Following the challenges for business owners over the last couple of years, many entrepreneurs have postponed the launch of their start-up businesses.
Fortunately, Covid-19 restrictions are now a thing of the past.
Yet, new challenges and concerns over the stability of the global market have since arisen, and shouldn’t be dismissed.
However, the tips detailed below aim to give you some examples of low-risk, high-reward, sales and marketing methods that are easy to implement.
You’ll encounter some difficulties along the way, there always are. Some you will expect and others will be curveballs.
The pandemic is a prime example of this, and why you should always have a plan B and flexibility.
We found a great blog called ‘The Main Challenges That You Must Be Aware Of When Launching A Start-Up In 2022′. As the title suggests, it details challenges facing start-up businesses in 2022, including:
- Price increases
- Supply chain disruption
- The job market
- Cyberspace and security
- Competitiveness in the market
It highlights some great points, to read it in full click here.
While there are unforeseen challenges in the future, you can avoid others by learning from the past.
For example, how to win those first crucial customers. How to communicate your sales and marketing messages with impact. How to establish your brand in a competitive market.
There are several methods and activities to explore. In this blog, we list some techniques used by successful start-up companies, and how to leverage them yourself.
1. If your offering is complicated, create an explanation video
With marketing and sales messaging, simplicity and clear communication are key.
Often for SaaS or service-based businesses selling B2B, your offering isn’t easily explained in one sentence.
The trouble is creating a lengthy, over-complicated blog piece may quickly lose your audience before you’ve even had a chance.
A company with multiple solutions, services, or products would probably agree a demonstration or presentation gets the message across the best. Simply because you can directly show the client how it works.
However, when you are still in the lead generation phase you can’t do this. Your audience isn’t at that point of the sales cycle. So, how are you supposed to get their attention?
Video content.
The number of companies using video content in sales and marketing has increased year on year. It is no surprise considering:
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video
- Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year
- Users spend 88% more time browsing on websites that have videos
Here are some video marketing statistics you can’t ignore in 2022.
For companies with a more complex market offering, video is an opportunity to communicate with clarity. Keeping it simple and direct creates more of a chance of engaging your target audience.
An example of video content supporting a highly successful start-up:
Slack originated in Vancouver Canada in 2009 as a start-up company, and has since leveraged this popular medium to grow its audience.
Across their website, you’ll find videos and animated graphics. These explain how their online workspace for companies works.
This allows Slack to explain its product benefits, and reduces ambiguity around the product. Also, from a user experience perspective, you don’t have to hunt around their website to understand the offering.
An example of the company masterfully putting video content to work is their ‘Slack vs email’ page.
In just over a minute, you get a full explanation of the software, its features, and the businesses gain compared with other systems.
For start-ups, using video content to reach your audience is hugely impactful.
Social media and website users today have a reduced attention span. So creating short, snappy, and engaging content to relay information will go down well.
For Slack, this media format has paid off. While using videos alongside traditional media they grew by five to 10 percent every week in the first year.
Remember the power of a good review & make user experience and customer service a priority.
They say you never get a second chance at a first impression. So, when you’re starting you want the buzz about your company to travel through good sources.
It seems simple, but remember your product or service needs to be straightforward to use, have a solid design, and make a real-life impact on users.
Then, your clients will never wonder about or debate the value of your offering.
In addition to this, great customer service goes a long way. Having a helpful, friendly approach and problem-solving mindset ensures your customers never feel undervalued.
Why is this so important?
Referrals and reviews.
Reportedly, customers spend up to 31% more on companies with excellent reviews. Even in business-to-business, a great referral or customer case study can be heavily influential in the decision-making process.
People always feel more confident in something if they can see someone else has done it before them and had success or a good service. So, the influence of a good customer experience story cannot be underestimated.
Yes, you can opt for paying for advertising space to run digital brand awareness campaigns.
However, referrals, testimonials, and case studies we argue have a better ROI and more influence.
Businesses who have put customer experience & service at the centre of their offering:
Monzo, the fintech company founded in London in 2015 started as a people-centric personal bank. More recently, they offer business bank accounts.
A key differentiating factor between Monzo Business and traditional banking is the flexibility, ease, and helpful features it offers business owners.
For example, to set up your account you can quickly apply online. If you are already a Monzo user you can do this through your personal account. So no traipsing into a physical bank to open an account.
Some of Monzo’s features for businesses include:
- Free UK transfers
- Fee-free spending abroad
- Categorised spending
- Tax pots
- 24/7 customer service
- Multi-user access
- Integrated accounting
- Business debit card
- Simplified invoicing for Business Pro users (£5 per month)
Here is a review of Monzo’s business bank accounts.
