Ashu Kajekar, Managing Director, 7EDGE
Internet Private Limited

If you are a product startup of any variety, from any industry and looking to make your product marketable, you have it a lot easier today than you would have even a couple of decades ago. The vast array of marketing technology (MarTech) platforms available these days gives you the opportunity to reach audiences across all channels, scale your business quickly, and drum up a huge interest in your product - even if you have little experience in marketing for your industry.

However, having all this marketing technology for startups available at your fingertips won’t drive instant success for your product marketing initiatives. Product owners need to understand how to embrace that technology, whether it is simple, standalone software or a product available on the marketing cloud.

As with all marketing, everything starts with a solid end-to-end strategy. It’s an area where many startups fail, whether it’s in developing a good PR presence, social strategy, email marketing strategy or content marketing. You need a solid foundation before your product is launched, and there are various tools in the marketing cloud for startups you can use to get started.

Finding your market

The first step is to find your differentiation or niche. There is an enormous range of MarTech tools available to do this, such as market research software like Attest, which can give businesses valuable insights into the viability of their products.

Competitor Research

Researching your competitors is also a vital process in developing your product business. It will give you ideas on how to differentiate yourself, highlight potential problems, and see where you can possibly steal a few customers from our rivals. Services like Adthena are an interesting proposition for product builders, as they can give you invaluable information on Everything from keywords to search strategy secrets.

Developing Relationships

If you want to reduce customer acquisition cost, there are plenty of tools available for you. Look into conversion boosting technology that involves A/B testing to find out what works and what doesn’t. Automating your processes can save you a significant amount of money, and the more you do it, the more you will save. Wages, salaries, and benefits can account for over three-quarters of your business costs in many cases. So consider the impact automating tasks will have on your cost per customer and, eventually, your profitability.

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal when it comes to marketing your product. However, without the right level of knowledge and practice, it can turn into a hit and miss situation. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you personalize and target your offers and ensure your customer data is as valuable as it can be. Marketing Automation technology such as HubSpot can help you gain visibility across all your marketing channels - email, content or social. It gives you knowledge at every step to optimize your campaigns and provides deep insights into which channels are performing and which are not.

As you can see, there are plenty of options for any stage of your product startup, from conception through to converting prospects into customers. MarTech is definitely here to stay and can make a significant improvement to your launch and ongoing campaigns.