and places to start: how does a fresh face in a cutthroat industry possibly stand out from the crowd? Don’t panic.
Tech companies in particular have a unique set of challenges when it comes to building buzz and encouraging a flood of new, hungry customers. As such, we’ve highlighted some tips to help ease you into the marketing sphere, as well as the most important principles to consider as you look to make your name online.
And with that, let’s dive right in!
Don’t Wait Until Your Product Has Launched
Despite popular belief, you don’t need to wait until everything is totally up and running to start building up your web presence. Even before your product has hit the market, you can spend months boosting your site to establish your credibility. For example, you can start by…
- Creating a sense of hype with behind the scenes content showing your team revving up for your launch
- Beefing up your company blog for the purpose of SEO and thought leadership
- Highlighting trust signals on-site, highlighting pointers such as your commitment to risk management as an tech company and security at large.
Set Up Everything You Need “Behind the Curtain”
Have you picked your email marketing provider yet? What about your CRM?
How are you encouraging new sign-ups and leads for you company’s list?
These are all systems you need to have in place long before launch. By fine-tuning and testing these aspects of your web presence, you’ll thank yourself later rather than have to deal with any bugs.
Use Earned Media and Industry Blogs to Your Advantage
The importance of earned media can’t be overstated for modern companies, especially given how much clout there is to go around in the tech blogosphere. Whether you leverage your own experience or know of fellow industry players who can score you a mention, make sure to reassess “who you know” to get your name out there.
Leverage the Power of LinkedIn
Although social media is considered a must-have for all modern businesses, unlocking the potential of LinkedIn is of particular interest to techies. The ability to network directly with industry insiders and share your mind is a great way to get attention on your company prior to launch.
Choose Your Social Networks Carefully
On a related note, don’t make the mistake of spreading yourself way too thin via social. Start by picking one or two communities to focus on and leave any secondary networks (think: do you really need an Instagram account?) on the backburner from now. If your primary goal is building a list of customers, focus on that first.
Work with a Professional Designer
Finally, looks are everything for tech companies. For the sake of keeping up appearances, don’t neglect acts such as hiring a professional web designer, running UX tests and making sure your graphics are up to snuff. Given that customers and competitors will judge you at a glance, these are the sort of creatives you can’t afford to skimp on.
Reality check: there are tons of tech companies out there that manage to thrive despite having a sub-par web presence. If you’re able to tick all of these boxes in terms of your marketing strategy, you’ll be way ahead of the curve and poised for traffic, customers and buzz shortly after hitting the scene.