Nothing is more exciting in life than starting your own Business/Company. The dream of launching something unique, grabbing the attention of the market and becoming an established company is thrilling. But with one’s great idea comes a challenging responsibility.
Before committing to any dream business projects, you have to be fully prepared for all the unaccounted responsibilities that instantly come with it. The technology industry is a very complex and hugely competitive place. There are thousands of experienced players out there who can beat your business with their expertise. Apart from those players, there are also many small players who are trying to enter the game on a day-to-day basis. I’m talking about startups, those up-and-coming businesses that are likely just as unique and competitive as your new business.
The main fundamental rule to succeed in any business is to have enough in-depth knowledge about it in order to hit the ground running. The right information can make your road toward success comparatively easy. So how do you start out right and beat your competitors? Well, for starters, it is important to have a plan, complete strategy with goals and a clearly defined vision.
In this era, the internet provides you with a variety of platforms that will help your business in gaining popularity, engage with customers and build relationships easily.
So do you have an idea and are ready to launch your startup? Did you know that nearly 90% of Indian Startups fail in the first few years and shut down within 5 years? If you think that they shut down because of the lack of new concepts or lack of funds, then you are completely wrong.
This is where digital marketing comes into play. No one starts a business today without having a proper digital marketing strategy in place. This is because digital marketing today is at the centre of any marketing strategy for any kind of business, whatever its size or industries. If you are in the initial stages of starting a business, you probably have a tight budget and a small group of employees. Therefore, you need a proper plan if you want your startup to grow as fast as it should be.
You want your startup to grow as it’s what it’s meant to do: Grow. This is why we want to show you digital marketing tips that you can apply right away. Digital marketing requires funds of the highest order to provide any successful returns. And searching for funds for your startups is a difficult task. So what can you do? Well, there are various means and ways of making digital marketing both effective and affordable.
One of the most important ways to market your startup is by using social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. these are simple to handle, provide effective promotion, easy to operate, and great customer service opportunities for startups. You can also implement an inbound marketing strategy or why not integrate a growth hacking process? Nevertheless, keep particular things in mind when handling the promotion of your startup through digital marketing:
The world of digital marketing is very complex, and you might get confused with the different channels that belong to this platform. Thus, you have to know the kind of your products and your actual customers and define an accurate marketing strategy for your startup. In this case, begin with the means that are suitable for you. If you’re confused about how to pick the right channel for your business, you need each option to hire a qualified digital marketing agency that will do every research necessary for your online business marketing and create a strategy that’s suitable for your business.
Online presence has become more important and complicated than ever before. For you to promote your business, a good website is needed to make your company visible on the internet, but not only as an informative one but a multidimensional one. Aside from that, you will need to make a dynamic Facebook account, a blog’s page, a Twitter account, LinkedIn Company Page and so on. Several companies might try for web applications, Android apps, and iOS apps.
Create a well-designed User experience and user interface site (UI/UX) with fascinating attractive designs and relevant images so it shows up quickly within the searches. This is just the initial start of a great digital marketing campaign. Likewise, concentrate on the main structure and content of the website along with the SEO (search engine optimization) and webpage keyword because they’re crucial for website visibility in Google Search Results. SEO is also cost effective and provides long-term benefits. It also increases the visibility and number of natural visitors to your website.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a must for a Website. An SEO professional can optimize your site to boost your business, make your website mobile-friendly to attract more customers and even ensure all webpages of your website are working fine. Never forget to decorate these with proper titles, descriptions, headlines, keywords, etc.
It’s often mentioned as a blessing for all digital marketers as it allows you to target actual people with exclusive ads based on the contact details, behaviour, geo, interest, etc. You may convey content to your actual customers, which applies to their queries with the use of identity-based PPC marketing.
Mobile usage traffic has surpassed desktop apps in a majority of developed/developing countries. Hence, mobile device optimization must be given due importance to benefits from your digital marketing pursuits. Make sure that the user may navigate easily through the apps effortlessly with the use of a mobile.
In order to get more customers, you need to expand the voice of your brand, the message you deliver about your product/services should reach out to your actual customers and how you can deliver it. Do it through consistently and frequently sending out useful and informative posts. Research suggests that it is effective to send or post 5 to 10 pieces of content every week on Facebook, once a day for LinkedIn and 5 tweets daily on Twitter about your brand.
The voice of your brand needs to be present on every platform like on your emails, brochures, but also contains social media channels and even offline marketing.
If you think that the highly promotional strategy of your startup will keep your audience captive or active, you couldn’t be more wrong. The clients won’t waste their time to know how good you and your brand is, they like something of value. Therefore, give information that’s mixed with promoted content to make your offering attractive and engaging.
Digital marketing isn’t a highway hoarding board that individuals see, read, and move on. The digital marketing platform provides them with the option of satisfying their doubts and queries easily. Therefore, give them the opportunity to interact with you personally. Fuel their pride by making them valuable members of your brand. This won’t only add to your credibility or advantage, but also show your customer service capabilities in the open market. Use affordable services to improve interaction with your consumers.
