Promote Your Project in a Very Competitive Niche with @salmanlashkari #vcbuzz

The Internet has opened up lots of opportunities for new businesses and innovated startups. It also has made many niches over-saturated and too competitive.

How to promote your new product in a highly competitive niche? Let’s discuss!

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About @salmanlashkari

Salman @salmanlashkari is a software engineering graduate and digital marketer by profession. Brand Manager at Appiskey.

He loves to create value for the Startup community & help entrepreneur reach their goal. He is a big fan of cricket and does play AAA games in his free time.

Questions we discussed

Q1 How did you become a digital marketer? Please share your career story!

Long story short, I was a software developer who made a startup product, An AI assistant that was above Google/IBM AI. Unfortunately, I did not have the budget to hire marketing agency for marketing. So I decided to become a marketer.

a little about me 🙂 A software engineer graduate who shifted focus to digital marketing areas in order to promote technical products in a competitive niche. I have given talks in AI summits & have been guest in marketing podcasts! #vcbuzz
— Salman Saleem (@salmanlashkari) March 31, 2020

A1: I fell into it. I went from designing websites (an unexpected move) to SEO to email marketing to social media. Turns out – I love it all! #vcbuzz
— Gwen Montoya (@gmontoyapdx) March 31, 2020

A1: I had a good friend of mine introduce me to online marketing. My mind was immediately blown away by the possibilities. I haven't looked back since! #vcbuzz
— Jacob Laguerre (@jacoblaguerre91) March 31, 2020

Q2 You’ve been working in a few competitive niches (including cloud hosting and mobile development)… How were you navigating the marketing strategy?

For every marketing strategy content curation plays an important role. In order 2 generate evergreen content, I have 2 understand the persona & problem of my target audience. Once its identified, I curate content and then perform content marketing which helps in leads

A2 It's imperative that you do marketing that your clients will thank you for. #vcbuzz
— Jon-Mikel Bailey (@JonMikelBailey) March 31, 2020

A2 I would like to point out to @SnappaHQ which is making its way in the market where @Canva exists and doing a great job #vcbuzz
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 31, 2020

Q2 I would love to specifically hear if/how you navigate with competitors such as PCMag or G2Crowd and Capterra in the space(s). Do you use them as well as compete with them or go paid-only versus trying to top organic for head software terms? #vcbuzz
— Chris Boggs (@boggles) March 31, 2020

@boggles for SaaS projects in tough niches, I'd recommend combining forces on those big three (buy their ads as well as use customers' help to generate reviews) #vcbuzz
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 31, 2020

@seosmarty me too! 🙂 depends though if you have a super niche you may get space and not have to buy into the aggregators. #vcbuzz
— Chris Boggs (@boggles) March 31, 2020

A2: When it comes to a competitive niche, you need to find out who the best people are and model yourself after them. Don't try to re-invent the wheel at first. When you start to gain some traction, you have more room to experiment and try new things. #vcbuzz
— Jacob Laguerre (@jacoblaguerre91) March 31, 2020

A2 Here's your ultimate growth hack in a competitive niche: DO ALL IT TAKES. Being hungry and restless goes a long way, but you can probably just have an energy to make it work once in a lifetime #vcbuzz
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 31, 2020

Q3 Which marketing tactics worked especially well for you and which didn’t?

Content marketing works best for me since its helps me to get high intent focused content, rank in SEPR that generates leads! So far I did not have great results from Social media marketing as I had expected

A3: I've had pretty good success with SEO in the past. I was operating in a niche that didn't have a lot of savvy marketers so I was able to take advantage of that. I've done moderately well with social media marketing. The key is in being consistent. #vcbuzz
— Jacob Laguerre (@jacoblaguerre91) March 31, 2020

A3 Content marketing hack for a competitive niche: Treat your competitor's brand name as a keyword and build content around it: Get highly targeted leads + build a project that solves competitor's problems! #vcbuzz
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 31, 2020

A3: I've had success with #influencermarketing for my business and clients. Taking time to identify and develop relationships with influencers (even micro-influencers) in a specific industry or niche can deliver results. #VCBuzz
— Jaime Shine ?️ (@jaimeshine) March 31, 2020

Tools like Ahrefs ad BuzzSumo can help you identify hot topics in your niche. #vcbuzz
— Don Sturgill (@DonSturgill) March 31, 2020

Q4 What are some particularly creative growth hacks you discovered?

How to grow a community with great intellectual minds? Get a premium Linkedin account and try to connect with senior executives. Reach out to them over email with a cool crafted invitation along with a pic of yourself with their company site, also add some growth tips.

A4 Whether you're in a highly competitive niche or a boring niche, you need to get people's attention. I always think of the creative ontent @CaterpillarInc puts out https://t.co/rcsSTaMtyl #vcbuzz
— Gail Gardner (@GrowMap) March 31, 2020

Personally, what I've seen make the difference between success and struggling is organization. The people who succeed have processes and use them regularly. #vcbuzz
— Gail Gardner (@GrowMap) March 31, 2020

Q5 What are your favorite digital marketing tools?

AHREF for SERP Ranking & Backlinks research, KWfinder for keyword research, Buzzsumo for influencer marketing, ViralContentbee for content marketing, Sendgrid for email marketing, Hootsuite for Social media marketing, optin monster for lead generation.

A4+A5 Growth hack: Use Ahrefs keyword difficulty to find least competitive terms to build content around #vcbuzz
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 31, 2020

Zenkit is the tool I am using to create those RT @DonSturgill: I love Kanban Flow for project tracking. #vcbuzz
— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) March 31, 2020

Ubersuggest is good too but they have to work a lot in order to get it near to SEMrush quality. I believe their ultimate goal is to become #1 SEO tool.