10 ways to effectively market startup programmes for maximum reach
Since we brought The Pitch under the Inkwell brand in 2017, we’ve been constantly refining our marketing strategy so we can continue to grow the startup programme year on year.
The Pitch has now evolved from a pitching competition to a national incubator that reaches tens of thousands of entrepreneurs every year – our 2023 campaign drew 29k online and in-person event delegates.
With a lot of trial and error over the years, we’ve learnt about what methods work best to reach startup founders. Here are the 10 methods that have the biggest impact when it comes to marketing startup programmes.
1. Build awareness through outreach
Direct outreach can really help with growing your network, particularly in the early days.
First you’ll need to consider who will be interested in the programme. The Pitch targets early-stage founders that have been trading for less than three years, so we’ll reach out to:
Coworking spaces
Accelerators and incubators
University entrepreneur programmes
Networking groups in the local area
Startups we think would be suitable for the programme
You can get in contact by using their social channels, relevant forms on their website or by email.
It’s definitely worth keeping a note of who you’ve contacted on a spreadsheet somewhere (particularly if you have more than one person conducting outreach) so that you aren’t duplicating effort. It’s also helpful to keep as a reference point for outreach in future years.
2. Focus on your content marketing
A strong content marketing strategy is one of the most powerful tools a marketer can have. It not only gives your audience a reason to visit your website, but by demonstrating your expertise you’ll seem more trustworthy and credible.
Once you nail your content marketing, you’ll also notice your brand ranking higher on search engine results. A good SEO position will mean that your website has maximum exposure and can draw organic traffic to your programme.
To learn more on using content marketing to sell to startup founders, read our article here.
3. Generate build-up on social media
Once you’ve got people interested, you need to keep them engaged to retain them throughout the programme – nothing is worse than finding a strong cohort of founders and having them drop off halfway through.
Mix ongoing updates about your programme with content that your community will actually be interested in. For instance, we found that sharing social content on the following topics garnered a lot of engagement on The Pitch social channels:
Who the upcoming judges were
The startups in the running
Relevant events to the community
Tips and advice from industry experts
4. Social advertising will grow reach – but can be costly
There’s no doubt that social advertising can deliver great reach. After placing an ad on this tweet from The Pitch 2022 campaign, we reached almost 80k video views.
However, social ads should only be considered if you’ve got the budget to spare. The cost of ads varies depending on the industry and the platform – an ad can cost up to £2.70 per click on Instagram.
If you do have some money to spare, social ads are definitely worth playing around with. Run tests where you put ads on different types of content, on different platforms and at different times. Once you’ve trialled a few different formats, you should have a better understanding of where to spend your budget.
Here are some other questions to ask when placing an ad on a social post:
What objective do you want from the ad? Impressions or engagement?
Have you researched and included relevant hashtags?
Are you targeting the right audience?
Is the language in the copy engaging and in the right tone?
What organic posts are performing well? Use content that clearly resonates with your followers to inform which content you place ads on
5. Encourage your employees to share brand content
It’s one thing to craft brilliant posts for social media, but getting your content seen is a whole other challenge. One easy (and cheap) way of doing this is by utilising your employees’ networks.
Employee advocacy is a valuable asset for companies, as your employees will collectively have a massive reach. When Innovate UK adapted their social media strategy to involve employees, they achieved 20 times more reach and trebled their social media following and website traffic.
If you’re a small team, all you need to do is share a link with your colleagues and ask them to engage with it. This method is more difficult if you’re working in a big team, though.
One solution is to share content on your chosen communication channel, whether it’s Slack, Teams or Google Chat. However, it’s worth being a bit more strategic than the usual send-all message.
For instance, if it’s a social post discussing marketing, send it to the marketing team to share. To get maximum impact, give them as much support as possible so that sharing requires minimal effort.
6. Leverage the communities of programme participants
Don’t forget that most (if not all) startups will have their own marketing strategy and their own loyal following.
Encourage your programme’s participants to share content, whether it’s application information or exciting updates. You’ll create a snowball effect and massively expand your own community as a result.
Bear in mind that startup founders are busy and it can be difficult to get them to actively post. You’ll need to come up with a good way to motivate them and make it as easy as possible – a folder of pre-prepared copy and social cards will take away a lot of the hassle.
7. Run competitions to encourage involvement
We’ve all seen them – brands are always utilising social media competitions to drive traffic and engagement, and ultimately grow their following.
By enticing your audience with an exciting prize, you’re giving startups a reason to interact with you. All you have to do then is keep them on board as part of your community.
