Is ATL marketing a good option for start-ups?

ATL Marketing stands for Above The Line Marketing and generally refers to the kind of marketing that has an extensive and broad reach for example a national tv campaign where the audience is largely not targeted. This is done at a macro level and helps in creating a brand image.  It deals with paid promotion of mostly traditional nature. 

While this is helpful in creating a brand image and brand presence due to its largely generalised nature, it can be a wasteful method in start ups where the niche product needs to reach the customs who have been researched to have an affinity towards it so that the campaign reaches only as much people as needed but with maximum effort and no fund is wasted. 

Sine ATL refers to generalised large scale marketing, it is only preferred by people and brands who have a huge amount of fund or surplus amount to begin with where they can afford to reach out to all and have maximum reach even when they get minimum feedback but it will not affect them. This is not the case for most start up businesses, as they often have limited funds and a lot of departments to invest into. They have also limited amount of manpower which is why they need to be careful of just how elaborate the campaign is and how much time and energy along with funds is needed for it. 

ATL being a form of marketing which mostly uses all traditional methods of marketing unlike the modern options like going digital, there it demands a lot of manual labour and strategising too, along with a heftier budget, which is a given.

Keeping in mind a start-up, being a new business will probably come up with no more than a few products at first and at once, promoting only few products on such huge platforms is a waste again. It is much better to go with targeted ads with a modern approach like social media marketing or content marketing so that it reaches its goals with minimum effort but gets you maximum return on investment.