Top 7 Startup Marketing Mistakes

When starting your own business, especially the first one, there’s definitely a learning curve. As an entrepreneur, you have so many things on your plate you have to deal with for the first time, that it is inevitable that you will make mistakes.

Also, marketing is usually not a founder’s specialty, and that’s why we tend to see many startups making the same avoidable mistakes.

Here are the top 7 startups marketing mistakes and how to avoid them:

1. Not identifying your target audience  – Some startups fear of “missing opportunities” and decide to cast a wide marketing net. But, one of the staples of marketing is targeting, and if your message is vague and unclear, it will not be effective. Before launching any marketing campaign, stop and strategize. Who is your target audience? For example, if you have a solution for enterprises in the financial sector, you need to understand WHO in those enterprises you are selling to. Is your product a solution for IT executives, CMOs or CFOs? Each role has a complete different set of priorities and responsibilities, and the success of your product is very much dependant on identifying your exact target audience.
2. Failing to check marketing results –  Marketing is a continuous process and is not a set and forget one. In order to understand if your marketing efforts bear fruit, you need to setup the necessary analytics tools and check your results on an on-going basis. Tracking everything, including the amounts you spend on each channel and how much traction you receive, is crucial for understanding marketing results. Without tracking, you will not be able to calculate your ROI and will not have the sufficient information needed to make improvements in your activities.
3. Spending too much money too soon – This is actually a common mistake that startups make on all fronts. According to CB Insights, among the 20 primary reasons causing startups to fail, the #2 is running out of cash (the #1 result for failing is that there’s no market for the product). Unlike the option of hiring a programmer for a low salary but a large chunk of options, you can’t pay Google for AdWords in shares. But, there are ways to launch and grow your startup with no or minimal budget. Before jumping to marketing tactics and spending a lot of money on buying media, spend time in analyzing and figuring out what is important to do now for your marketing, and how much – if at all – will it cost.
4. Failing to check on competition – Few are the companies that don’t have any competitors. Even if you think that’s the case, map the closest ones to you as your company cannot operate in a closed-off bubble. Follow your competitors’ social media accounts, create alerts on their brand name so you are always on top of things. We all know that users are comparing when shopping, especially in the early stages of the purchase cycle. The purchase will probably not happen once they first visit your site and chances are they will look at competitors to compare. Don’t mimic what your competitors do but rather, add reviews and posts to your website that compare you and the competitors. Adding such a comparison page has also side benefits, including increased SEO for your site.
5. Expecting immediate results – Marketing takes time, and it is very much dependant on the market (if it’s educated or not), type of product (quick online purchase or a slower buying process) and clients (individuals vs. SMBs vs. enterprises). If you have a B2C product and run a Facebook campaign, it’s OK to expect fast results. If you, however, have a B2B product and run a LinkedIn campaign – you have to chill. The campaign can provide you valuable leads, even in the form of a comment from a potential client to a promoted post. But don’t expect immediate results as the buying process itself takes time. In addition, most marketing budgets, especially ones that involve building online presence and SEO, require months of efforts before you can see results. SEO is not exact science but estimation is that it can take a brand name up to a month to rank on top 3 results and a niche keyword up to a year to rank.
6. You keep recycling – One aspect of marketing is content and for it to be effective, it has to be good quality one. Recycling content is OK, to a point. Even if you don’t have any news or product launches, you need to be innovative and come up with new angles and stories to existing ones. If you published a press release about new data your company found, you cannot re-publish the same data as ‘new findings’ 6 months from the date of the original release. You can follow up with new information, mention the initial release, but to showcase the data as new or even – gasp – copy and paste from the first release, is not effective at all and can also paint your company as untrustworthy.  
7. Lastly – not investing at all in marketing – This can be one of your biggest marketing mistakes. Investing in your marketing does not necessarily mean putting aside a hefty marketing budget, but rather investingthought into it. Running forward with your company’s roadmap while leaving marketing activities behind can be a crucial mistake as marketing defines the positioning of your company in its market, your brand and the packaging of the product you are selling. As budgets are often tight in startups, marketing can be viewed as a frivolous expense. But, it can be done for a minimal budget and if you keep an eye on results and make sure to shift efforts towards the positive ROI channels, any funds you invest will come back, with an interest.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PTZmL4

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7 Online Marketing Ingredients You Can't Ignore in 2016

Online marketing constantly evolves: What worked in years past won't necessarily be the most effective strategy today.

So, what should you focus on as you plan your online marketing strategy for the upcoming year? 

Here are seven ingredients that you can’t ignore as we enter 2016.