During The Pitch 2022 campaign, we conducted two mini competitions to drive more applications. One competition offered a mentoring session with angel investor Simon Squibb, and another provided the chance to win free credits to use on freelancing platform Fiverr.
Introducing these competitions was really effective in boosting engagement. Tweets for the Fiverr competition drove around 50k impressions and 7k engagements, while the Simon Squibb competition received around 63k impressions and 2k engagements.
The competitions also drove a lot of traffic to our website. For instance, the article advertising the chance to win Fiverr credits received around 8k views.
Later on in the programme, we also ran a People’s Choice competition exclusively on social media.
The competition featured short pitch videos from startups involved in our semi finals, which were shared on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts. People were asked to vote on their favourite, with the winning startup qualifying as a wildcard for The Pitch Final.
In total, this drove over 41k video views across the three platforms within a few weeks. Just make sure you watch out for bots to ensure the competition stays fair – you can normally tell if someone uses a lot of bots, for instance by checking for random surges of video views and a lot of comments that don't seem relevant to the post.
How to run a successful social media competition
So how can you make your competition a success? Here are our tips:
Have a good prize – This is arguably the most important thing you need to do. Your prize needs to be appealing enough for participants to go through the effort of entering.
Clearly articulate the ask – Do you want them to like, comment and share? Or write a tweet using a certain hashtag?
Set a deadline – Make sure people know when they need to enter by. A competition will need long enough to build traction, but not so long that it loses momentum – we recommend running it for 24 hours minimum and a week maximum.
Consider running advertisements – Relating back to what we covered above, running some social media ads will really help boost the reach of your competition
Be clear on the T&Cs – Such as who’s eligible to apply, the time frame and when the winner will be announced
Simon Squibb, founder of The Purposeful Project
8. Offer ongoing support following the competition
Providing followers with great content is a lot easier during the “on” season – there’s always a flurry of new webinars, articles and videos that’s available to share. But giving followers a reason to stay with you in between programmes can be difficult.
Unsurprisingly, we always see a slight drop in followers and engagement following the end of The Pitch programme. It’s definitely one of our pitfalls, and we’re constantly working on new ways we can avoid this.
We recently implemented an off-season marketing strategy to make sure that we were still engaging with The Pitch community while the competition wasn’t running. It certainly isn’t the level of content we publish the rest of the year, but it’s enough to keep people engaged.
Of course, it can be hard to justify generating new content when you have less budget to do so. This is when being a bit more savvy with what you share becomes a lot more important.
Some ideas of social posts to publish (which doesn’t include creating your own content) in the off-season can include:
Content you’ve found that you think will be helpful to the community, such as tools and templates
Relevant news and updates in the industry
Updates and wins from the community. We love to share social posts about alumni achievements, whether it’s securing investment or launching a new product
You can also reshare old content, as long as it’s still relevant, but be wary of potentially sounding repetitive if you do this too often.
9. Take advantage of email marketing
Utilising email marketing software is a really easy way to maintain direct contact with your audience. It’s popular amongst marketers, and with an approximate ROI of 35:1, it’s easy to see why.
Building up a strong email list will help to drive engagement in your content and traffic to your website, so you can create interest in your programme before it launches. Encourage people to sign up to your newsletter wherever possible. For example:
Display clear sign-up forms across your website in multiple locations
Reach out to people who have attended an event or webinar to see if they’d like to join your newsletter list
Have links to your email list available across your social media platforms
To retain people on your email list, make sure your newsletters are always designed around relevant and interesting content. All it takes is one boring email for them to hit the unsubscribe button.
For more insight on creating the perfect email marketing campaign, read our article here.
10. Incorporate video into your marketing strategy
Video is crucial to any marketing strategy, and using it across a diverse range of platforms can help to capture the attention of your audience.
Written content definitely has its place, but video content can deliver the same message in a way that is faster, more accessible and digestible for users. This means that video naturally satisfies consumers increasingly shortening attention spans.
Video is also a really effective way to break up long-form written content, which you can see in this example article from The Pitch.
Utilise your network for influencer video content
Influencers can also be a valuable addition to a brand’s video marketing strategy – and there’s a great opportunity in tapping into your network to source them.
The Pitch has utilised its alumni and industry experts to create relatable and interesting content for our startup audience. This helped us reach a wider group of people and deliver content that truly resonates with our audience.
For example, this Instagram reel from The Pitch alumni Lauren O'Donnell garnered nearly 20k views.
Are you looking to reach startup founders? Inkwell are experts in creating content and designing support programmes for small business owners.
To learn more about what we do, please contact our founder Chris at chris@inkwellagency.co.uk.
