Marketing Magic - Starting up a StartUp

Starting up a StartUp

Marketing Magic


- Part 2 of 4-

Now that we’ve covered and gone over some building block ideas on how you should handle your brand - let’s go over some marketing fundamentals. This second part of the series will serve you to gain insights into how digital and traditional marketing strategies work hand-in-hand in the XXI Century to get the best results and make your entire company relevant in your niche, wider audience, or even global platform. 

We’ve all heard someone somewhere whisper the words “content is king”, well, that’s what Bill Gates says anyways - and where content is king, marketing is the entire kingdom. So let’s fortify your castle with the most powerful tools in your reach. 


“Master the topic, the message, and the delivery.” — Steve Jobs


Modern marketing is a dynamic, organic, and complex cloud of ideas from which we project the image and concept of a brand into the world. With a massive arsenal of tools at your disposal, marketing can be condensed into 4 easy concepts to understand, that will give context to any campaign you venture into.

1. Engagement

How you engage with your customers, be it business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), or Business-to-government (B2G), should be at the heart of your marketing journey - especially start-ups aiming to connect with their core market(s) and target(s). Why? Easy, because if they’re engaged, they are paying attention, their eyes and money are ready at a moment’s notice to invest or buy whatever it is you have to offer. 

Think of your company or start-up as the hero’s story, where the mission is providing a service or product to your end customers. The obstacles you face, the triumphs you earn, and the common ground you share are what make your brand appealing to anyone at all. Make them feel that in reality, they’re the hero, they are innovating their lives, or they’re upgrading their way of life because they wield your brand in their day-to-day.

The more you can make the consumers absorb your story - the more they’ll feel as if they’re a part of it, creating a feeling that they need/want your product. You have created a demand for your big name. To make them feel is the greatest superpower any company can have at their disposal - because through their emotions, you can manage to engage with their consuming habits and become part of their lives during an entire lifetime.

By using a mixture of digital and traditional marketing mechanics and platforms, your public reach grows exponentially and is bound to hit the minds and hearts of who you’re aiming for. 


Digital X Traditional 

Digital Marketing: Is the most inexpensive and innovative form of marketing ever created so far in human history - where you can go from zero to hero in a heartbeat and hard work. A few methods to keep in mind to expand your digital marketing toolbox are: 

  • Website creation
  • Video content marketing
  • CRM campaigns (Customer Relationship Management)
  • Social media content marketing
  • Email & Newsletter marketing
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Traditional Marketing: Is a heavy contender of propaganda and publicity since before the printing press. The sheer amount of ways to interact and engage consumers in the real world can go from mundane to extraordinary. It is literally anything you can dream of into reality through multiple channels. The mediums that traditional marketing usually invests in can be: 

  • Radio
  • Television
  • Newspapers & Magazines
  • Events & Workshops
  • Print & Billboards

2. Multifaceted Strategy

“Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals."  —  Gary Vaynerchuk

System, blueprint, design, game plan, method, procedure, project are all ways to plan action - all approaches being synonyms of the word ‘strategy’. You can never be too prepared in a world that will throw just about anything and everything your way - so your strategy must come action-packed with tactics that will execute your plan to fit any scenario or circumstance.

Even though living in the now is the correct place to be, and we learn an immense amount of valuable insights and wisdom from our past mistakes and trajectories, we must also structure our business, partnerships, and collaborations for the future. Planning out short, mid, and long-term strategies will secure healthy flows of relationships and growth. 

To retain your clients, sell products, and gain exposure in today’s marketing battlefield, you must position yourself with the best tools in order to growth hacking your company, while also being able to pivot in another direction in the face of unforeseen variables. Remember, flexibility is always key!

A growth hacking approach can be taken during any stage of a fresh start-up or veteran business, but it’s imperative that the marketing and operational department teams work together to mix creativity and logical approaches to create solid and impactful actions that will reflect positive results due to well thought out decisions. 

The process you can adopt and apply to make adjustments to your business model and marketing campaigns.
Source: growthtribe.io


3. Empathy Dynamics

Knowing your audience is basically rule #1 for marketing. It becomes even more interesting when you really know who your audience is, what they’re like, and what they like/dislike. 

Gathering information and data on your consumers is a major key to unlock the potential of better serving and providing the needs and wants of those and future consumers. 

This is a very straightforward pillar within the marketing structure. Empathy has no deep mysterious secret, and it’s simple - your business’ sole mission is to provide a service or product for someone who either needs or wants it. No empathy - no consumers.

"You have no business being a marketer, unless you have empathy for people you are seeking to serve" — Seth Godwin


By applying rich strategies of empathy dynamics into your entire marketing gameplan, the overall quality of your brand’s outreach will be immensely valuable and relevant to those you seek to convert into loyal consumers or subscribers. 

Not sure yet if you are a master of empathy in your field? Then you can go researching. That is an important, and usually forgotten, technique that marketers can rely on. Finding the best professionals to work with your company and conduct market research studies (blind study can be an example). That is a great opportunity to really listen to your audience and adapt your strategy based on real information. 

4. Data-Driven

This is where things add up. Once you’ve gone through enough campaigns, created bits of content, and have gathered enough feedback from reviews regarding your products or services, it’s time to crunch the numbers - because numbers don’t lie. With the data gathered, you’ll gain valuable knowledge and consumer insights to hone in on where you need to be better and where it needs to get better in order for you to upgrade or create a better version of your previous product/service. 

By having data-driven marketing working on your behalf, you’ll also be able to pin down any pain points and readjust your campaigns and content to work better for you - for your audience. You’ll be able to apply logic to creativity to enhance your outreach and elaborate a more intricate story, a better engagement on social media platforms, or an overall more interactive or empathetic campaign. 

Data will play a pivotal role in how your operational and marketing teams operate and are guided along the most successful path to consumer satisfaction. Think about it, who doesn’t want a golden key into how to make a better sale or boost your service potential? 

Tools like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), and website/social media analytics will provide you with the knowledgeable insights needed to further enhance your brand’s marketing experience. This will be a worthwhile investment for any company or startup, big or small, due to the valuable data that can be gathered and applied.


"The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight." — Carly Fiorina

Again, data is so valuable, that if you don’t use it - you can sell it to someone who will. If you end up gaining enough valuable consumer habit details that will be of relevant benefit to a possible partner or third party, you can negotiate a price point so they may have access to your data vault too. The more data you mine from your overall engagements with consumers, the more win-win scenarios you’re able to play out in the next marketing campaigns and content creations.  

By applying most of these concepts and ideas on your own, be prepared to have a professional team of creatives with you for these phases to completely realize the vision you have in mind. Nobody does anything on their own, so have a solid backbone to your brand in order to face the long run while working your brand to its fullest potential with marketing magic.

As stated at the start of this article, this is only part 2 of 4 of a content series to help you build your startup before launch. It’s important to think about each process carefully to implement your marketing ideas as seamlessly as possible for fast integration or adaptation on the consumer’s end. For any assistance on how to start your startup in Lisbon, feel free to reach out to us at geral@unicornportugal.pt.

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