For early stage start-ups that haven’t done much marketing yet, there’s a “simple” and relatively inexpensive start-up digital marketing playbook you can run to test messaging and drive some initial interest.
First you need a small content library, both long-form articles and short-form videos. Ideally, add interactive demos to this mix.
Create 8-10 articles that address key problems your intended audience has – written or informed by a subject matter expertise.
Create 8-10 30s to 2m headshot SME interviews videos articulating the same problems/solutions as your articles. Try to have multiple people in these videos.
Once the content library is ready, set up a dynamic search ad (DSA) campaign targeting your article library.
With this traffic, build a retargeting awareness campaign on LinkedIn – loading all the videos you created, setting ads to rotate evenly to get more unique videos in front of this audience. (Maybe experiment with new Thought Leader Ads here too – brand new to LinkedIn).
From there, create a retargeting audience based on video engagement. Run an ad mix like this:
1) Native LinkedIn lead gen form to get the interactive demo
2) Ads to a gated landing page to request the interactive demo
3) Ads that send them to an ungated interactive demo with a CTA to book a meeting
How much would this cost? These are estimates based on my past experience.
For the articles, I’d estimate $500-1000/article unless you have a writer and a subject matter expert in house. In theory, you could have AI write these and then edit them but I don’t like that route – unique insights that only your SME can provide is preferred here. ($10,000)
For video, you can go pro and have someone do an onsite shoot or you can record virtual meetings and edit those. Pro may cost up to $5000 for the complete project. Recording a virtual meeting and having a video editor slice it up into the short clips will cost half of that. ($5,000)
For the DSA ads, budget $2k/month and run for 90 days. For the LI ads, budget $5k/month over same period. ($21,000)
Layering in interactive demos is another expense. ($10,000)
Add in costs for other creative assets (a copywriter, ad designer, etc.) ($4000)
That’s $50K all in for a test program over a full quarter. That cost is adjustable.
How so?
The content costs are flexible depending on in-house talent or the ability to find reasonable priced contractors for components of the campaign (e.g. video editors on Upwork).
Maybe you can get away with half the content. The ad budgets are at your discretion.
The interactive demo is arguably a “nice to have” though if you’re selling software, it’s a necessary and valuable touchpoint.
There are other ways, too, you can more efficient with your spend e.g. audience settings for your paid campaigns.
Adjusting those variables to bring down the cost, you could get away with a test for $20k-$25k over a quarter.
