The earlier you start deploying organic marketing activities through an SEO agency, the better your chances of ranking higher. It’s what is advocated time and again by SEO professionals, not for the sake of doing business, but to make every keyword and search term count. To put it simply, branding is every businesses source of bread and butter. However, the primary online marketing activity that most companies neglect is SEO.
In today’s blog, we’ll explore a crucial stage in the business cycle of an early-stage start-up. The process involves developing a go-to-market strategy and the initial product launch.
During the initial days of a start-up, you plan your first product launch, considering risks and uncertainties of the outcome. You face pressure from the stakeholders and deadlines that require you to be on the ball. It can get to you over a period of time if you don’t have a solid go-to-market strategy in place. Remember that investing in growth requires its share of planning and deep thought. There is no fixed price by an SEO agency when it comes to strategizing for brands.
Therefore, what you need is a product-market fit that efficiently satisfies a specific market segment. Getting the right product-market fit is necessary for a short-term and long-term growth, including monthly business revenue.
Making a Go-To-Market strategy for your business
You will find several blog posts about the perfect strategy; however, the approach working for successful businesses covers the following aspects.
- Some businesses interact with their customers or interview them with specific and general questions. Companies find this process useful as solutions come directly from the customer.
- Using A/B testing with groups of target users to validate the product and identifying issues like edge cases and compatibility problems with other systems.
- Setting a feedback method of approach from the set groups mentioned above. This method helps companies to determine the potential audience and see how the product brings value or makes a difference enough to purchase the product.
By implementing the above three methods, a brand is better able to formulate:
- a pricing strategy
- a core market messaging
- defining competitors
- an idea of the customer’s way of using your product, and in conjunction with other products
The process can help you target relevant customers, but it might reduce the wider set of audiences by weeding out uninterested customers. While this is a good practice, stakeholders might fail to recognize its potential. At this point, it becomes essential to explain and educate stakeholders of the strategy involved here. Even though one might feel that exposing a brand to all industries or random audiences seems ideal, it makes no lasting impact. The real way is to target a smaller audience, but one that will most definitely buy your products and services. It’s like having 10 to 12 quality friends instead of a larger group of 200 friends who never interact with you but are simply warming your friend’s list on Instagram.
The significance of targeting a narrower audience
Your SEO agency will help filter the audience based on your niche. In doing so, you get potential customers that are serious and genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
Now, depending on your niche, SEO activities can result in a narrower audience. That can sometimes mean that third-party keyword research tools begin to decrease. This happens in emerging markets where search volumes are lower and phrases are not yet picked up due to lack of PPC spends and marketing data.
So, a thorough and logical go-to-market strategy can help you devise a targeted SEO strategy for creating value propositions.
Let’s look at how an SEO strategy can help you.
- Comprehend the right competitors
Not everyone selling products online are truly competing with Amazon and eBay. Therefore, not every brand doing similar business is your competitor.
SaaS product-related companies have a small set of competitors, but these are likely to overlap with other SaaS products. It’s an aspect you need to factor in, while potential customers consider alternate options.
- Direct your focus on keyword research
Develop the right set of keywords depends on the messaging your audience is doing in online searches to find related products and services. Therefore, focus keywords should be based on researching the problems your target audience is facing. By helping your audience seek a solution only available with your product, you or your SEO agency will be able to find keywords relevant for your brand’s marketing approach.
Look towards entering forums such as Quora and StackOverflow for tech or SaaS-related products if your audience is looking for systems, infrastructure and engineered solutions. Similarly, slack communities, Facebook groups, and Reddit are platforms more suitable for general marketers. Make sure to not enter forums with a sales-ready message. This might result in members staying away from you. Worst case scenario, the admin might remove you for being too promotional. You need to be a problem-solver rather than constantly sharing updates and new information about the products and services you are selling.
- Convert and retain customers
It’s good to get in new customers, but focus of equal strength should also be on retaining those customers. Retention does not start after you have converted a customer; it begins during the discovery stage and travels along the funnel of consideration and conversion. You have to retain a customer the moment you get them in for the first time.
This practice helps companies develop a trusted and meaningful bond with their customers. There are several variables to factor in with the customer buying process and journey. Customers have personal experience, expectation, and estimate the good from the bad product.
Therefore, your brand’s message should represent the product or service that can meet the user’s requirements. As competitive as this seems, which it is, your communication needs to allow the user to correctly estimate the usefulness of your service deliveries. In short, meet their expectations perfectly. If you are successful at meeting the user’s demands and expectation, you are converting them into daily subscriptions, and retaining them for future purchases.
Let your SEO agency provide you the best go-to-market strategy to scale your business growth. If you haven’t hired an SEO firm, connect with us for a free SEO consultation session to discuss your requirements and give you the right direction. We charge our services at affordable prices, especially for start-ups.