European start-ups would benefit from looking at their English-speaking counterparts\u2019 approach. Brits and Americans tend to focus on promotion from day one. They make sure their target audience becomes aware of their product while continuing to develop it. Belgian start-ups, on the other hand, for example, will invest every last cent on product development in the hope that the product will then sell itself. This is a typical European mentality, and it doesn\u2019t only apply to start-ups; we also see this in product launches from established companies.<\/p>\n
The problem isn\u2019t just down to budget allocation. In Europe we often wait too long to recruit employees for our marketing communication department. And when they do come, they have to be real all-rounders: people who can organize lots of different events, create PowerPoint presentations, write press releases and direct marketing and whitepapers, get the right photos \u2013 all while not losing sight of Google ratings or neglecting social media. It\u2019s surprising that we don\u2019t specialize in marketing communication more, especially considering we have done in sales for so long already.<\/p>\n
Almost nobody is waiting for products from a start-up. A hard truth. If you launch a product without first raising awareness, nobody will be there, eager and waiting to buy it. Everyone has to go through the same buying cycle process before they are really ready to buy, so it makes sense to raise their awareness first.<\/p>\n
Be patient, because this process can take some time, depending on how complex your product is and how urgently your prospective customers want to find a solution for their associated problem. This means you have more time to continue developing your product while preparing the market for launch.<\/p>\n
To create awareness at a very early stage of the sales cycle, you can for example invest in whitepapers and distribute news through the press or social media. As long as you\u2019re only spending your marketing budget on media you can use for content that makes customers think about their challenges, and what solutions they need to resolve those problems, then you can already tell them how you can make the difference (without any explicit explanation of the product itself).<\/p>\n
When you prepare your potential customers properly at an early stage, you make life much easier for your sales department:<\/p>\n
European start-ups can benefit from looking at Brits and Americans: focus on Marketing from day one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,8],"tags":[304,52,73,206,303,78],"department":[510],"media":[],"topic":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n