Sales and marketing: It begins and ends with the customer
Efficient marketing starts with knowing who your customers are and what they need. A clear brand, a well-defined target group and consistent messaging help businesses reach their audience. When making the marketing materials, AI offers new opportunities to create relevant content without a large marketing budget.
When setting up your business and starting to attract potential customers, one key principle is to not try to do everything. Mikko Niiniketo, Account Director at Morgan Digital, emphasises that successful sales and marketing begins with identifying the right target audience and building a strong brand.
Branding starts with a company’s vision and concept for the business, product or service. In a marketing agency a graphic designer and a copywriter then shape and build these ideas into a solution that suits the business combining the name, colors, logo, slogan, fonts, and other key elements. These elements should work together across the company's different channels.
While a marketing agency can help develop the brand, the company itself is ultimately responsible for maintaining it. According to Niiniketo, reliability, the promise and commitment, expertise and visual appearance are all important elements of a company’s brand.
To reach your customers you should take the time to define who your potential customers are and tailor you’re marketing according to this. Once a business knows its customers, it can make more informed decisions about where and how to reach them. For local businesses, for example, this means concentrating on marketing efforts locally and not trying to reach customers nationwide.
– There is nothing wrong with having a local brand if that is where your market is, Niiniketo points out.
Websites, social media, newsletters, events, advertisements and media coverage all offer ways to connect with an audience. You should not be on every channel but on those where your customers already spend their time. Consistency is also essential. Rather than constantly changing the message, businesses should repeat it until customers recognise and remember the brand.
Let AI turn customer feedback into marketing content
For small businesses without a dedicated marketing team, AI can be a practical way to make marketing more manageable. Jim Backull, entrepreneur at VILJA Media, shared insights on how businesses can use AI to create relevant content without needing expensive subscriptions or complicated prompts.
Backull speaks from his own experience as an entrepreneur. Alongside advising businesses on marketing he tests his ideas in practice in his family's cacao business. His central message is that efficient AI-assisted marketing does not begin with clever prompts. It begins with the customer.
– Once you have customers, their words become your copy, says Backull.
Customer reviews, comments and feedback provide valuable material because they reveal what people appreciate and what concern them. Rather than inventing marketing messages from scratch, businesses can use AI to identify recurring themes in this feedback and turn them into marketing content.
This approach can also help businesses that have not yet launched a product. Analysing reviews of existing alternatives can reveal what customers value, what frustrate them and where there may be room for a new solution.
The process can be surprisingly simple. Start with collecting real customer feedback, either from your own business or when researching the market. Then ask AI to identify recurring words, feelings, positive experiences and complaints. Finally, use those insights to develop a marketing message that reflects the language customers themselves use.
Backull emphasises that it is important to carefully read AI:s suggested marketing message and make editions before publication. Businesses need to carefully consider what information they share with AI tools and ensure that the information they publish is accurate and appropriate.
Mikko Niiniketo from Morgan Digital and Jim Backull from VILJA Media have been sharing their insights in Startias and VASEKs events this autumn (2026). They represent two of Startias partner organisations.
- Do you want to know more about branding and marketing and need a partner? Be in touch: Morgan Digital and VILJA Media.
- Are you thinking about starting a company or do you have questions regarding your established business? Book a time.
- Startia and VASEK regularly organize events for entrepreneurs at different stages of their entrepreneurial journey. Keep an eye on our event calendar for upcoming events!
Jim Backull (entrepreneur at VILJA Media), Tuija Räihä-Pundars (Business Advisor at Startia/VASEK) and Mikko Niiniketo (Account Director at Morgan Digital).