1. Content on platforms beyond your blog

Blogs are a great way to deliver your brand message to your target audience. They will continue to be an excellent platform for content marketing, but everyone has a blog these days. So, think about creating content on multiple channels in order to stand out in your industry. 

Consider creating a YouTube channel or engaging with your audience through live streaming. Video content is highly engaging, and best of all, it’s free to produce -- you don’t need fancy camera equipment. In fact, I know several brands that even film with smartphones.

2. A mobile-first focus

Mobile can’t be an after-thought any longer. Back in March, the number of mobile-only adult internet users exceeded desktop-only Internet users. Websites must be built (or redesigned) with a mobile audience in mind -- your forms, calls-to-action and content must all be easily readable and accessible on small screens. 

If you are running pay-per-click ads, consider a Google AdWords call-only campaign -- it’s a great way to drive phone calls with buyer-intent.

3. A strong brand voice

Consumers aren’t interested in engaging with a faceless generic brand these days. The social media age almost demands that brands have a face -- T-Mobile's CEO John Legere is a great example. You will often see the brand promoting Legere's tweets on Twitter. It gives T-Mobile that human element consumers love and connect with. 

Branding also comes close to home: In 2016 I'll be writing a book as a branding play to continue to get my company and personal brand out there. 

4. Website UX and speed

It’s important that your website provide a pleasant user experience -- both in functionality and speed. You want to make sure your visitors can access information and features on your website regardless of what type of device they are using, and you want to make sure your website loads quickly. 

Nobody has time to wait around for pages to load and if the UX is poor, you can expect your bounce rate to be through the roof. For feedback on your UX, consider using a tool like SurveyMonkey to get feedback from your users. Ask them what they like, what they don't like and what they would change. 

To check the speed of your website, use Google’s PageSpeed Insightsand GTmetrix. Both are free tools that will analyze your website and provide suggestions to improve its performance.

5. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing via social media has the potential to be your most ROI-friendly online marketing of 2016. Leveraging the popularity and social reach of various influencers can help you position your products or service directly in front of your target market. 

The trust that’s already established between the consumer and the influencer he or she is following removes the barricade traditional marketing and advertising will typically face. If you want an example of a successful influencer marketing campaign, check out how this hover-board company used social media influencers exclusively to build a multi-million dollar brand.

6. Highly specific paid search remarketing.

Running remarketing campaigns became more popular this past year: Almost every brand running pay-per-click traffic was experimenting with remarketing on some level. I audited my own fair share of PPC campaigns this past year and noticed that many of these remarketing campaigns were not as specific as they could have been. Why? It takes time to really break them down.

If people are viewing a “blue widget” on your website, then, set up your remarketing so an ad featuring that same item follows them and sends them directly to that product when it's clicked on. Sending visitors to your home page or a page with several different widgets will greatly lower your conversion rates. Instead, put your remarketing traffic directly in front of what the visitor was previously looking at. 

7. More diverse social media marketing.

Are you currently advertising on Snapchat and Instagram? How about Periscope -- are you taking advantage of live streaming? Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all great advertising platforms and will continue to thrive, but you simply can’t ignore Snapchat and Instagram right now.

Nothing works for everyone, but I would highly recommend experimenting with these social networks. Instagram’s self-serve ad platform allows you to use Facebook’s highly favorable targeting options to reach your audience. I would also suggest experimenting with Meerkat or Periscope in your marketing.

Source : http://entm.ag/1mIq6XJ

Quote of the day.

3 reasons social media relationships aren't virtual

I remember saying that if I could ever figure out how a person could be in two places at once I’d retire a billionaire.

Then, I figured it out.

Being in two places or more simultaneously is exactly what social media allows us to appear to do. With a nearly endless supply of apps designed to cross-post anything we can enter into a digital device, you’d think the impossible had finally been achieved.

Certainly a lot of innovative people have ensured a comfortable retirement by making that illusion easy to create. But what is it costing entrepreneurs who fall prey to it?

Back when I was lamenting the impossibility of being in two locations at the same moment I was working with service professionals, primarily doctors. We all know what happens when a doctor gets scheduled to be in two places at once; we have to clear our schedules because we’ll be spending most of the day in their clinic.

So, part of my consulting role was to teach micromanagement of the service provider’s appointment book to make the most of their available seconds while keeping their schedule as close to on time as possible.

You might think that showing up on social media has very little in common with being physically present with a patient, but you would be wrong. Social media gives us the opportunity to really show up, but most people confuse posting to a platform with having a presence in that space.

