Growing Your Startup Through Social Media

Growing Your Startup Through Social Media

When launching your brand, you may have spent all your money on building the site, product development, testing, etc. but now you need to launch and market but funds are tight. Here is the best ways to approach marketing your new brand on social media when the budget may not be ideal:

  1. Brand Ambassadors

    1. This can be key from the start - you may not be able to afford influencers, but reaching out to creators and influencers who really fit the bill of the brand (and it will be important to find the right people who are literally the definition of what your brand stands for). Your messaging needs to be around being the first to be a part of the brand, building together, and want them an ideal customer to try the product. This has to be super genuine, from the founder (ideally), and personalized. Focus on getting as many people as you can find and afford to share free products with.

    2. Pro Tip: Once you have built the brand and following a bit look into using a tool such as Kale Card to keep it going. 

  2. Brand Partnerships

    1. Typically a harder one to do when you don’t have an audience to offer up to the other brand - but reaching out pre-launch to other brands that really match the vibe and doing collaborative content will be key to fast growth. Similar to brand ambassadors, this needs to be a super genuine connection and ask. 

    2. Pro Tip: Starting a podcast for the brand and creating content that way (audio and video) can really move the needle here.

  3. Consistent Organic Posts

    1. This may be obvious, but keep putting the brand out there - show up every day with solid content, you may see slow growth or no engagement in the beginning but consistency is key and it will pay off in the long run. No budget for someone to create content? Internal team videos can be amazing for brand growth and cost nothing but time.

    2. Pro Tip: Interested in cool product photography but can’t spend $5k on a shoot? AI content is even better and more affordable, check out this cool new agency making waves: Not Content

  4. Giveaways 

    1. First off - we do not want to be gimmicky and get followers for the wrong reasons. However, giveaways can really catch attention to build brand awareness and followers can lead to other opportunities in the future (even though it’s a vanity metric).

    2. Pro Tip: Working giveaways into your organic brand partnerships will be key.

  5. Paid Ads 

    1. Obviously spending money directly on brand awareness can increase visibility for the brand. As long as you know your not focused on sales and just brand awareness, any amount on Meta or TikTok can be very useful. I would suggest trying to grow organically first, but paid ads can move things a bit quicker.

    2. Pro Tip: Just starting out doing ads yourself? Instagram makes it easy to boost in app and do the targeting for you. Test out a few organic posts that performed well with as little as $10 a day.

  6. PR

    1. Can’t afford the big influencers and celebrities? Work with a PR team (or find a list) to mail your products to. Not to mention, typically getting PR will show up not only online but on social, so don’t forget about this traditional marketing approach.

    2. Pro Tip: Do the press release yourself and get guaranteed pick ups or your money back on Linkby. 

  7. Social Listening and Engagement 

    1. This one is huge and typically people do not prioritize. Engaging (and rewarding) early adopters and spending time on social listening (leaving comments on content that relates to the brand) can be just as powerful as posting content.

    2. Pro Tip: Follow big influencers and creators that you would like to work with and monitor their content, looking for opportunities to leave valuable comments (they can seriously go viral). 

  8. Analytics 

    1. Don’t ignore the obvious - after posting, weekly look over your analytics. Learn what is working and what’s not. Tweak your approach every single week and keep diving into the content that people are engaging with. 

    2. Pro Tip: On TikTok it’s ok to post the same content with small changes over and over again - for example if you have a video that goes viral about a certain topic, make it again, change the format and post!



Side Note: As you are building your brand have you thought about your brand’s ability to virality? With social media being the number one way to grow for brands today, going viral can literally build a business overnight. Here are a few examples of brands that launched with “viral” qualities:

  • Last Crumb - Price Point and Drops

    • $125 for cookies and only available on exclusive drops? Who ISN’T talking about this brand?! This is what we want - people to feel the need to discuss your brand online (with or without even being a customer). 

  • Mid Day Squares - Bold Claims 

    • This brand really focused on making everything they do to build the company into content, and people love it. Something that really makes them stand out though is their talk to taking over Hersheys. 

  • Liquid Death - Branding 

    • They focused on being different, I mean their water looks like a tall boy. And their messaging fits the bill of a tall boy. People are completely obsessed or totally hate them - and we rather have that than everyone feeling lukewarm about your brand. 

Anna Sullivan