The success you achieve with your media startup business will heavily rely on your reputation as a trustworthy company, and as Nandi Mwiyombella writes, it will also open a new window for customers and potential investors.

Starting a media startup business – whether big or small – involves a lot, with little time to factor marketing strategies that will be key for the successful execution of the venture.

That said, having a sound marketing plan and strategy greatly enriches your company’s awareness level. Your strategy and plan serve as a compass to guide you as you navigate the market place in which your business operates. It is a tool that drives focus and protects your reputation, which is essential for building trust and credibility.

Opportunity for clients and investors

The success you achieve with your media startup business will heavily rely on your reputation as a trustworthy company. This will also open a new window for customers and potential investors. Your marketing activities will build a brand name and open new windows of credibility and trust as your reputation grows. As a result, your business and sales will also grow with new opportunities.

At this point you have probably learnt a thing or two that are helpful for media startup business that are useful when strategizing on branding, media, social media accounts management and marketing.

As a media startup, you need to focus on the following areas, although not to the exclusion of other factors.

1) Addressing the pain point

This is understanding the reason why your customers are looking for your product or service. It is important to address these issues directly in your marketing messages and every other place where you think your customer will interact with your brand. You should also strive to create content that resonates with customers’ preferences without sounding pushing a sale. In so doing, you will automatically improve their trust in your brand. They are likely to consider you as a potential leader in the industry if they keep consuming your useful content on a regular basis. Eventually, they will recommend you to other consumers of your product.

2) Being very clear to your audience on your messaging

Being precise on how your product is responding to and addressing their needs is important, because this is what the target audience wants to know from the onset. Equally important is capturing the benefits that your product or service provides and how it will meet these needs. Use different types of content on your media channels and social media handles to share with your customers what makes your product unique. Let them know why you are the best option for them. Make use of different proof points – such as graphs, statistics and testimonials – to deliver your message. However, avoid focusing too much on sales. It can be a deal-breaker for most of them. The idea should be more about what value you deliver.

3) Scanning the market to understand your competition

Having an understanding of the competition will give you better visibility and choosing an area of focus, through your strategy and plan. It is of utmost importance to understand your competitors’ most popular communication and social media channels, how they have positioned themselves on those channels, the marketing campaigns that gave them the most successful results, as well as how they address and engage their customers. Studying your competitors’ strategy will make a huge difference in terms of precision and meticulousness.

4) Establish whose needs you intend to meet

This goes beyond identifying target audience. At this point you are going granular to enable you to crystalize your strategy and plan. Customer personas for your brand and your audience are fundamental for the success of your business. A clear definition of your audience personas or buyer personas will help you with content creation and laying down strategies that will resonate with them. Language and tone of voice are a major consideration here. These will suggest areas your target audience will interact with your brand and their motivations and expectations. Having an audience persona will act like a guide for you on how to interact with your audience and it will also ensure consistency.

5) Communicating and engaging your target effectively

This includes matching the type of content with the persona established. You should ask yourself the following questions: How do they like to consume content? Are they simple people or do they like to be impressed? How do they engage with their friends or followers on social media platforms? Once you have answers to all these questions, you will be able to engage them with topics that matters to them and make them interact with your brand and more so become ambassadors.

6) Create content that your target audience engages with

Create and post different types of content that are impactful, compelling, and, most importantly, widely shareable. By so doing, your followers will feel compelled to share your content on their platform on their own volition, simply because they will find it interesting. This will in turn expand your pool of potential customers and ultimately increase your sales. Contents that are dynamic like videos or animations are proven to be more impactful than static content, so ensure to strike the right balance.



About the Author


Author ProfileNandi Mwiyombella
The author is a Branding & Marketing practitioner

Similar articles



Millennials And Gen Z Media Consumption Study Launched

Report by Aga Khan University’s Media Innovation Centre analyses the country’s millennials and digital natives’ media consumption habits.


Why legal education for journalists is a key tenet to attaining media viability in Tanzania

For the media to flourish, and the society to have free flow of accurate and verifiable information, journalists, the drivers in the passing of information are expected to be well grounded in laws and the legal aspect pertaining to the job, writes Alfred Ganzo.


Why pitching is important for startups

Pitching provides numerous opportunities for your new or existing business ideas to be discovered and realized; and as Simon Mtabazi writes,  some startups have become billion-dollar companies due to efffevie pitches


EAST Festival 2022: Building an informed and thriving community through journalism

That’s why I think today is such a great space for us to sit back and reflect on the questions that could help us shape the kind of journalism that we want to see in our local and global community.


Media Innovation Centre launches report on media innovation and media viability in East Africa

The report specifically analysed eight major variables which include: newsroom structure and resources, media ownership and business models, organisational capacity, innovation culture, journalism culture, financial trends and results, content quality and COVID-19.


Maureen Mudi’s quest to make media a better space for journalists

Mudi, in her role as Media Council of Kenya regional coordinator in charge of Mombasa(covering the entire coastal region), has found herself at the forefront in advocating and fighting to protect journalists’ rights, culminating in her being awarded for her peace efforts in the run-up and during the 2022 general elections in Kenya.


Journalists’ experiences covering Kenya’s 2022 general elections

The 2022 general elections have been mentally draining for journalists, some of whom have had to stay on the campaign trail for over a year. Others have had to toy with the tough call of managing teams in the newsroom. East Site’s Isaac Swila and political writer Rawlings Otieno recount their experiences


How social media influencers shaped Kenya’s 2022 General Election

What role did social media influencers play in the election? What voice did they give in political discourses during and around the election period? And to what extent did political candidates involve the influencers in marketing their manifestos to sway votes in their favour? East Site writer Steven Omondi unpacks the details


Why audience research is crucial for Media Viability

The media industry is experiencing enormous transformation as new digital trends emerge. With the vast opportunities that the digital space offers, media owners and content producers must deliberately adapt to how the audience consumes content.


