Over the years, marketing has changed a lot; there was a time when the only way for a company’s name to get around was by word of mouth or a newspaper ad. In today’s digital world, the strategies for marketing are also digital. You need digital marketing, whether you are a business that has been around for a long time or a new startup. Without digital marketing growing, your company is almost impossible today. Especially as a startup, you need digital marketing to help you build a brand. Below are 21 digital marketing tips and ideas for new startups.
The Start Matters
When you talk about digital marketing, there are various ways to go about it. So, the question is which way to choose. It actually depends on the type of product or service you offer, who are your potential customers, what is your budget for digital marketing, and your what is your digital strategy. If you do not know the answers to these questions, you should hire an experienced digital marketing expert or agency to guide you with this. As you do not want to invest your time, efforts, and money into a digital marketing channel that does not benefit your business.
Your Online Presence
Before you start talking about digital marketing, you need to focus on getting your business online. While doing this, you need to decide how you want to do this, are you going to use a website, blog, social media, or mobile application. In today’s digital world, it is best to get your business onto all of the mentioned platforms. By increasing the number of platforms from which customers can access your business, you can improve your brand’s online presence.
Building Your Brand
There is more to your company than just its name. Your logo, website, blog, and social media accounts all need to have a personality; this is what will make up your online brand identity. All content that your company creates, the language, the images, the colors, and all the digital marketing that you do should follow a specific structure. This branding is implemented in all internal and external aspects of your business. Building your brand is not a one-day job; it is continuous work.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is one of the most cost-effective channels of digital marketing; this is what helps your website/application rank higher on search engines like google. The higher you rank, the more online traffic you are bound to get. There is on-page SEO and off-page SEO; both are equally important to rank your business higher in search engines.
On-page SEO is on the website itself; it is a part of the coding and the content that is available on the site. Below are a few things to keep in mind for on-page SEO.
User-friendly URL (Keep it sweet and short)
Use Keywords (Research and use the keywords best suited to your business)
Use internal links (The content on your website should have internal links to other pages on your website)
Use external links (You should have a few outbound links, remember to link out to authority sites)
Optimize your images (the image name, the alt text should have a keyword; also all images should have a description)
Social Media links (Your site should have links to all your social media accounts)
Blog (There is only so much you can write on your website, and you should not keep changing the content. So, start a blog and write regular articles related to your business)
Off-page SEO is on other sites; it can be done independently from your website. Below are a few things to keep in mind for off-page SEO.
Backlinking (Creating links on other sites that link back to your website is known as backlinking, make sure you choose authority sites to create your backlinks)
Social Media (Post quality content on social media platforms that link backs to your website)
Guest Blogging (Write guest articles on popular blogs with links to your site)
Use Influencers (Get social media influencers to create content and link it to your site.)
PPC Marketing
SEO is a good and cost-effective way of digital marketing, but it takes time; as a startup, if you are looking for more immediate results, you need to look into PPC Marketing (Pay Per Click). Using targeted ads, you can focus on potential customers who are interested in the product/service you provide. PPC marketing is done through Google and Facebook ads.
Be Active on Social Media
When it comes to Social Media, you can choose from a lot of popular ones. You need to select your social media platforms based on the product/service you provide and the customers you target. Businesses should consider getting onto most of these if not all of them for their social media presence. Some of the most popular ones are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Reddit. You should also keep an eye out on which are the most trending platforms and get onto them.
Social Media Marketing
Just like you can run PPC ads on Google and Facebook, you can also run social media ads on other social networking sites. Ads on social media sites usually are cheaper than PPC and can be run for a small targeted audience.
Videos Are the Future of Social Media
As mentioned, there are a lot of social media platforms to consider for marketing. However, when it comes to the type of content you should consider, it is quite clear. Videos are ahead when it comes to your engagement. Almost 5 billion videos are watched daily on YouTube alone, so you can see that the scope of spreading your brand via videos is much higher.
Influencer Marketing
Today we have numerous social media influencers with a large number of followers, and using these influencers is a great way to get your brand out there. Whether you are promoting a service or a product, getting an influencer with similar content can do wonders for your business.
Email Marketing
It is the oldest form of digital marketing, and even now, it is an essential tool in the arsenal of digital marketers. Building an email list is necessary to a company that gets most of its business over the internet via social media, SEO, or PPC marketing. It is a backup when all else fails; let say in the near future a social media platform you use to get business is shut down or Google changes its algorithm, which makes you appear further down in searches. Yes, all these problems can be solved with a little time and money, but while you are addressing these issues, you can at least stay in touch with your audience via email.
Mobile Device Optimization
Today over 50% of all websites are viewed on mobile phones, this along with easy access to mobile applications has increased online traffic to mobile devices like never before. So, all your content for your business must be optimized for mobile devices. If a customer accesses your website or blog from their mobile device, they should still have a good user-experience.
Interact with Potential Customers
Whether it is through a social media platform, a chat service on your website or via email, interacting with the potential customers will increase the chance of them becoming a customer. It will also show them that you are an active company that promptly responds to questions or suggestions.
Content Is King
Whichever channel you chose, whether it is a website, mobile application, blog, or social media, content is king. You have to make sure you have engaging, relevant, and unique content for your website or any online platform. Most SEO experts agree that you should have at least 400-500 words per website page and about 1900 per blogpost.
An Engaged Audience Is Worth the Effort
While you need a lot of content, you need to make sure that the content you have is engaging. Talking about the product or service you provide is essential, but not all content should be dedicated to that. You should create content that a customer or a potential customer would read even if he/she were not as of now interested in the product or service you are offering.
Become a Reliable Source
All content that you have on your website, mobile application, or blog should have a reliable source. Don’t post things that do not go with your brand, even if it is on your blog. Remember, all your content adds up to make your brand image.
Be Regular
While posting on social media or your blog, you need to be regular. Experts say that you should at least post 5-10 a week on Facebook, at least three tweets a day on twitter and 1-3 posts a day on Instagram. If posting on your blog, try to make 1-2 blog posts a week and on YouTube at least 2-3 videos a month.
Start with Small Investments
While investing in digital media marketing, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, use various sources on digital marketing and make small investments to start with. The good thing about digital marketing is that you have stats for everything, so you can see which platform is working the best for you before investing a more substantial amount in advertising.
The End Goal Is the Product/Service
I know we have spoken about engaging the customer and not writing content only based on the product or service that you provide. But remember, the end goal of all customer engagement is converting the potential customers into paying customers. So, don’t forget to promote the product or service you provide as well.
Creating Product/Service Specific Landing Page(s)
You should create landing pages for specific products and services that you want to target before running a PPC or social media ad campaign. By getting potential customers to visit targeted landing pages, you increase the conversion rate. All you need to do is make sure that the customer has a good experience when he visits a landing page.
· Have Long-term and Short-term Goals
As a startup, your business needs digital marketing for both long-term and short-term goals. As some of the strategies are focused on short-term benefits, some like on-page and off-page SEO have a focus on long term benefits. You need to keep a balance of both these to grow your brand while making profits.
· Keep a Track
Now that you have a digital marketing campaign running, an online presence, and engaged customers, you should keep track of all the interactions between customers and your business. Whether they convert or not, every interaction is vital for future digital marketing campaigns.
Conclusion
There are various channels for you to promote your business digitally; you need to make sure you understand the nature of your business and your audience. The good thing is that you do not need to invest a significant amount into digital marketing from the word go, you can try a few different channels and see which gives you the most desired results. If you should consider hiring a digital marketing expert on board to help you out.
Promoting a startup is like sailing in troubled waters, but a dedicated team, with the right resources and strategies, can make the journey much smoother and reward full.
