Over the past few years, the concept of Digital Marketing has taken the industry by storm. Today, almost every company is leveraging this nifty marketing tool to multiply the business benefits. From large corporations to small startups, Digital Marketing has a universal appeal. However, there’s a catch – not all Digital Marketing tools and strategies perform equally. Their efficacy largely depends upon the business, the target audience, and the business objectives. So, what might work exceptionally well for a large enterprise might not deliver the same results for a startup.
The key is to develop a personalized and customized Digital Marketing strategy according to your business and business needs and goals. Contrary to big and established enterprises, startups have a unique ecosystem with unique demands. Hence, when it comes to startup marketing, it is a whole other playing field.
It is almost shocking to digest the fact that as high as 90% of startups in India fail to grow and shut down in just five years of their launch. While funding is one of the main reasons behind this failure, lack of proper marketing strategies in another significant contributor.
This calls for a robust and reliable Digital Marketing strategy designed explicitly with the startup ecosystem in mind. That’s what we’re going to discuss in this post – how to devise the perfect Digital Marketing strategy for startups!
How to devise the perfect Digital Marketing strategy for startups?
As we said earlier, the trick to devising the perfect Digital Marketing strategy for a startup is to understand the primary business factors – target audience and both short-term and long-term business goals. Once you figure this out, you can develop a customized Digital Marketing strategy for your startup. However, to give you a headstart on this front, here are some Digital Marketing strategies that have a universal appeal – these can work well for most startups.
1. Creative and Evergreen Content
When it comes to marketing, content is king. The more invested you are in creating and curating relevant and good quality content, the higher will be the traffic on your website. However, remember one thing – never oversell your brand. Be honest and straightforward with your audience about your brand’s story and what it stands for.
As for content creation, you must focus on both the latest/trending news in the industry and on those that will always stay relevant in your industry – evergreen. Trending content will keep your loyal customers/audience coming back to you, whereas evergreen content will bring in new and potential customers to your site. What’s interesting about evergreen content is that it markets itself – by getting backlinks from other blogs, or social media mentions, it continues to improve your search engine ranking, bringing newer traffic over time.
Together, trending content and evergreen content will help expand your audience base.
2. Social media platforms
In a world dominated by social media (SM), businesses can no longer afford to ignore this crucial marketing tool. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn play an influential role in promoting your online brand presence. If leveraged correctly, these SM channels can boost your brand awareness and value by reaching out to the right audience.
By developing a well-designed Social media techniques & strategy, you can positively impact your search engine ranking, webpage CTR, lead generation and conversions, and much more. However, you need to be regular and consistent in your SM strategies to connect with your target and potential audience at a deeper level. By doing so, you give your audience something to look forward to.
Another trend that has witnessed significant growth is Influencer Marketing. This requires you to connect with SM influencers, who harbor values that resonate with your brand and collaborate with them for product promotion and creating brand awareness.
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3. Focus on User Experience
As the marketing focus has shifted from profit maximization from enhancing customer satisfaction, your audience is everything for you. Keeping them happy and satisfied will ensure that you stay relevant in the market for the long haul. Thus, all your Digital Marketing strategies must be designed, keeping the interests, demands, and pain points of your target audience in mind.
To do this, you need to invest your time and effort in research. Find out what kind of content your audience relates to the most, what products/services can best address their issues, what social media channels do they spend most of their online time, what are they saying about your brand and products/services on social media channels, and so on. This kind of extensive research will help you understand your audience better and help you create a unique and personalized user experience for them.
Here are some ways in which you can create a positive user experience for your customers:
- Real-time customer support services.
- Concise, relevant, and informative content.
- Chatbots for assistance and communication.
- Intuitive website design and navigation menus.
- Fast loading speed of website/webpages.
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4. Video Marketing.
Short, interactive, and informative videos are the real deal now. Posting videos that strongly resonate with your brand’s objectives and vision allows your customers to understand what you stand for. This is why brands are now increasingly posting videos via social media tools like Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and SnapChat stories to keep their audience posted and informed.
Furthermore, you could also post engaging tutorials, webinars, and live Q&A sessions for your audience. This will not only help to keep your audience engaged but also answer their queries about your products/services.
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5. SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is something that’s not going away. EVER. No matter what your business is and what its size, SEO is the key to increase your website visibility and improve your search engine rankings. SEO strategies & techniques help people ‘find’ you on the web replete with millions of other brands offering similar services as you. Hence, you have got to make sure that you use all the right SEO tools to design unique SEO strategies for your startup.
Tools like SemRush, Moz, Google Search Console, Google Trends, Ahrefs, Woorank, and Screaming Frog, are some of the best SEO tools out there. You can use these tools in combination to devise a robust SEO strategy for your business, without leaving any stone unturned.
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The bottom line is, a good and well-rounded Digital Marketing strategy will help you accomplish two core business goals – increase your brand awareness and attract the right kind of customers for your business. Over time, your dedicated Digital Marketing strategies will help you create a lasting connection with your customers, and this, in turn, will ensure your survival in an ever-evolving industry. If you are curious to learn advanced digital marketing, check out Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing & Communication from MICA and upGrad.
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Unlike traditional organisations, startups have the flexibility to use different digital marketing strategies to grow their presence in the market and drive in customers.
Having a good social media marketing plan is very important and can be your secret weapon for lead generation and build brand awareness of your startup.
For startups, their primary goal is to increase their reach and scale in a very short period to keep an edge over competitors. And, traditional marketing cannot be an option for startups, as they are expensive and work very slowly. Only digital marketing can provide speed and scale in the marketing campaigns to startups. Following are some of the reasons to choose digital marketing:What are the best digital marketing strategies for startups?
The following are some of the best digital marketing strategies that can be used by startups:
Search Engine Optimization
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Optimization
Email Marketing
Content Marketing
Pay-per-click advertising, or Google Adwords
Retargeting Ads
Influencer Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
Referral Marketing
Each strategy has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, therefore the strategy may vary with every marketeer and their understanding of the market. What should be the best social media marketing practices for startups?
A solid media plan should include your goals, ways to build brand awareness, the platform you plan to use during the campaign period, content strategy, competitor and market research, using the right set of keywords, and using different social media automation tools and many more. You also need to fix the brand voice and post consistently to make it easier for your customers to find you. Why is digital marketing important for startups?
Inexpensive customer reach: You can monitor and track your customer behaviour and know which products and demographics works best for the business.
Can engage with customers in a better way: You can build a one-on-one relationship with the customers and get feedback directly on products and services.
Influence purchase decision: You have a better chance to influence the purchase decisions of customers using varied marketing techniques.
Track return on investment: You easily track how your marketing campaigns are performing and where more efforts are required.