Opinion: Excavating the Truth through Fact-checking

With the increased Digital Technology at the palm of just anybody; there are a lot of information that distort whether deliberately or not highlighting the need of robust Fact0checking as Asha D. Abinallah explains


Social Media: Where should journalists draw the line?

Is there a danger in media personalities having a vibrant social media presence? Assuming they have a massive media following, should they self-regulate and filter what they post? And when they engage with followers, should their opinions be taken as personal, or does it represent the journalist’s media house? East Site writer Isaac Swila explores


The pursuit of gender-inclusive reporting in East Africa

Media stakeholders are raising concerns over the lack of gender-inclusive reporting in East African newsrooms. They want concerted efforts to ensure more female journalists get equal opportunities like their male counterparts.


Media Innovation Centre partners with Mozilla to launch Pocket

The partnership will also ensure that local content is curated and distributed to better optimize the product and meet the needs of Kenyan online users.


How media outlets can safely handle user-generated content

The news industry is constantly changing, and in the last few years, User Generated Content (UGC) has become a ubiquitous feature in news sourcing and packaging. However, media houses and journalists need to establish verification and credibility safeguards to avoid the misinformation trap.


Six tips journalists need to know when covering elections

Reporting on elections is, for many journalists, an opportunity to establish themselves as reliable political reporters. But the task comes with certain risks, particularly in the East African sub-region.

Stakeholders are now calling for concerted efforts, better planning and preparations for journalists before they are sent out on the field to cover Kenya’s high-stakes August 9 General Elections.


The perils of political reporting in East Africa

East Africa’s media grapples with a myriad of challenges whenever general elections approach. Not only do editors struggle with balancing the competing political interests, at times at the altar of professionalism, but individual journalists pay dearly, many suffering attacks in the course of their duties.


Enact policies that guarantee education for all

As Form One students settle into a new life in secondary school, this has also been a period of reflection. We have read tear-jerking and heart-warming stories of determined students who overcame many odds to get an education and how well-wishers came together in their aid.


Optimism in Tanzania’s media industry after a dark period

There is renewed optimism in the Tanzanian media space following the ascension to power of President Samia Suluhu whose regime is keen to relax some of the laws deemed punitive to journalists and media houses


RSF 2022 Press Freedom Index: A mixed bag for East Africa

Uganda fell behind, whereas Kenya improved its press freedom ranking in the Reporters Without Borders 2022 Press Freedom Index. And after years of media freedom decline, Tanzania appears to be on the right track. But overall, media freedom activists say there is still work to be done.


Good journalism does not come cheap

A free and independent press is the cornerstone of any democracy and the foundation of economic success, mostly because through our free press, we’re able to hold the leadership to account.


Opinion: Rethinking media houses revenue streams in the Digital era

To align with the changing times and stay relevant in the business, media houses are challenged to rethink their strategy and to adopt and understand obstacles and challenges they face towards rethinking and exploring alternative sources of revenue and on developing the digital strategy.


Hamasa Media Group: Tanzanian innovators with a solution to organisation management

A team of young, Tanzanian tech-savvy communication professionals is dreaming big. It seeks to usher a new dawn in media business management in Tanzania by optimising employee output and offering consultancy to media businesses on how they can operate with a minimal budget but still attain their goals.


The legal challenges facing East Africa’s bloggers and influencers 

Bloggers and influencers have become an integral component of information sourcing across East Africa. The public uses blogs, privately run websites and social networks to crowdsource information from social networks, which they then publish and distribute. But it’s not all rosy for this group of content makers.


Afyatoon: How two medics are transforming lives through story-telling

The chances of meeting a medical graduate practising journalism are usually very slim, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. But two Tanzanian physicians have broken away from that norm by inventing a start-up called Afyatoon. It uses visual art technology to tell compelling medical stories. They narrate to the EAST Site their experience and share their vision for the future.


Five astounding findings from the MCK state of Kenya’s Media Survey

Did you know that in 2021 Kenyans watched less TV and spent more time on social media? Or that some Kenyans rely on family, friends, or even social media icons and bloggers as a source of news and information? These are some of the conclusions highlighted in the 2021 State of the Media Survey conducted by the Media Council of Kenya (MCK).


Uganda’s media strives to reinvent itself post Covid-19

The effects of the Covid pandemic continue to change the world in ways we had not imagined possible. The media is going through a painful transformation to keep up with changing production, distribution and consumption habits. In East Africa, Uganda’s Media Challenge Initiative (MCI) recently hosted a panel discussion on Media Viability comprising experienced journalists from Television, Radio, Print and Online/Digital media to address lessons learned from the pandemic. East Site’s Moses Mutente attended the panel and compiled this article.


Opinion: Africa must revamp journalism education to include media ownership

In this commentary, Uganda-based journalist Caleb Okereke shares deep personal insights into why media schools in East Africa must rethink their curriculum. He stresses the need for trainers to begin teaching media ownership to better equip journalism students for the dynamic and cutthroat job market by taking us through his journey as a journalism student and media owner.


Dwindling trust in media raises concerns ahead of Kenya’s General Election

For the second year running, a survey commissioned by the Media Council of Kenya shows that the trust level in Kenyan media has nosedived, raising fundamental questions on how media will play its watchdog role more so with landmark elections set for August 9. EAST Site writer Isaac Swila explores.


Opinion: Media needs credibility to survive the pandemic and digital transformation

Legacy media is currently caught between a rock and a hard place — the Covid pandemic and the rise and proliferation of social media has hit revenues hard. Some say this could signal the end of news as we used to know it. However, Ugandan decorated journalist Ernest Bazanye believes the industry will survive and thrive, but not without a fight.