In the business world, there is nothing more exhilarating than launching your own startup. Yet if you are unprepared for marketing your product or service, it becomes a daunting task to sustain your business. The whole idea is to make your business visible to most of your target audience.
There is a huge competition in the market today, not only in terms of products or service but also to grab attention. Millions of emails are circulated each day and maybe even your target client also receives few emails regarding the same product you are marketing. It is very important to cut through the clutter and take your marketing message to your customer. No matter what your product is and how advanced you are as a startup: Digital marketing is essential to growing your startup to new heights. We want to give you 15 online marketing tips to sustain and grow your startup in today’s cut-throat competition.
One of the most affordable and easy ways to create your brand presence is through social media marketing. You need to implement an inbound marketing process to create a buyer’s journey or integrate growth hacking process to give your startup an early boost. Nevertheless, these are the tips you need to follow when handling the promotion of your startup through digital marketing.
1. Lay The Foundation Right
The world of digital marketing is overwhelming and each platform has its own promises when it comes to grow your startup. Thus you need to know your product and the target audience inside and out. Define a marketing strategy aligning with the business goal of your startup. In this case, you need to choose a platform which is best suitable for your startup. If you are still confused about which platforms to choose, you can hire an online marketing agency to study your business and create a strategy suitable for your startup.
2. Bring Your Startup online
Creating an online presence needs a sophisticated approach and has become difficult more than ever. You not only need a website but also need to design it by keeping user experience in mind. You may also need to create a social media presence on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Moreover, several startups may even try app marketing through Android, IOS or facebook app.
Create an aesthetically well designed website with relevant images and content. The website structure and content must be SEO optimized. SEO is a long-term player and will help you bring in most organic visitors. Your website must be optimized with keywords to attract relevant visitors. These basic steps define the foundation of your future strategies.
3. Search Engine Optimization
When done right, search engine optimization can alone sustain your startups for a long period of time. An SEO professional will optimize your website to rank higher in Google rankings. Anyone searching for your startup related product may stumble upon your website and start their online journey in your sales cycle. Make your website mobile friendly, ensure all your webpages are working fine. Never forget to decorate your content with proper texts, headlines and images.
4. Boost Your ROI through PPC Marketing
This is the biggest boon for any startup business out there. You can even compete and defeat large conglomerates with an effective PPC marketing campaign. PPC is affordable for startups with a low budget since you pay only when a user clicks your ad. Typically a user see your ads only when they are interested in your product and hence the probability of conversion is much higher than any other digital marketing activity.
5. Optimize for Mobile Search
Mobile searches have already surpassed desktop searches by a huge margin. Hence mobile device optimization is a must to reap benefits from your digital marketing campaigns. Make sure that a user can easily find your website in mobile searches and the navigation is responsive enough to have easy access through mobile devices.
6. Amplify Your Brand Message
You need to create a unique brand message and deliver it to your customer in the right manner. You need to do it consistently on any available platform by sending out promotional messages. The voice of your brand must be heard on every platform including your emails, brochures, social media and offline marketing. Building your brand is important, this is how customer connects with your brand for a long haul.
7. Educate Your Audience Through Blogs
Relying heavily on only paid marketing campaigns cannot take your startup to a higher level. The efforts made through paid campaigns are temporary and often stops when you discontinue your campaigns. Sometimes the audience is not aware of your service or a product. Writing blogs can help you educate your audience and build trust in your product.
8. Creating Relevant Content
To create and deliver relevant content to your target audience. You need to have a content marketing strategy in place. You may have the best of digital marketing platforms, but if you haven’t figured out what actually your target audience is really interested in, all your marketing efforts could go waste. Build a buyer persona and try creating content which aligns with your startup goals. There are many tools and platforms available to help you generate content. Your content should connect with your target audience and make them stop and notice.
9. Engage With Your Audience
This is one of the obvious digital marketing tips but often the most overlooked one. Your marketing efforts do not always have to be sales centric. Your content must engage your target audience and influence them to participate with your brand. Always remember that user-generated content is a great way to showcase your brand value to potential customers. Running few Facebook poles, Q & A session will help you understand your audience’s mindset and can even unlock some hidden gems your startup might be missing. This also conveys that you care about your customers personally and not only for monetary benefits.
10. Be Reliable And Consistent
Social media is a great way to connect with your customers and build a brand image. But you must be consistent to create a space in your audience’s mind. Never deviate from your brand values and be reliable when answering the queries of your customer. Your social media posts should either entertain or educate your audience about your product.
11. Experiment With Small Investments
There is no digital marketing strategy which is one-size-fits-all. You need to keep experimenting to uncover what works for your startup and what doesn’t. Keep aside a small investment of your marketing budget aside to test your ideas. The great thing about digital marketing is that one unique marketing idea can help your startup compete with the larger conglomerate.
12. Keep an Eye on Technical Aspects of Your Website
Sometimes technical glitches can prevent your website from ranking higher in the search engine rankings. Keep a close eye on the technical SEO aspect and make sure that your website has a great user experience. Startups can use free tools provided by Google like Search Console to monitor the health of your website. This tool constantly analyzes your technical aspects and flag automatic warnings if your website doesn’t follow Google’s guidelines.
13. Capture Customer Information
Your website structure and content strategy should be made to capture the audience’s information when they visit your website. Place actionable CTA’s and lead forms to build strong inbound funnel. Startups can use the basic version of Google Analytics to trace the path taken by users to reach your website and optimize the path to boost conversions.
14. Work On Your Landing Pages
Having a compelling, relevant and high-converting landing page is necessary for every startup, but not many invest their time in designing an effective landing page. Your landing pages are your customer’s first contact point and determine whether they will continue with your startup or not. So it becomes imperative to deliver a good user experience. Rather than using a pre-designed template, iterate various designs and see what works best for your business. Designing is not a one-time affair and each new marketing campaign can have its unique design specification. Try experimenting A/B testing on landing pages to check which one is performing better.
15. Investment in Best Tools
Even though you are a startup and probably trying to use all the free tools, it is advised to keep aside a certain amount of budget to purchase premium tools. Tools will automate many of your menial tasks and lets you focus on important marketing efforts. Test various tools with their free trials and purchase the one best suitable for your startup. There are countless of good digital marketing available to help you with SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing, lead generation etc.
The majority of startups fail due to the ineffective execution of marketing plans. With digital marketing, there is an opportunity for small startup businesses to make the most out of their marketing efforts at a fraction of the cost. Startups always struggle with their budgeting needs and hence if you find a tool that can make your life easy, don’t hesitate to try them out. Having a good digital marketing strategy in place is a great start to optimize your budgets and track the ROI.