Being tech-savvy, mobile-friendly, and quick to set up makes online banks increasingly popular.
Others such as Starling Bank, Tide, and Revolut are making the most of B2B opportunities, with user experience and customer service being the edge to seize over traditional banking.
Monzo founder Tom Blomfield commented in an interview with Virgin Start-up on the importance of customer advocacy:
The best way to get existing users to advocate on your behalf is by building a great product, and providing great customer service. I think people are so passionate about Monzo because they genuinely love the product.
When it comes to your own start-up company, focussing on great customer experience and service will build patrons and champions of your company and brand from the get-go.
This ensures you always have a customer to ask for reviews, a recommendation, a testimonial, or case study. Therefore, providing potential customers with real-life examples of how brilliant and valuable your services or products are.
They help to grow your audience and spread positive recommendations through people who already use your services, (AKA trusted positive sources). From this, you will see better customer retention, business growth, brand awareness, trust, and increased revenue.
For Enterprise solutions, this may not be practical, but don’t be afraid to ask for that referral.
3. Provide the solution to a societal or business need
This may seem obvious, but a fatal flaw for many start-ups is investing in a product or service that no one needs.
Providing something useful to your client base that makes a genuine difference and being clear on what that is, is key to getting your start-up off the ground. It doesn’t need to be any more complex than that!
This way, you’ll ensure your business has a long life ahead of it. Plus, rather than your products or services being considered a ‘nice to have’ or luxury item, they’ll fall into the necessity category.
Start-up companies who built their businesses around an urgent need
The online events platform Hopin saw huge benefits from providing a much-needed service to society in a time of crisis.
They achieved enormous growth during the pandemic, as house-bound remote workers needed a reliable online platform to host events.
Hopin stepped up as the go-to virtual events platform for businesses and has since been crowned as Europe’s fastest growing start-up of all time.
Another great example is Cera Care which produced a solution to help a growing societal need.
The company aspires to enable elderly people to live long, healthy, independent lives.
Their digital platform provides users with a network of careers and healthcare professionals to match and connect with.
In an ageing population where healthcare services are stretched, this service can greatly reduce the pressure on local care services and provide the elderly and their families with a quick and reliable service.
Cera Care reports they conduct 10,000 daily care visits, as well as create job opportunities in a sector with increasing needs and pressure.
From a business perspective, we can only expect Cera Care to grow and expand further.
What we learned as a B2B start-up company
Excelerate360 was a start-up business and has achieved steady growth over the years with plans to expand even further.
As an outsourced sales agency, we have to understand the problems our clients experience to provide a service that is:
- Useful to the client and would make a genuine difference to their business
- Scalable so we could adapt to changing markets
- Valuable to our target audience and produces results
The key to our success in solving our client’s pain points and providing them with a quick, cost-effective solution.
Things our clients need are increased b2b sales outreach and lead generation activity so they see a boost in revenue and business growth.
For example, many companies in recent years have suffered high employee churn. The major downsides of this includes the significant cost of internal set up, systems, and management for lead generation,
It leads to an empty pipeline, missed targets, and loss in revenue.
How do we help in this situation?
Firstly, by quickly assembling a team of seasoned sales professionals who understand our client’s sector and target audience.
Secondly, acting as a sales consultancy, conducting research and market analysis to help our clients make informed business decisions.
And thirdly, by increasing our client’s sales activity with multichannel outreach via LinkedIn, email, and telesales.
The result?
Our clients have a pipeline full of SQLs ready to convert into customers or sales while avoiding the costs and risks associated with internal recruitment.
They gain back time to close business and nurture their current clients, while we take care of acquiring new ones.
Overall revenue and sales increase, allowing for further business growth and expansion.
Key takeaways for entrepreneurs launching their start-ups:
- Integrate popular media formats into your sales and marketing strategy.
- Communicate the benefits of your product or service clearly and efficiently.
- Use this as an opportunity to show the personality behind your company and brand, people connect with storytelling and real people.
- Actively encourage your clients to share and spread awareness of your company through word-of-mouth referrals.
- Take care of your reputation and remember the value of a positive recommendation, and the impact of a negative review!
- Never slack on providing great customer service.
- Build a product or service that appeals to the needs of your target audience.
- Understand who your audience is and what their problems are.
- Be solution focussed and present your company as a way to make life easier for your target audience, and a way for them to achieve their goals.
We have supported many start-up companies over the years to find their feet and win their first customers.
If you would like to learn more about how our services could benefit your start-up you can learn more on this page.