How can you showcase your startup and attract opportunities online?

Showcasing my startup online involves strategic digital presence. Crafting engaging content that showcases our product's unique value is key. I leveraged social media to share success stories and behind-the-scenes insights, sparking interest. Collaborations with industry influencers extended our reach. For example, partnering with a prominent blogger led to a significant increase in website traffic. SEO optimization and targeted ads ensured visibility. Hosting webinars to share expertise positioned us as thought leaders. In essence, combining authentic storytelling with digital strategies helps attract opportunities and forge connections in the online realm, driving our startup's growth.

First, an essential component is understanding your customer or prospect. Feel their pains and frustrations in order to strategically embrace each with your compelling solution. You're not selling your product or service, you are selling your company's capabilities to overcome those specific pain points. Later in the sales cycle, you can dive more into products/specification, in regards to important differentiators, as long as they apply to the solutions to those specific needs. As a rule, in most 'sales' you are NOT selling products, but rather, most importantly, SOLUTIONS. Embracing customers' more deeply to understand their true pains and marketing your company as a Solution Provider versus Product Manufacturer makes all the difference.

When it comes to goal definition, my approach would be to: 1. Finding a product-market-user fit, leading to 2. Profitable customer acquisition, followed by 3. Scaling my customer base while retaining the right team When defining my audience, I call out my ideal customer profiles at 3 levels: 1. User: Show how your tech solutions solve their problems and enhance daily productivity. 2. Buyer/Sponsor: Emphasize rapid ROI realization and TCO reduction. 3. Adversary/Gatekeeper: Address concerns, assure them of the importance of their function throughout the journey, and promise a smooth & quick integration.

When choosing a platform, you must remove your own bias from it - as an example, I always told myself that my customers are not on facebook many years ago until one of our sales guys joined a Facebook group and brought in several hundred customers from that group alone! Leave your bias behind, and initially, you must be everywhere at once. It is not difficult to be in many social platforms at once, it takes time that you must invest as you are starting up. A startup has the luxury of Time.

To arrive at the right platforms & channels, I'd take a 4 step approach: 1. Develop all forms of content for the entire GTM flywheel and funnel stages, from awareness to advocacy and referrals. 2. Promote content through both organic and paid campaigns across all relevant online platforms. Collaborate with internal teams like sales and customer success, as well as external partners and analysts, to ensure a holistic approach to promotion. 3. Repurpose content from 1 format to at least 5 more, optimizing resource utilization while maximizing your content reach. 4. Analyze content & campaign performance to identify which messages, formats, and nurture sequences resonate with the audience, driving qualified dialogues and conversions.

The goal is visibility. When you’re a new business with little brand equity, it’s important to reach out to websites and offer unique information, such as studies, statistics, concrete examples on how your product solves X problem, and commentary on related topics. Your potential customers will always look you up online prior to making any type of commitment. They need to see you as a solution.

Meeting the right people and the marketing activities are Critical for any new companies or solutions in the market. Familiarity and brand recognition are earned through consistent and repeatable efforts. Research and analyst relations are important! Doing briefings with the people assessing the market will help Establish credibility and leadership. This includes market research, analyst, association, and investment companies. Attending executive level events where smaller groups but senior levels are together provides “wisdom of the crowd” Moments - something all entrepreneurs and business people have to value. Integrity matters most of all though in business. So Watch for that… ????????????

Leverage research to tell a story about the market rather than focus on what you are selling - research and data can help educate the industry and now the company is viewed as a thought leader And the data helps your marketing and sales team along strengthening the story for whatever they are selling

The primary goal of any content is to engage the target audience, provoke thoughtful responses, and drive intended actions. Great design, whether in marketing messages or product interfaces, should facilitate the user's journey towards the intended action with minimal effort & resistance. Effective CTA placement and clear next steps are essential for guiding the users. The success of content and design hinges on collaboration among various teams, including branding, product, content, and product & design (UI and UX). This synergy ensures that your brand identity, value proposition, and story are seamlessly integrated and are able to create a unified and compelling user experience.

Optimizing SEO and analytics efforts, especially with the limited resources a startup has, is crucial. Startups can tap into the expertise of their workforce to create thought leadership content while fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and helping with improved visibility in the search engines as well. This approach enables data-driven managers to measure content performance. By tracking user engagement and conversions, startups can identify specific content [and the keywords & topic clusters they targeted] that attracts and converts visitors into buying customers, and create in-depth content around those topics thus establishing ultimate authority before going after the next topic. This helps expand visibility & reach for the brand.

As a startup, you will not have the resources nor funds to go after SEO. Reserve this for little later stages. Referrals, cold calling, cold emails, etc are the most effective way to gain your first 25 to 50 customers in a B2B settings.

Be different. Be noticeable. Be authentic. The irony of articles like this one you're reading (and a cottage industry of startup consultants) is that they tend to provide a template to follow. That's literally the path to becoming yet another cookie-cutter wannabe influencer. I'm not saying it doesn't work, since the demand and interest is there, but as a startup founder you should be focused on being distinctive and innovating your way to the top. So, rather than provide a series of steps to follow to showcase your startup, I'm going to suggest that you spend some time introspecting about what makes *you* and your startup truly unique; then lean into that. For me, it is sharing my passion for pizza, robots and startups. What's yours?