As rapidly growing competition invades the startup business sector, new and innovative brands are continuing to launch every day in the hopes of an easy path for success. Full-fledged marketing requires a significant investment, both above the line and below the line, and since startups oftentimes have a limited budget, it’s important that they make the most of their money to market themselves and generate revenue. That’s why digital marketing has become such a savior for many startups, as these practices allow startups to reach audiences at a much lower cost than traditional marketing.
Although many startups have adopted digital marketing, developing your own strategy is key if you want to achieve the best results.
- Advantages of digital marketing startups
- Selecting the right channels
- Strategies to become a revenue positive startup
The Advantages Of Digital Marketing For Startups
When it comes to breaking down the why’s of your digital marketing plan, consider the how’s more than anything. As the definition explains “digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.” If you aren’t invested in these practicalities, the likelihood of failure in your startup can spell doom.
Instead, shift your attitude to include the advantages of digital marketing such as:
- Exponential reach – This includes your precise targeting towards audiences you intend to lure into your brand, the ability to establish brand awareness across channels, and your greater visibility to spread your messaging.
- Better tracking – Let’s face it, everything is trackable these days, however focusing on this aspect as an advantage allows you the ability to generate sales and leads at a lower cost, and have access to real-time data.
Promoting your company across digital channels requires a major look at the above advantages and how to implement them into your original marketing plan.
Selecting The Right Channels
There are many avenues of digital marketing, and discovering the right channels is vital for meeting your business goals. As you discuss your options with team members and collaborators, ensure your marketing mix includes the following 8 digital marketing practices:
Start A Blog For Your Business
Building a blog is more important than ever when it comes to startups and entrepreneurship. The main reason is that your blog provides you with a platform to explain your startup, drive the message, and get the prospective customers informed about what they can achieve by using your product. The fact remains that it will take a while before any blogger of worth or a media outlet writes about you and your company’s services.
However, you can start it off by telling your own story and tugging on your audience’s heartstrings. That is the sole function of your blog, which means that after a year from the date of publishing your blog post, that long-form content will still be relevant. Evergreen content is not like short news stories targeting traffic for a day or two, this is content that is going to be bringing visitors to your company’s blog day after day, month after month, as it markets itself, gets mentioned on a couple of social media channels, gets some backlinks from other blogs and companies, and does its own thing day after day, improving in search rankings and bringing your company some very needed daily traffic.
Social Media Marketing
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a host of other social media platforms aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Your job is to utilize these platforms in such a way as to build your audience, create a significant following, and develop separate business pages that attract more traffic to your website. No matter the amount of controversy that tends to surround social media, if your voice and messaging of your startup brand is consistent and packs a punch, you’ll see how market networking can increase your revenue with simply one click.
Giveaways And Contests
If your startup organizes giveaways and contents to make potential customers sign up and participate, this allows you to grow your mailing list when you are still trying to get traffic to your site. You can use email marketing later after the contest to market your services or products.
If utilized well, these can land you initial customers as the contests run, and some potential leads to follow up on after the contest or giveaway is fully completed.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. This digital marketing practice (that’s been around forever) involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. It is highly effective in that it is the most direct and effective way of connecting with your leads, nurturing them, and turning them into customers, consistently winning out over all other marketing channels.
Video
The use of video for digital startups has grown to become a proper marketing channel on its own. Thanks to the existence of the social media networks as well as YouTube, it takes a tap on the mobile phone and anyone can get a video of whatever it is they are looking for. On the social media networks, video can get lost after a couple of days when new updates show up, however while on channels such as YouTube, they can get found anytime if ranked for specific terms.
On social media, sharing the videos and letting them go viral helps a lot in marketing. Startups with the creativity to create viral videos will shine in the coming years by using the video marketing strategy to get more customers.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing allows companies to effectively market a product with a low budget, low effort and time, and at a well-contained risk level while guaranteeing a high return on your investment, increase in brand awareness, and business growth. Of course, some things sound too good to be true, but in this case the benefits are a consequence of marketing that is highly targeted and effective. Startups are able to identify a target market and select the perfect set of representatives that’ll suit the brand—this is exactly what affiliate marketing does.
Final Thoughts
It’s key to remember that your selection of digital marketing practices depends upon your target audience, your location and your business goals. Messaging is such an important element in marketing as a startup, you can even start with test campaigns to determine the engagement you get for each channel. See what resonates with your target audience, and perhaps adjust your approach or go to town with the results your omnichannel tactic is already attaining.
As more entrepreneurs brace their fear of failing and launch companies around the world targeting solving world challenges both big and small, the challenge of growth for these startups remains very glaring. Thanks to the internet, startups can now do marketing without necessarily spending huge amounts of money on traditional marketing methods..Today, whether small data or big data, it doesn’t matter. Startups have to care about both anyways, the very ones that will propel the brand to become revenue positive and continue to grow further.