How can startups establish themselves in the market?
In the face of fierce competition, startups with relatively high product costs cannot rely solely on good products and new technologies to gain market favor and defeat established large enterprises. Startup teams should systematically market their own brand to capture market attention and build connections and opportunities in the early stages of the business.
InnoVEX is a leading global information and technology exhibition. Since 2016, it has become one of the most important events for startups and investors to connect and network with each other. It actively provides opportunities for startups to connect with international networks, attract investment and partners, and also allows startups to exchange ideas with peers, corporations, and government agencies to gain a deeper understanding of industry trends and explore the possibility of their products entering the market.
The most valuable asset of a startup is its unique new technology, enabling it to strive for success and become a rising star in the industry. However, facing fierce competition, startups with relatively high product costs cannot rely solely on good products and new technologies to gain market favor and defeat established giants . How can we judge market trends, seize opportunities, capture market attention, and build connections?
Besides research and development, startups need to market themselves.
Actively participating in startup and technology exhibitions in various countries is the best way to establish a startup’s brand position. However, in addition to the few exhibition days a year, companies can also use Martech tools to plan marketing strategies at other times. This serves as a driving force before and after product launch, allowing them to constantly showcase themselves in the market and avoid being quickly forgotten in the vast sea of startups. Let’s take a look at some marketing goals that startups should implement step by step during their growth process to help them systematically capture the market and acquire resources during the challenging early stages:
Early stages of a startup: Planting flags in the market and technology industry to announce, “I’m here.”
In its early stages, a startup can essentially be considered just a product brand.
Startups rely on their newly released (or soon-to-be-released) products to prove their capabilities to the market and potential investors. More urgent than promoting the company’s name is getting the public to know “this product” ; even further, the goal is to “sell it, get it used, and gain user acceptance.” Therefore, at this stage, the marketing strategy should focus on “product marketing,” striving to ensure the product survives in the market.
What we can do：SEM marketing（Search Engine Marketing）
There may already be discussions online about existing social realities, industry challenges, and unmet needs in daily life that resonate with our product development. At this point, “demand-related keywords” already exist online, but the public is unaware of our product, and corresponding “product keyword traffic” hasn’t been built up. Implementing SEM marketing involves manipulating search engines and independently placing ads to embed the product name and functional keywords of our new product into the online world. For ad placement, we can leverage Martech technology to perform data-driven audience targeting, identifying the target audience, the most effective advertising channels, and determining what actions by internet users trigger product ads for the highest conversion rates.
Continuing to make its presence felt in the startup community and technology industry
In marketing terms, this means “building brand awareness.” However, unlike typical businesses that engage in word-of-mouth marketing to consumers, the targets of our awareness building here are relevant individuals and competitors that the company needs to reach during its incubation phase . Therefore, our territory for building brand awareness can be placed in:
- Popular circles for startups include Crunchbase, Startup101, and Xchange.
- Channels that can build brand trust in B2B media include: New Electronics, Industry Intelligence Network (IEK), Digital Times & Future Business, Medium, etc.
- Those who can provide resources/connections in R&D technology and industry: such as the Hsinchu Science Park Youth Innovation Base, ITRI, TTA (Taiwan Technology Startup Base), and local government innovation and R&D subsidy units (such as the SBIR program), etc.
What we can do: Use SEO and SEM simultaneously to increase the website authority and product awareness of the enterprise brand.
If you want to widely disseminate product/brand information, holding online and offline product presentations and producing videos can help viewers understand in detail what our products can do, establish a visual impression, and directly collect audience feedback.
However, the cost of holding each event and filming each video is quite high. To prolong the memory effect in people’s minds, we should simultaneously write several articles that can answer questions in the industry or spark related discussions, and promote them online month by month/quarter (for example, the article you are reading now is discussing the question of “How can a startup build brand awareness?”), so that the audience can continue to pay attention to our brand’s product development and the company’s growth progress.
In B2C marketing, a successful SEO article can bring a brand organic search traffic for up to six months to a year, which is very helpful in building the website’s authority and product awareness. SEO articles for startups can adopt the writing logic of B2B, for example: (1) referencing industry observation white papers from large companies, raising issues related to the current state of the industry, and then further leveraging the product’s advantages to provide answers to these questions. (2) Alternatively, they can be presented in the form of a personal interview, sharing the founder’s know-how in technology development and conveying important hidden messages: “Who we (the brand) are, what our characteristics are, and why we are trustworthy.”
Accurately identify the market and attract customers
SEM and SEO marketing have built a strong online presence for the company. The next step, when seeking clients and investors, is to leverage data analysis to identify the most suitable partners for our products and conduct targeted cold calling . We can tell them, “It’s not how good my product is, but how it solves your problem.” Targets for cold calling include: people interested in using our products, potential investment partners, business managers, media professionals, and companies that can collaborate to create business opportunities or generate buzz.
What we can do: Develop B2B audience targeting strategies and understand what people with decision-making power/influence are thinking.
For newly established startups that haven’t yet had extensive direct customer contact, we can leverage Martech to collect first-party data by embedding tracking points on their own websites. This allows us to determine “what aspects of my product are attracting attention in the expected potential market.” First-party data primarily comes from direct customer contact and data embedding on the startup’s own website and social media. Startups need to engage with/develop relationships with corporate decision-makers. We can refer to the analytical logic of B2B personas to identify the pain points and needs of our product’s target audience (website visitors) as a starting point for cold calling. For B2B persona analysis, please refer to this article: [Data Application] Analyzing Data Meaning to Accurately Depict B2B Personas .
With Google announcing the discontinuation of third-party cookies in 2023, we should seize the opportunity while data collection is still relatively easy to conduct extensive industry keyword research and analysis to quickly cultivate and improve our first-party data sources (our own corporate channels). To obtain referable third-party data, we can use Martech keyword tools to analyze the volume of discussions about product features, exposure channels, industry trends, and current events, thereby identifying market demand pain points. This data can serve as a starting point for direct communication with customers during cold calling and as a source of content material for continuously writing SEO articles.
Conclusion
While “data technology” may sound distant to the general public, many of its achievements have already been commercialized and integrated into our lives; the most obvious examples are YouTube’s algorithmic recommendations and product selection on shopping websites. This year’s InnoVEX exhibition, centered on “forward-looking trends,” “virtual and physical demonstrations,” “precise recommendations,” and “business matchmaking,” is inviting startups worldwide to bring their creativity to the right market; data technology is one of the four core technologies driving this. Applying data technology to marketing not only effectively implements enterprise digital transformation to keep pace with the times, but also further leads enterprises towards data transformation, maximizing the synergy between online and offline marketing. Startups using Martech, starting with marketing their “products” and then their “brands,” can successfully create growth space within the industry and seek opportunities to establish a foothold in the market.
Digit Spark, part of the Zhenhao Internet Media Group, integrates its six sub-brands offering data application services to provide enterprises with comprehensive and precise optimization services across five key areas: “Industry Customer Targeting,” “Performance Optimization Strategies,” “Digital Tool Integration,” “Online Voice Cultivation,” and “Brand Value Promotion.” It drives brand success through data technology.
