7 top tips for selecting the most appropriate communication channels for your start-up

As a start-up you have so many priorities and marketing sometimes gets pushed to the bottom of the pile.

So how do you ensure you maximise your marketing activity and communicate effectively with your target customers on the right channels?

There are so many different digital and offline channels that you could choose for your business that it could easily become overwhelming, so here’s a few tips to keep your start-up on track.

1. Goals and Budget. Before you spend lots of time and effort setting up a channel, you need to define exactly what you want your communications activity to achieve. Define your goals e.g. brand awareness, customer engagement, lead generation, e-commerce sales etc. and how much budget you have allocated to your marketing activity across each communication channel.
2. Create a highly engaging website. If you think a Facebook page is going to suffice to engage your customers, then you are wrong. A highly engaging, modern website that clearly communicates what your business does, what products or services you offer and how someone should engage with your business is essential. People check out your website before they get in touch in any other way.
3. Identify the communication channels your customers are using and focus on these channels to engage your customers and maximise your effort. If your customers are avid networkers, you need to find the events your prospect clients are attending and start networking at these events.
4. Social media has become such a core part of the way we communicate. It is important for not just promoting what you do, but also as an engagement platform for new customers as well as a research tool. Pick the channels that your customers are using. If your business is B2B, there’s a very high chance that your customers will be on LinkedIn, so make sure you have a strategy for engagement on LinkedIn. Social media can be a very cost effective channel as it is free to use and paid for advertising is relatively cheap.
5. Email is still the number one channel for communicating with customers. Research indicates that 99% of us check our emails daily – some up to 20 times per day. It’s a core channel across all age groups from teenagers to older adults. Consumers only engage with brands they trust via email as they have ‘opted-in’ to receive their communications and personalisation makes email more compelling for a consumer to open it, so create personalised, highly engaging email campaigns that catch the attention of your customers.
6. People engage with moving content much better than still images so ensure video is part of your marketing strategy. Research shows that using video in campaigns results in revenue’s growing 49% faster than campaigns that don’t use video. And what’s really interesting is that video used on social channels generates 12 times more shares than text and images combined.  It is easy to create and share video content as most of us have smartphones these days. But don’t forget to edit those videos to add your brand imagery and a strong call to action message.
7. Analyse your activity. Each of the communication activities listed in 1-6 generates lots of data. Analyse your data regularly to determine which campaigns get the best engagement and result in sales leads and on which communication channels. Once you work out where your customers are engaging and where most of your leads are coming from, you can focus your activity in this area to maximise engagement and really boost your brand awareness.

This is the third blog in a series for the Women in Innovation programme. Follow #WomenInnovate or sign up to our online community to stay up to date with future articles.