Promotion of IT startups

In 2022 the field of information technology has undergone significant changes. Approaches to building a business and logistics have fundamentally changed. Meanwhile, startup founders focus on product development and overlook the need for information support.

The lack of “early adopters” is the result of neglecting promotion, which depends on professional marketing and PR support. In order to start promoting a product, you need to announce your idea to the world, get an expert opinion, find a group of like-minded people and business angels.

The market needs simple document constructors, native solutions for web analytics, services that systematize large volumes of data, cloud solutions and developments concerning the application of AI. Broad prospects are opening up for startups in the BIM/TIM field, robotics, and drone creation. If a product enters the market in its raw form, but due to its usefulness and feedback from customers, it manages to be improved, it gets recognition from users and becomes a profitable business project. 

Peculiarities of IT startup promotion

• Before you can name a startup, you need to understand the promise of the idea, to find out how viable it is and how much demand for it is on the market.
• A startup develops quickly, but at the first stage it exists only at the expense of investments. Huge profits are possible, but you still have to live up to them.
• Success in promotion, as well as measurable results, must be achieved in the short term, because investors need to demonstrate constant growth. 
• High risk, no margin for error.
• The hardest part is finding your first customers.

• In order to become regular customers, you need to accompany them for at least three months. It is necessary to build close communication with users, share your thoughts, quickly solving all problems.

How to develop a startup

To enter the market, you need to make a promotion plan, namely:

• Participate in offline events (conferences, exhibitions) to enter the IT sphere and gain expertise;
• to start advertising on the Internet in order to verify the basic hypotheses and to receive numerical effectiveness indicators.

The promotion of a startup follows a common algorithm.

• Creating a website and presentations. They show the reality of the project’s existence, telling all interested parties about it. A startup needs investment, so it is necessary to develop a presentation with a business plan and marketing strategy thought out in advance. As a rule, the presentation contains from 4 to 13 slides, which contain all the information about the idea, its benefits, and business prospects.
• Exit to external sites. Having a website allows you to attract traffic. It is necessary to make publications on blog platforms, in professional IT communities. It fills the search results, and any promoted site is better than a freshly built site. Traditional marketing methods should be relied upon for promotion. The constant testing of the business project should not be forgotten. Hypotheses are tested, experiments are made to improve performance and reach the audience.
• External publications. The useful content is the skillfully picked up infopod and success story, even if it is insignificant. A speech at a pitch session, the launch of a successful pilot, the first sale – this is a chance to tell about yourself.
• Demonstration of the project’s activity. In many ways, having constantly updated content on a site is an indicator of the adequacy of a startup. The content should solve the task at hand, testify in favor of the quality and prospects of the project.

After the startup manages to pass all the stages of development and proves its viability and relevance, we can talk about its transformation into a classic IT-company.

How do you emphasize the advantages of your startup?

Before you can promote a startup, you need to deeply understand the needs of your clients. The project will attract interest if it can solve problems that people face every day. 

To do this, you have to:

• Understand user discomfort, explore solution alternatives in the market, and opportunities to offer a better solution. 
• Focus on the priority areas of product development. When designing it, development development should be subordinate to the wishes of the customer.
• Support like-minded people and the established community. This can take the form of discussing the product, organizing events.
• Improve the user experience, raise product awareness.
• Make the product easy to perceive, allow to understand its essence and usefulness without diving into the nuances.
• Draw attention to the startup idea in blogs and forums, wherever there are consumers with problems that the product solves.
• Prioritize content or events that make a startup idea or product go viral. Any advertising campaign, given the speed of a startup’s launch, should be as thoughtful as possible.

Step by step, the promotion of an IT startup looks as follows:

• Determine the client’s needs, its target audience.
• Develop a strategy for the startup marketer.
• Create a website, maintain a blog.
• Run SEO.
• Apply email marketing.
• Promote the project on startup platforms.
• Register on business platforms.
• Get SMM promotion, opinion leaders involved.
• Host guest posts.
• Use cross-marketing.
• Explain complicated things in simple terms with video marketing.
• Conduct presentations and webinars.
• Analyze customer feedback and product reviews.
• Build a network of contacts, make acquaintances in the IT sphere.

Marketing methods for an IT startup

Marketing strategy for a startup takes into account the factors of high cost of attracting leads and high competition. The promotion of IT technologies requires a special approach. In addition to creativity, it is important to choose platforms and methods for promotion.

• Networking is a budget promotion method designed to attract clients and investors. It is necessary to tell about yourself, about the product, attracting like-minded people in social networks and at any available thematic events. Mutual PR is welcome. You can place a post on a social networking site that redirects to the site page and leads to the purchase through crowdfunding, as well as promote the project in the form of questions and answers.
• Dedicated startup platforms. In order for the first mentions of the startup, its product to appear on the web, it is necessary to place announcements on all available resources. This way you can emphasize the social importance of the development.
• Website. Even a business card site can contain the USP, description of the project, presentation of possibilities, history, philosophy, information about the team, contacts, advantages and appeals to action. Every visitor can become a customer. Traffic comes from organic search using SEO. Clicking through from the ad leads to downloading the checklist, getting the visitor’s email, and establishing communication.
• Outreach. Infotrips are a great way to spread the word. They allow you to stay “on the radar” and demonstrate expertise. You can promote yourself with press releases, expert articles, comments on events and articles, interviews. An interesting publication in the media leads a user to a site or blog.
• PR. Advertising for startups has many pitfalls. You have to find the keywords and know your competitors in advance, set up targeting and retargeting, and promote yourself via bloggers. You need to calculate your possibilities with a limited budget, high competition, and a market that is not fully defined.
• Content. Startups launched in complicated themes require increased attention to users. You can educate and motivate users by creating guides, picks, FAQs, hosting webinars, broadcasts, creating podcasts, white papers, infographics, making videos about the product, posting cases and posting interviews.
• Social media is essential for building a group of like-minded people. They share news, announce events, share visual and video content, collect feedback, ask questions, respond to comments, launch tech support, contests, publish articles, etc.
• Affiliate marketing is relevant to those who have little time for promotion. Affiliate brings a guaranteed result for an adequate investment.

To break through the ranks of competitors and promote your IT startup, it is important to be creative, look for investors, engage in project development and positioning, experiment with methods and platforms for promotion, and never give up!