Why is the hamburger model a winning marketing strategy?

In the old software world, sales were the competitive advantage. At this point in time, we are living in a world of product-led growth, where engineers (as well as the software they have built) are the biggest differentiator. If your customers love what you’re building, you’re headed in the correct direction. If they don’t, you’re not.

However, even the most profitable product-led growth companies will get to a tipping point, because no matter how good their product is, they’ll need to figure out how to expand their customer base and then grow from a start-up into a multi-billion-rand revenue enterprise.

The answer is the hamburger model. Why call it that? Because the best go-to-market (GTM) strategies for start-ups are like hamburgers:

• The bottom bun: Bottom-up GTM.
• The burger: Your product.
• The top bun: Enterprise sales.

Other Start-Up Marketing Strategies

Send Emails

Email marketing is a crucial strategy for attracting customers to your start-up for absolutely little or no cost. When you have a prospect or customer’s email address, you will be able to send him or her emails to promote your start-up.

In order to take advantage of this marketing strategy, you need to first collect prospects’ email addresses. If you require a site for your start-up, consider placing a newsletter sign-up form on it. Instead, you can ask customers directly for their email addresses.

The very important thing to remember is that you need to diversify your emails with non-commercial content such as guides, how-to articles, videos and infographics. If you just send advertorial emails, subscribers will probably opt out of receiving your newsletter.

Start A Blog

Blogging is a very powerful strategy which can help your start-up with generating the exposure it requires. One report found that companies with blogs generate 126% more leads as opposed to their competitors without blogs. With a blog, you are able to position your start-up as a leading source while also attracting organic search traffic to your website.

The secret to designing an effective business blog is to publish content which your audience would like to read. If it’s important and worth reading, search engines will reward your hard work by means of ranking your blog at the very top of the search results. When your blog ranks high, it will bring in more visitors – meaning more people will learn about your start-up.

Post On Social Media

Statistics demonstrate that more than 2.4 billion people make use of social media, which means that it’s very important to incorporate this channel into your start-up’s marketing strategy. As your company’s presence on social media grows, more individuals will see and recognise it.

In addition, most social media networks – including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest – allow business owners to pay for traffic as well as exposure. With Facebook Ads, for instance, you are able to create ads which appear in users’ news feeds or in the right-hand column of the Facebook website.

It takes more than merely a profile to succeed with social media marketing. You must post engaging, relevant content that gives users a reason to follow your account. And once you’ve attracted followers, you should encourage them to stay by responding to their questions and comments.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more about marketing strategy, then you need to do our Marketing Strategy Course. Find out more here.