7 Marketing Hacks For Startups.

It is very exciting to work in a startup, isn’t it?

Everything goes through you, you are responsible for hiring and firing and of course, the money-making experience is worth the effort.

But,

What do you do when you see low sales?

When you don’t have enough to pay your employees and other staff? And when you are making no profits?

Needless to say, quitting is not an option!

Apart from improving the quality of your product, you can work on your marketing to rocket your sales and see exponential growth every month.

Where Did I Learn & Practice My Marketing Skills?

I practiced the powerful tools of SEO, FB Ads, Google Ads, Content Marketing, YouTube Marketing and a lot more during my tenure working for www.portraitflip.com.

PortraitFlip is a startup, they make premium looking handmade painting from a photo in 6 different mediums and deliver it to the doorstep anywhere in the country.

The first thing you would want to do as a marketing manager is to analyze YOUR CARDS.

• Which I did for PortraitFlip as follows:
• 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
• 100% Money-Back Guarantee.
• Free Worldwide Shipping.
• Free Modifications & Custom/Tailored Experience.
• 24x7 Customer Support.
• An all-time 10% Discount when the customer used OFF10 during checkout.

Tailored experience in any business is a very important marketing tool, PortraitFlip let the users customize the following parameters:

1. Medium – Oil, Acrylic, Pencil, Color Pencil, Charcoal and Watercolor.
2. Size - 12″ x 12″, 12″ x 16″, 16″ x 20″, 18″ x 24″, and 24″ x 36″.
3. Finishing Options – Rolled, Gallery Wrapped, and Framed.
4. Shipping – Express (10-12 Days) and Ordinary (25-27 Days).
5.  Upload Any Image.

Analysis Of PortraitFlip’s Cards

PortraitFlip is an excellent E-Commerce business with a wide range of customizations.

They could sell the same product with different names like Christmas Portraits, Valentine’s Day Portraits, Pet Portraits, etc.

They have high sales in America for the product - Pet Portraits.

They needed less manpower because most of the things were done through the website.

There are some Strong Cards (which I have highlighted) and some Potential Cards for me to play with.

How Did I Boost Sales For PortraitFlip?

1. SEO of Product Pages

SEO can make you the first result of Google if followed properly and ethically.

I created many pages which were Search Engine Optimized and whenever someone typed “portrait from photo” or “pet portrait” we started showing up in the first 10 results.

But it was difficult to rank in the FIRST 3 results because this is where the magic happens!

I was doing everything but one thing – BACKLINKING!

And that is what this post is for!

And today PortraitFlip ranks in the top 5 for its organic keyword searches.

2. Content Marketing

A. Blogs

I started publishing content like “Top 10 Anniversary Gifts For Your Spouse”, “Top 10 Christmas Gifts”, and “Thoughtful Valentine’s Day Gifts” on the same website www.portraitflip.com.

Needless to say that I took care of SEO because I wanted them to rank, as the very first product was PortraitFlip’s paintings.

B. Guest Posts

I contacted bloggers who were established in providing content to my target audience (Pet Bloggers, Gifting Blogs, etc.)

I wrote content for them featuring PortraitFlip which led to pushing our product to them by simply contacting the blogger.

I remember I used to write at least 10 guest posts every month for guest bloggers.

The best thing is you get Backlinks which positively affects your domain authority.

3. Social Media

When it comes to social media there are only 2 things you should worry about - Content and Discipline.

In our case, we posted our customer’s paintings one for each day on Instagram.

We used to make occasional promotional posts related to Raksha Bandhan, Christmas, Diwali, etc.

4. YouTube As A Confidence Builder

We asked all of our customers to send us a Video Testimonial of their unboxing of our product.

Most of the people ordered it as a gift so the video used to turn out very engaging and genuine.

We posted it on the YouTube channel of PortraitFlip which is still live and used the free resource to get us some orders!

5. Zoomed into Pet Portraits

We knew by now that the maximum of PortraitFlip’s sale occurs through the Pet Portraits.

We could have promoted our product on pet websites like AKC and pedigree but that was already taken care of by Google and FB Ads.

Hence, we created our new hub Dog Is World.

A. Dog Is World

We created a Website, FB Page, and a YouTube Channel to build a dog parent’s hub which is currently live by the same name.

I published video content related to dog care and eventually promoted PortraitFlip.

B. Local Stores

We contacted local pet stores to feature our pamphlet ads in their shop and gave a commission on each order to the shop owner.

6. Giveaways & E-Mail Promotion

We held many giveaways in which people had to post a photo of their dog or cat and gain votes through the sharing the link which indirectly promoted PortraitFlip.

We also reached out to potential customers through E-Mail and offered discounts to them.

7. Affiliate Program

An affiliate is a website owner whose target audience or a major chunk is the same as yours.

In our case we started from creating an Affiliate Page on PortraitFlip and listed the audience we were looking for which included:

• Christmas
• Valentine’s Day
• Pets (Dogs, Cats, Horses)
• Mother’s / Father’s Day
• Weddings or Anniversaries
• Gifting

Any website owner who has any one of the audience common would get digital banners of different sizes by signing up on ShareASale and feature them on their website.

And if he/she is able to generate a sale from the banner which is featured on their website they automatically get a commission through ShareASale.

To know more about PortraitFlip’s Affiliate and Partner program you can visit the website from the links given below.

These were the 7 Marketing Hacks that one can learn from the Indian Startup PortraitFlip, I hope you found some helpful tips for your venture.

All The Best!

Find PortraitFlip:

Website: www.portraitflip.com

YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCWeM6IABe4gS1dp19BQP56g

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portraitflip/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/FlipPortrait/?ref=br_rs

Twitter: https://twitter.com/portraitflip?lang=en