Long-term success is achieved through a clear marketing strategy, not by the individual aspects - customer knowledge, brand awareness, product validity, etc. The main goal of a start-up is growth. Therefore, understanding the start-up market can help find the right marketing tools to influence the audience.

Focused on Short-Term Goals

The journey of a startup is often bumpy. A startup can fail when there is a lack of patience and respect for you and your team.  Be patient, respect the ideals and be grateful for the continued experience.

Neither the Team nor You get Appreciated

Understanding your client's real needs are essential for a long-lasting relationship.  To help get to know your clients, consider the following questions: <ul><li>What problems do our clients need to solve?</li><li>Why should they choose us?</li><li>How can we be useful to them in the long term?</li></ul> It is sufficient to identify the needs of your best users. They are loyal and independently promote your product.

Don’t Really Know Their Customers

A start-up often fails because of premature or late scaling. 90% of start-ups fail: 10% fail in the first year and 70% in the following 2 - 5 years. The following questions can help assess if your start-up is ready for scaling. <ul><li>Are the sales figures growing?</li><li>Do all the founders have a shared vision about future development and growth?</li><li>Is cash flow positive?</li></ul>

Premature scaling

Vanity metrics reflect how well you grow your social media followers, get more website visits, and gain trial users, but they fail to meet your business goals. Sometimes start-ups choose too many metrics. Despite their progressive increase, they don't contribute to business growth or help to attain business goals. The issue is that the start-up does not have a relevant metrics base. You should choose two or three relevant metrics and set a deadline for them.

Relying on Vanity Metrics

Marketing strategies are pointless if a product is not validated and the audience does not see its value. Marketing is used to highlight your product's advantages.

Failure to Identify Product Value

Scaling a start-up requires careful preparation and a timely launch. <ul><li>Scaling is exponential growth, where your revenue grows faster than you spend. The net income is often reinvested to further the growth of the company.</li><li>Growth is often a linear term. The start-up revenue increases as more resources are added, such as capital, people and technology.</li></ul>

Scaling start-ups

A common mistake for start-ups is to fail to consistently gather and analyze key indicators. Marketing approaches that secure start-up growth is brand marketing, performance marketing, and product marketing. Each approach is connected to a specific stage of the sales funnel: awareness, acquisition, activation, revenue, retention, referral. If you move from one task to the next, you may waste time, opportunities, and investment. So instead, focus on one or two tasks from the list.