Marketing is something that must exist even before you open the doors of your business. It is not strange for entrepreneurs to start with marketing before startup stage of their business. Before their products or services finish with the development stage.
If you want to have a successful business launch or successful product launch it is crucial to have an appropriate approach to marketing function, even if there are no business or products and services are not yet developed.
Here I want to emphasize five most essential elements of marketing function that you need to implement before you start your business.
1. Customers Development as a Marketing Before Startup
Customers development is an essential step for you before you begin with your startup company. What means customers development, or even better how you can develop your future customers?
When it comes to customers development you will need to answer several questions:
- Who are your customers?
- What are their needs?
- How much is their desire to satisfy those needs?
- Can you satisfy their needs completely?
- Where are your customers?
- What is their behavior?
- How can you approach them?
With these answers, you will have a picture of your potential customers who in the future will buy your product or service.
2. Networking is Important Part of Your Marketing Before Startup Stage
How can you make the initial contact with potential customers that you define in the previous step? You still don’t have developed products or services. So, what you will talk with them?
Because you already know who they are, what are their need, how they live, where they are and how to approach to them, now your goal is to go there and start a conversation with them. In such a way, you want to transform them into a driving force for your business.
Networking can be online through social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook…) as well as offline through meetings, conferences, seminars, talks, fairs…
At this stage, you simply want to have a better knowledge about your potential customers and going as much as you can deeper into their needs, desires, problems, ideas, thoughts, etc.
3. Collecting Valuable Information From Your Potential Customers
What type of information do you need? What can you do with such information?
Networking is useless if you don’t collect information and at this stage of your business life cycle, you use the information only to improve your idea, your future business, and your product or service.
During those networking contacts, you can understand the problems and needs of your potential customers and use that information in designing the real products and services.
4. Set Product Launch Date
When will you start with your new business? What you need to do before you start?
By setting the date of launch with explanations of all benefits to customers and what you already implemented in the previous stages, the goal is to start with the process of creating a buzz around your business. The goal is to become known in the market and to make a sense of urgency and desire for your products and services to all those potential customers.
5. Test Your Prototypes
You already have the first prototypes of your products and services, and you can begin testing it with some of the potential customers.
Because you have a prototype, nothing guarantees the success of it. Why don’t you use some of your new friends from networking stage to test your final prototype?
Such approach can give you exceptional information about possible improvements to the products or services.
Certainly, do not forget to ask for referrals from satisfied testers that you can use it in your initial marketing weapons.