Thinking you’re really showing up on social media using apps to create and recreate content is like a doctor writing about the symptoms of a disease for WebMD. It’s marketing, it’s valuable content, but it is not the same as being present with the patient in the examining room.

1. Content equals marketing; conversation equals a relationship.

You post content, and with the magic of technology it shows up everywhere you tell it to go. Then, boom! There you are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, any social media platform you choose.

That’s marketing. Sometimes it’s really good marketing, but like all marketing, the purpose is to make you visible, to make you valuable, to get you on the radar of prospective customers and brand ambassadors to invite them to raise their hands and say, “More please.”

Marketing doesn’t build relationships. Most of the people telling you that social media doesn’t work aren’t really building relationships, they’re marketing. These are often the same people who tell you networking doesn’t work because they go to live networking events with a stack of cards and an agenda to market to as many people as possible.

Perhaps all you need from social media is a place to promote yourself and your business. In that case, carry on as you have been; this discussion won’t apply to you. If building relationships is part of your success strategy, here are some things to remember.

2. People have relationships with people.

People might develop loyalty to a brand, but they have a relationship with the people who represent that brand. If you are the brand, then their relationship has to be with you. Show up as a person who has a brand, not as a brand who is a person.

3. To have a relationship you have to relate.

Some of us are very private by nature. But if you can’t be personal, even vulnerable, people will see you as a personality, not a person. The admonition to “get real” has never been more applicable than here.

4. We bond over things we care about.

If your posts are never about anything except yourself and your work your family and your pets and your life, you’re sending a message that you are pretty much all that matters to you.

This may not turn people off initially, but it creates a revolving door of relationships with people who thought they had something in common with you, then slowly realize the only thing you have in common is that you both like you.

5. Relationships are built on know, like and trust.

Letting people get to know you is all about putting yourself out there. If you’re charming enough, people might like you just from what you have to say, but to trust you they need to believe you care about them.

Take the time to show up in their space. Do more than just like, retweet, or leave a “You go, girl!” Respond, engage, invite dialog, and demonstrate that you recognize the unique value of their personhood.

6. You really can only be in one place at once.

I really thought I could have overcome the impossible by now, too. Though I can market in multiple places at once, I can’t really show up as a person and engage in multiple places at once. I spend most of my “person” time on Facebook, that’s my home base of choice. What’s yours?

Source : http://bit.ly/1NMFOf4

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Five social media hacks to make you a better boss

Social media can be a tool to help you better manage your employees.

When the words 'social media' and 'work' are used in the same sentence, it is usually in relation to one of two activities – self-promotion and time wasting. Either you're the one watching the cat video, or you're the one who filmed it (in the hope it will make you and your feline a viral sensation).

But, can social media also make you a better manager? I believe that it can if you're calm, calculated and compassionate when posting, pinning, liking and lurking.

Do you want to boost team morale, exert your authority or just spruce up the office? Then follow my top tips:

Show your trust

​I remember at the dawn of Twitter, many employers banned their employees from mentioning who they worked for in their social media bios. Or, if they did say they worked at [insert company name] they had to put a disclaimer saying, "views are my own". I take the opposite tack with my team members. Not only am I happy for them to proudly say they work for The Collective, but I encourage them to have strong opinions, because I trust their ethics and morals. Imagine sending a staff member to a party in the real world, but banning them from telling anyone where they worked.

Track their overtime

I've written before about the downsides of over-dedication in staff members. Although I applaud passion and adore anyone who goes the extra mile, I am also extremely aware of the dangers of burnout. Is a star employee uploading Facebook posts at 9pm on a Wednesday ("Location: the office")?

Are they posting Instagram snaps from their desk when everyone else is tucked up in bed? If you start to notice patterns that a staff member is neglecting rest and restoration, it could be time to sit them down and check they're not burning the candle at both ends.

Find a virtual mentor

Social media isn't just a way of boosting staff morale, but also your own. On Twitter I follow an inspiring army of business leaders and managers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Sir Richard Branson and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. They share wise words and insightful articles and what it's really like to run a company.

I also use social media to peek behind the scenes at other people's offices. No, I'm not just nosy! Pinterest boards like The Muse and Instagram accounts like Todd Selby (@theselby) give me ideas for how to design a creative and productive office space for my own team.

Give out gold stars

Do you name an 'employee of the month'? No, me neither. My employees are no longer 15-year-olds working in a burger joint. But I do think it's important to give credit where credit's due, publicly, and social media offers a subtle way to do this. I recently posted a picture on Instagram which just read, "Thankyou".

