Writing an article for Forbes, noted marketing entrepreneur Neil Patel noted that 90 percent of startup companies fail within a year.

According to his piece, failure to plan and execute an effective marketing strategy is among one of the most common reasons that new businesses go under.

The challenge is to implement impactful marketing that drives sales leads in an affordable manner.

The following is a look at several tips to maximise a tight marketing budget as a startup company to drive sales leads and achieve success.

Pinpoint Precise Target Markets

Much of the waste in marketing expenditures is based on attempts to reach the wrong types of buyers.

Before you invest, prepare detailed buyer personas that identify the exact types of sales leads you want for each solution you offer.

Include demographic, firmographic and geographic descriptors in your personas.

This will allow you to picture your ideal client profile and map their buyer journey to your content.

Develop a Social Media Plan

Startup operators often realise that social media is a low-cost opportunity to promote.

However, few go through the necessary planning steps to develop a social strategy that achieves marketing results.

Your social marketing plan should involve the same steps as other marketing strategies, including how it coordinates with other tactics.

Identify the social channels on which your target markets exist.

Figure out how those prospects use each channel. Only create accounts on social media platforms on which you can consistently post impactful content.

You can read more about social selling on the post entitled “How To Generate Better Leads With Social Selling”

Develop campaigns to deliver your messages, but also engage social users through replies, shares and other conversational strategies.

After you achieve organic social success, look at paid advertising opportunities to extend your reach within your target markets.

Create and Distribute Content

We recently discussed that increased content production is a major marketing trend for 2017 in our popular post “4 Content Marketing Trends You Need To Know About“.

Your content strategy should emphasise addressing the questions your targeted buyer personas have throughout their journeys, from awareness to consideration and decision.

After you create a message framework that outlines content plans for each persona, the costs of production are efficient relative to traditional advertising.

Continue to keep your message in front of the right buyers and guide them through their journey until you arrive at conversion-ready sales leads.

Most buyers, particularly in B2B, investigate solutions online before interacting with providers. Meeting them on their digital turf enables more efficient selling cycles.

Your ability to connect and engage with prospects is key to differentiating your startup business from established competitors.

Retain Top Customers with CRM

It is common for a startup to focus on attracting customers and maintaining operations. To endure, you need a plan for capturing and maintaining core relationships from day one.

A customer relationship management programme allows to track opportunities as they move through the sales cycle, and then maintain profiles of your customers over time.

Deep customer profiles enable effective long-term communication and retention programmes that drive repeat sales and referrals.

Wrap Up

It is virtually impossible to efficiently use a marketing budget without a plan that defines your audience and message strategy.

However, with these pieces in place, you can execute affordable methods of reaching your targeted buyers.

This article originally appeared in Internal Results. This article was written by Will Humphries from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.