7 WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR STARTUP
Guest Blog Post By Jesse Troy
Congratulations - You have finally done it.
You have taken that brilliant idea you had, and decided to take the leap of launching it.
But we have to acknowledge that startups today aren’t like businesses in the past.
The Unique Challenges
When you hear stories about past businesses, often the story is the same. “I set out with a bank loan of $50,000 and a dream. After years of hard work, I am here with an empire!”
The story of modern successful startups are usually much different. The founder started with nothing, bootstrapped the beginning product, then approached venture capitalists and angel investors until someone decided to nibble. From there, history was made.
It points to both the unique challenges of startups, and their unique strengths. The funding structure is much different, for one thing. So is the ability to create a successful company with only one person at the helm, putting their own money, blood, sweat and tears into it to make things work. Who could have imagined that before the days of the internet?
One thing that is interesting about startups is that a lot of them are launched as tools for other startups. Seriously, talk about catering to a rising demographic.
Here are seven of them you should check out to get your own up off the ground.
(1) GetResponse - You are going to have a lot on your plate as you move forward with your company. So much that you will quickly begin to feel like there aren’t enough hours in a day. Automation and simplification are crucial, and GetResponse offers both. Automate marketing tasks, quickly put together and send out marketing, ecommerce and drip email campaigns, create customized, optimized landing pages, record webinars that are meant to attract your target audience… this is a pretty impressive tool. My personal favorite part is the email templates… I hate drafting emails, and I have never liked the options and how complicated they are on other email marketing platforms. This saves me the time, energy, and sheer irritation.
(2) Viral Content Buzz - As a startup, one of your greatest tools is going to be word of mouth. In the modern age that means social media. So how do you get out there to be seen by more than a tiny sliver of people? Viral Content Buzz allows you to trade posts with other people who are looking for their own exposure. You can break into whole new audiences, all for the cost of a single tweet, Facebook post, or other social networking carrot. Best of all, you are networking with other startup founders, marketers, and bloggers. So you can end up with some long term working relationships that benefit everyone for years to come, and maybe even find you some business partners or investors.
(3) Cyfe – Launching a startup is pretty overwhelming. You have so much to keep in mind and monitor. Cyfe is your Godsend. You can track pretty much anything using comprehensive dashboards. Set up a separate pages to monitor your finances, marketing efforts, website performance and so much more! It’s also a surprisingly inexpensive tool too.
(4) Liquid 2.0 - This is actually the second release of this tool, and it had to be tweaked to meet the demands of customers. Now it seems to have fixed for hiccups, and it is up and running. Liquid 2.0 is a neat way to optimize your mobile app. It is also a growth hacking tool (and startups are especially in need of one of those). It creates in app notifications for your customers, including push notifications, in-app alerts, emails, and allows you to notify your back and front end. The original interface left a lot to be desired, and it could be hard to use. Now it is all a lot simpler, so you don’t have as sharp of a learning curve (or the errors). With it in its second incarnation, this is a definite must-have if a mobile app is an important part of your startup.
(5) Narrow.io – Building real Twitter following is hard. You need to be there 24 hours a day interacting, participating in Tweet chats, retweeting, etc. Narrow.io is the only tool that emphasizes the power of real following and doesn’t promise you one-day growth. Use the tool to grow your startup Twitter following.
(6) Branch Journeys - Are your banners and promotional materials on your mobile app as good as they can be? Are you growing at the rate you feel is right? Probably not, and that would be the lament of most developers who are trying to break into the mobile app game. Whether you are just promoting an app as part of a service, or all of a service, this is another great growth hacker that focuses entirely on making those leads convert. So far the reviews on this one are great, though it is still new enough that the results aren’t completely verified. Still, definitely worth a try.
(7) Reactful 2.0 - Ugh, you are getting great traffic but they are stalling on the final step. Why won’t be go the extra little bit and sign up?! Now you can find out, and do something about it. This second version of an already pretty popular app lets you address the issue right in the moment where they are failing to convert. As they say, you are taking “maybe later” customers and turning them into conversions, breaking through the barrier that is keeping you from building your customer base. The overhaul did a lot to sell me on this one, to be honest. Not that I didn’t like it before, but it had a few design issues that made it hard to use, and lacked a couple of features. Now it is a way more complete application, and worth every bit of time they put into revamping it.
MEET JESSE TROY
Jessy Troy is a blogger with 7+ years of digital writing experience. She started as a freelance writer and stay-at-home mom. She has since founded her own writing business. Jessy is a blogger at Successful Blog. She earns her living by providing writing services as well as operating blogs that are being monetized through affiliate programs.
You can follow Jessy on Twitter @JessyTroy
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