Are you basing your tech startup's marketing plan on assumptions or data? Not validating your assumptions can do serious damage to your ability to successfully launch your brand.

A wrong assumption can be toxic for any marketing strategy. There simply isn't any room for false assumptions when you need to measure every move and account for every dollar while managing your startup's marketing strategy. Boldly assuming that you already know what your customers need and how to deliver it to them can prove to be a fatal mistake.

Never Assume What The Customer Wants

Every business would be successful if knowing what customers want was as easy as making a few assumptions without doing research. The reality is that you have to look deep beneath common perceptions and conventional wisdom if you want to build a successful brand.

As a senior marketing executive, you likely spend your day juggling an ever-changing list of priorities. When it is time to create your annual budget, you may view the task as an annoyance rather than an opportunity. However, the act of creating your budget gives you the chance to review what you have done, consider what you want to accomplish during the coming months and create a map that can help you achieve your goals. Unless you avoid the most common marketing budget pitfalls, though, you could find that your budgeted funds fail to generate the results that you want. Here is a list of the 10 most common errors that occur when planning a marketing budget.

All signs are pointing to chatbots when it comes to what the future of customer engagement will look like. Is it too soon to start thinking about integrating bot technology into how your B2B tech company operates? Well! Surely Chatbot is still in its toddler phase but soon it's going to graduate from an ever-changing kid to a complete grown-up dependent technology.

Your marketing strategy might be too boring to get noticed. Don't create dull, predictable content that's likely to be ignored by your target audience.

Far too many tech startup companies miss their opportunity to shine because they rely on boring, recycled marketing tactics instead of coming up with a targeted plan that is bold and elegant. The reality is that your customers will lose interest if you don't focus on fostering customer engagement. How can you make sure your marketing approach isn't boring? It's important to evaluate your tactics and make a push for personal and relevant marketing initiatives.

Is your startup company a powerhouse on social media? Using SEO can raise your brand's social profile and increase visibility in Google searches.

One of the biggest mistakes that startups make when dealing with social media is that they aren't very social at all. Social media can be an amazing platform for a startup company if it is able to find its voice. However, many startup companies use social media incorrectly by creating posts that read like sales pitches instead of starting conversations. You can't wait for others to find you on social media. A startup representative needs to be the initiator of conversations and relationships on digital platforms. An effective post should read like the beginning of a great conversation. Of course, great content needs to be backed up with great SEO strategies. SEO strategy and social media need to be tightly interwoven if you want to get more eyes on your brand and boost engagement. More shares, likes, responses and retweets lead to higher visibility and legitimacy.

A sales team is a valuable resource for creating a marketing plan. Information collected from sales data can help a B2B company build a solid buyer persona that can be used to add value to relevant services.

If you lead a B2B company, you might not realize that your past sales are actually the best resources for putting together a future marketing plan. In fact, your sales team might be the most underutilized research resource you have at your disposal. Who else spends more time interacting directly with customers and prospects than your sales reps? This means that each member of your sales team is like a walking, talking information-gathering machine. Taking time to pick the brains of your sales team members could help you to gain key insights that will inspire better decisions and a crisper marketing plan.

Have you recently hovered over a smartphone and chuckled at an adorable viral video with a friend or colleague? Did you recently share a video on your social media page that had some powerful political talking points? There's just something about a funny or informative video that makes us want to share it with our friends, family and colleagues. Videos can have that same power when it comes to your B2B tech company. Here's what an effective video should be able to do:

• Inform
• Persuade
• Communicate a brand story and value proposition
• Build relationships and trust

Selling to an invisible audience is difficult to do. Many startup owners are shocked to discover that the real challenge of launching a brand doesn't actually occur until that product is already developed and ready to be launched. The reality is that identifying an audience and spreading your message to the right people can be the most difficult aspect of launching a brand. You already know how crowded and competitive the market is. What you may not realize is that having the best product available isn't a guarantee that your startup company will rise to the top. Visibility and relevance are the two deciding factors when it comes to whether or not your startup company will last past its first year of existence. Connecting with customers is the best way to be competitive. This is why more and more businesses and startup companies are actually developing buyer personas that can be used to create relevant content and effective marketing measures. A buyer persona is a relatively new concept in the marketing world. The reality is that the marketing industry simply didn't have the technology to create such an accurate and detailed analysis of customers up until very recently. A buyer persona is heavily based on details that can be mined from data. The reality of the marketing world today is that customers no longer have to answer surveys or voice their opinions in order to tell brands exactly who they are and what they want. Brands can learn everything they need to know about customers simply by observing digital behaviors and measuring interaction levels.

Not all homepages are designed equally. Your brand's message can easily fall flat if you fail to construct a homepage that delivers your message in an effective way. Did you know that you only have between zero and eight seconds to convince a visitor to stay on your page? The goal is to engage your audience and make people want to keep looking. Building a website that gets the job done is a key step for launching a startup in any industry. Are you looking for the secret to building your own high-conversion homepage? There are five key design principles to keep in mind as you design and launch your page.

Many startup companies are intimidated by the idea of courting high-profile companies. It is actually very important to try and make your brand known to large enterprises because having high-profile clients can lead to more exposure and better sales.