I gave a shout-out to my extraordinary team who make my big vision a reality. I also tagged all of them in the picture. It not only (hopefully) gave them a happy glow, but also reminded me how much I appreciate them all.

Send a postcard home

As a manager, you might travel – a lot. I am personally on a plane at least once a week, travelling to an event, speaking gig or far-flung meeting. As I head to another airport, I never want my team to think I'm just jetting off on a frivolous vacation. That's why I use social media like a postcard from my working holiday, to prove it's not all play.

Although I will sometimes post a photo taken by a hotel pool, I always try to make the point that I just had a quick dip before a conference or to unwind after a long day of negotiations. When you're remote-managing a team, don't let social media undermine how much work you're really doing.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LfHpsp

The 10 Startups That Are Changing Social Media

Innovation can take the world by storm in just a matter of months, sure, but it can also take years to change the market through a slow shift implacable as the tide. Whether causing explosive change or subtle, here are 10 startups that are impacting social media today:

1. Bubbly

Self-described as “like Twitter and Instagram for your voice,” Bubbly is a social media platform that allows users to create voice recordings and share them with family, friends, or followers. The voice recordings can be accompanied by text or a picture, but the focus is the voice recording element, the differentiating angle for this social media startup.

Based out of Singapore, Bubbly currently has 40 million users worldwide, primarily in Asia and the Middle East, and has received nearly $50 million in funding. In 2014 Bubbly was acquired by Altruist Technologies, a large Indian mobile social networking company, and this year the company is poised to break into the European and American markets. In a visually driven market, Bubbly is proving that audio can be just as successful in a social media startup.

2. Kenshoo

A huge aid to marketers, Kenshoo is the global leader in agile marketing software, allowing users to create and manage mobile, search, and social marketing campaigns. The company is bridging the gap between search and social data, connecting user search queries on Google, Yahoo, and Bing with advertisements on Facebook and Twitter, an incredibly useful tool for any company with the budget to afford it. Kenshoo also provides tools to analyze data from social media in order to find target audiences and optimize the campaign’s performance.

Kenshoo is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Sequoia Capital, among others, and the company produces over 1 trillion digital advertisements a year that in turn provide over $350 billion in annual revenue for clients. Kenshoo’s success is no small matter, and this startup is changing the way that businesses interact with the world of social media.

3. Periscope

Sorry, Meerkat, the crown goes to Periscope. Meerkat is a live-video streaming app released in February 2015 that allows users to broadcast live streams through Twitter. Meerkat caused quite a stir in late winter/early spring of this year, acquiring a loyal following and making noise in the social media world. But when Twitter noticed Meerkat’s success, the company turned on Meerkat and acquired Periscope, a similar live video streaming app in development, in March 2015. Shortly after, Twitter blocked Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph, limiting Meerkat’s compatibility with Twitter and damaging its growth.

Both apps are good and are together pushing live video streaming into the forefront of social media this year, but Periscope has the more intuitive interface and the backing of Twitter, giving them an edge. In August 2015, Periscope announced that it had over 10 million user accounts, and this only 4 months after launch, a further sign that the balance between Periscope and Meerkat is shifting in Periscope’s favor.

4. Frilp

Frilp is the latest startup entering the social network of recommendations and reviews, but it plans to upset the models of TripAdvisor and Yelp. Frilp (short for Friend’s Help) aims to spread recommendations the way they would in real life: through your network of friends, family, and acquaintances. Frilp uses your social network, your work place, and address book to create your Frilp network, in which you can then ask specific questions or look at your network’s posted reviews for ideas on where to eat, shop, or explore.

The company is only in Beta testing, but once it’s officially released, this app could change the way people approach online recommendations and references by reducing information overload and providing that information through a source you know and trust rather than a stranger.

5. Conspire

A social networking tool gaining steam, Conspire wants to rectify LinkedIn’s wrong: that LinkedIn has grown too large for its own good, making many connections meaningless. Conspire requires access to your email (it doesn’t see the actual email, just who you are talking to) and analyzes your contacts and emails and learns how strong your connections actually are based on how frequently you talk to them. If you want to meet someone, Conspire shows you who to ask to make the introduction by following the strongest path to the desired contact.

The site also has the useful benefit of teaching you how to email better. Users can see their average response time with specific contacts, as well as the contact’s response time to them, helping them to identify if they are being over- or under-communicative. Conspire is only as effective as the breadth of its network, and while the company has not released any actual figures as to how many users it has, there are over 70 million people in the network created from users’ emails. Not bad for a company just two years old.

