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How to Choose the Right Marketing Investments for Your Tech Startup
Dan Cavallari
September 16, 2024
As a tech company founder, you need to build excitement for your brand that will lead to sales and attract investors. It’s easy to start by plunking down cash on random marketing assets without a concrete plan, and it’s admittedly cool to see your logo on a T-shirt.
But in order to get the most bang for your buck, hold off on that shirt order for a moment. Start by asking yourself four key questions about whatever it is you’re considering:
- Will it help me attract leads?
- Will it help me build relationships with current and prospective customers?
- Will it help me make sales?
- Will it help me build credibility with investors?
If an asset ticks one—or preferably all four—of these boxes, it could be right for you.
To make things even easier, start with four proven assets to get your tech business generating leads in no time. With a simple website, a logo, an email campaign strategy, and some wisely selected swag, you’re ready to put your marketing assets to work generating real leads for your tech company.
Approach this process with an MVP mindset—a minimum viable product that creates traction and generates revenue without breaking your budget right out of the gate.
1. A basic website
Notice the word “basic.” It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole of complex website design, but that time would be better spent communicating with your potential customers.
Think back to that MVP mindset. You’re better served by a basic home page with relevant information and a contact form today than you are by a complex website with heaps of pages a year from now.
Timing is crucial for a tech startup. Get your home page up quickly, focusing on the most relevant information your customers are looking for. Sure, you’ve got lots to say, but that can wait. Your home page is your elevator pitch. Make it short, sweet, and, above all, useful to your customers.
Highlight valuable applications, show how your solution delivers tangible business value to your customers, and avoid specialized jargon and acronyms unless you’re certain your audience speaks that same language.
Your website will grow with your company. As you start, a basic home page will help you build relationships with potential clients. It can even help you make sales by serving as a quick and easy sales funnel. Just get ’em to the SET UP A CALL button with as little friction as possible.
During the early stages of your company development, only spend as much time on search engine optimization (SEO) as is practical. Laying a solid foundation from the outset ensures your customers can find your website.
Make sure your SEO keywords reflect what your business does and how it provides a solution for potential customers. Tools like Yoast SEO Premium can help ensure your landing page is optimized for SEO best practices, and search engines like Google will show your website in their results.
You can also try a plug-and-play website builder like Elementor on WordPress or Squarespace. These services make it easy to get a landing page live—often in just a couple of hours. If your business requires your website to have an ecommerce component, Shopify offers plenty of plug-and-play website designs with stores built in.
If you’re using WordPress to build your site, check out premade themes that come loaded with features and sleek designs. Creative Market is a great place to start looking for a home page theme.
Remember the classic adage: keep it simple, stupid! Start small and clear. As your business grows, your website can grow with it.
2. Logo, branding, and colors
Logo design costs can be significant. It’s worth spending money on a great designer, but if your budget doesn’t allow it, don’t sweat it—at least not yet. Start with the basics, and focus on the strategic aspects how you want to position your brand in the market.
Your branding is your company’s identity, not a clever name or color scheme. You and your team are your best marketing tools; a logo is simply a visual identifier that ensures customers recognize you once you’ve established a relationship with them. It’s your visual identity when you can’t be in the same room with your customers.
A logo needs to be adaptable. Think about how you’ll use it: on computers, on mobile devices, in apps, and even on physical items like paper, business cards, or clothing. Tend toward lean, clear, and simple logos if they will be used on multiple media types. A black and white logo is about as versatile across different media as it gets, so make sure to get a black and white version, even if your logo is colorful.
Farming design out to a pro is a good idea here. You can try hiring a cheap designer through Fiverr. There are options for just about any budget, but beware: designers offering to build you a logo for a miniscule price may deliver exactly what that price indicates. It’s better to invest in quality over quickness for a logo you’ll use for years to come.
Sure, you can change your logo down the road, but each wholesale change means reestablishing your branding for customers who have already associated particular designs and colors with your business. Consistency over time leads to greater brand success.
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3. Email campaign software and newsletters
You need to keep in conversation with current and potential clients, even when you can’t be in front of them.
Social media presents that opportunity, but you’ll have to contend with a lot of background noise too. Face-to-face communications are of course ideal, but such interactions are few and far between (think tradeshows and other events).
An email marketing campaign gives your message a captive audience and helps you build rapport with current and future clients in a controlled and focused environment. Where social media is shouting in a crowded restaurant, an email campaign is a fireside chat in a quiet living room.
Tools like Constant Contact and Mailchimp allow you to quickly design, send, and even schedule emails to your mailing list. These platforms also help you manage your mailing list, which is likely to change frequently. And you’ll get important stats that will guide the direction of your future email blasts, like unsubscribe data, open rates, click-through rates, and more.
If you’re on a shoestring budget, you can also try free newsletter builders like Substack. The design tools are limited, but you’ll be able to get in touch with your current and potential clients within minutes after creating your account. If you need more design tools than what Substack offers, try ConvertKit’s free subscription.
4. Swag!
Freebie products, often known as swag, reinforce brand recognition with current customers and serve as a reminder to potential clients to get in touch with you.
It’s worth investing in some giveaway products like T-shirts, but if you want to start small, just order some stickers with your branding on them. They’re cheap and easy to make, and they’re universally popular.
Keep in mind that poorly chosen swag is a dopamine hit, not a marketing strategy. Somewhere deep in the figurative marketing dump, a USB flash drive is chatting with a beer koozie about its big moment in the sun—four seconds of relevance at a trade show fifteen years ago.
They sure are a sad pair, but they hold a valuable lesson: you need to understand your customers. What do they use daily? What products would they otherwise buy that you can give them? What real value does your swag provide?
You don’t want your logo staring up at them from the trash bin.
That’s a disservice to your marketing plan, your bottom line, the customer, and even the environment. If your swag isn’t useful beyond carrying your logo around, skip it.
But there are several good reasons to get your logo on some swag. For starters, seeing your logo on high-quality products is exciting for you and your employees. Those employees are your evangelists, and if they’re excited about the quality swag you’ve produced, they’re likely to share it with others and spread the word about your business.
Spend wisely on your swag. Overspending won’t lead to a good return, but choosing selectively can serve your long-term ROI well.
And hey, swag is fun! It’s motivating for you and your employees, and it can act as a conversation starter with potential clients. Spend within reason to get an impactful return.
Bonus: Your business plan is a strong marketing tool
Before you can tell your customers who you are, you need to know who you are. That’s why your business plan is your most important marketing tool: it states clearly what you do, why you do it, and who you do it for.
Sometimes even a tech startup founder can lose sight of the company’s ethos, so consult your business plan frequently.
Wait, you don’t have a business plan yet? Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Without a business plan, you’re not likely to collect any dollars.
Dynamic Tech Media can help you with your go-to-market strategy and the marketing aspects of your business plan. We can help you with core messaging, brand identity, market positioning, and customer discovery—all of which will help you determine which marketing investments are worth making now and which can wait.
Let us help you get cracking on those plans to ensure you’re maximizing your marketing potential.
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