6. Unmetric

It’s no secret that social media analytics is useful. It can help improve your business or even predict the results of political elections. Unmetric is an intelligence and social media analytics startup for branded businesses. The company provides several useful tools, from providing lists of successful campaigns to inspire clients with ideas to comparing clients’ social media campaigns with those of their competition. No other service provides as comprehensive a look at what branded social media campaigns are succeeding and how they do it. The startup also provides real-time updates of clients’ campaigns, so if unusual activity is occurring, whether it’s positive or negative, clients know immediately and can take action accordingly. With branded clients like Toyota and American Airlines and agencies like Edelman, Unmetric is getting recognition from high profile clients for its in-depth analysis drawn from over 150 million pieces of microcontent on the web.

7. Flipboard

Flipboard is, in essence, a sort of Pinterest for articles and RSS mash-up. The site handpicks content from trusted sources all over the internet and presents them in a beautiful format, sorted by topic. Flipboard allows users to tailor their Flipboard feed according to their interests and also to curate their own magazines by “flipping” articles and photographs to include them in a personal magazine-styled format that can then be shared with other users.

Originally a mobile app that released in 2010, Flipboard has remained an independent entity and has amassed 70 million monthly users as of June 2015, a jump aided by Flipboard’s website, which launched earlier this year. With this growth and a recent $50 million announced for Series D funding this summer, Flipboard is poised to go bigger with its content curation platform.

8. SocialFlow

SocialFlow is a software company that provides analytics on social publishing and advertising and works with their clients to increase their brands’ visibility and business by posting content on social media at optimal times when more of the audience is active online. Partnered with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+, SocialFlow is one of the biggest social media analytics companies out there with clients such as Pepsi, Walmart, eBay, L’oreal, and Redbull, among others. With an additional $5 million in funding acquired this year in July, SocialFlow will continue to grow and push its social media optimization through the rest of this year.

9. 500px

The banner on 500px’s website reads, “home to everyone’s best photos,” and the banner isn’t lying. 500px is a photo community of photographers and fans of beautiful shots alike. Users can follow specific photographers or like individual photos and see what their friends on the site follow and like as well. The posted photos are also available to purchase and use as stock photos for web, print, or reselling purposes (with different price points for each). Andreesen Horowitz has invested in both 500px’s Series A and B funding rounds, the second of which occurred this past July for a total of $13 million. Pricier but with high quality than its primary competitor Eyeem, 500px is on the campaign to support high-end photography and usher in a new bar for quality photographs in a larger market.

10. Yik Yak

Probably the most well-known company on the list, Yik Yak is the app everyone loves to hate (and also happens to be valued at ~$400 million). In the past year, most of Yik Yak’s coverage has focused on the anonymous bullying and racism that has occurred on the app, but these are always issues with anonymous content hosters. For those not in the know, Yik Yak is an app in which people can make short Twitter-style posts anonymously that can then be voted on by readers. The catch? The newsfeed only includes yaks from within a 1.5 mile radius of a phone’s location (though they’ve sinced added a “peek” ability that lets you read yaks from other areas but not vote or comment on them).

Given the restricted location of the app, Yik Yak became wildly popular on college campuses and has active users at 1,600 US colleges today. The question now is can they survive the negative backlash the app has received because of its ability to host cyberbullying. Yik Yak has been blocked on high school campuses, and the company is actively working to make the app’s content more constructive, but only time will tell if their efforts work. Whether people continue to “ride the Yak” or not, the app has shown how popular location-based posting is, for sports arenas and college campuses alike.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PVTFhm

Kids using secret mobile apps to keep things hidden from parents.

There’s a parenting alert about kids keeping secrets on their phones.

Kids are installing so-called secret apps that hide media like texts and photos from their parents. 

So how do these cyber secret keepers work? One of the apps looks like an ordinary calculator app on the iPhone.

In fact, it is a standard calculator, but when you enter the secret password that your child created and hit the percent key, a photo album appears.

Now there’s pictures hidden that your child didn’t want you to see.

Apps like these are becoming so popular, a county district attorney in Alabama sent out a warning to parents on Facebook. Pamela Casey said a parent called her about "Private Photo"

“You and I know if one child knows about it, many children know about it, so take a minute and grab that phone,” Casey said in the video.

   

Experts say you can keep your kids from these apps by turning off their ability to install apps without your approval.

“The problem with these apps is they allow kids to hide their cyber lives from their parents and sometimes the things they’re hiding can harm them,” Yahoo! Editor in Chief Dan Tynan told ABC's "Good Morning America."

You can watch GMA's full story below or click here for a link:

Source : http://bit.ly/1NWBIRV