Take advantage of all the major social media channels to boost your business and it will help in spreading out your brand awareness. You can test the best social media marketing tips, strategy and apply them to your business. The more widespread brand content is, the more customers you’ll be able to attract and engage with. There are some social platforms that can be valuable immensely to marketing your startup like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope, Plaxo, WhatsApp, XING, Tableau, Buffer, Digg, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, SlideShare, Vimeo, etc. You should have a social media strategy for your startup to build upon its presence.
To create and deliver cutting-edge content, it’s important to create a content marketing and strategy plan. You may have the best of the digital media platforms, yet if you haven’t thought out what, how, when and where you’re going to say about your startup, your efforts will just turn to ashes. In digital marketing, content is called as the king, since this conveys the message of your brand to the people. There are many content marketing tactics to make your messages delivered very interestingly to make people stop and take notice about it. If making the right content message is a concern for you, then you may take the help of topnotch content websites or freelance content writers that are very affordable.
Social media is not only about the number of followers but about their engagement in your post (Likes/Comments/Share). I often hear startups saying they have 30,000 Facebook fans or 25,000 Instagram followers or 20,000 LinkedIn contacts, 15,000 Twitter followers, and so on. Then, I asked them how many of your followers actually bought their products and they answered me 0. Is that good? I don’t think so.
Social media marketing is an amazing channel to spread the voice of your brand globally, yet once you choose to go for fake likes/followers, this remains unheard. If most of the followers are not real, it only means that even publishing the finest content of your posts will not be noticed by anyone. The majority of social media channels serve as an ad post to a group of individuals who follow your page, yet once they turn out to be fake user ID and there’s no engagement involved (Likes/Comments/Share), such platforms won’t spread the post to the next batch.
This can feel like one of those obvious digital marketing advice for any startups adventure, but it is surprisingly very often forgotten, even by large companies with a large digital marketing investment.
Marketing must not look put on. Your posts don’t always have to be a business influence, audience engagement is a more important job. Run unique and creative contests with several giveaways contests, tag relevant individuals in the curated posts, do Q&A Sessions for better user interaction, convey information using attractive infographics, ask the audience interesting questions with the use of creative graphic design posts, and so on.
A note to remember is that User Generated Content is a great way to showcase the connection of the brand with the audience. Once your users or customers contribute to the page’s content, then it’s a success as they are likely to engage with their friends as well regarding your brand.
At the start, it’s obvious for the startup companies to get over-excited and reach out to everyone. Nevertheless, as exciting as it might sound, it’s very important to stay focused on the actual target audience segment that’s likely to give you businesses/sales.
If you do not narrow down the market according to your niche target, your delivery of a message reaches a bigger irrelevant audience that’s unlikely to grab their attention and it won’t meet your intended goals. For instance, if you’re a brand selling the stationery items and your target audience is set to everyone, this way you could get several sales, but not as many as you expected plus more marketing expenses.
It is wise to segment your target audience according to gender, age, region, and so on to maximize the returns of the digital marketing campaign’s strategy. Rather than attracting all random clients, you must reach out to those who will help you meet short-term goals like your immediate reachable customers.
There is no denying the fact that content is still considered the king in the marketing world, yet people undermine the content time and again. While developing your webpage’s content, keep some important things in mind, including a combination of your target market, relevant in the industry, and existing customers.
Make a content marketing strategy and follow this consistently to engage with your audience. Don’t always talk about the features and benefits of the product instead talk about the benefits of the user in that piece of content. Once the content isn’t clear and the messages are not formulated well, you’ll undoubtedly struggle to communicate with your targeted audience. Somebody said that the content is the reason the search started.
Social media is considered the best method for you to build a positive image for your company/brand. You must not just post articles frequently, but instead, there ought to be uniform individuality to your post. In addition to that, never over post and deviate from the meaning of your brand. Experts suggest that the optimal number of posts to Facebook should be between 5-10 times a week. Try being more engaging and share a relevant and useful post.
Never use social media accounts for promotional purposes only, give more information to your readers may like to see and mix in your promotional content. Moreover, take an unafraid social confrontation approach. Consider any complaints or interactions as a chance to display the customer service capabilities of the brand.
Overlooking marketing or content writing is a big blunder. It’s solely for conveying the message of your brand to your customers. If the content isn’t clear, accurate, and well-crafted, you’ll struggle dramatically to succeed. Search for cheap and imaginative content. For instance, interactive content is one of the best digital marketing trends your business should maximize on. Innovative content does not have to be expensive. You may find inexpensive quality materials on websites like Elance, UpWork, or Fiverr.
There are numerous social opportunities that you can invest in that have the benefit regarding unique selling ideas as well as the industry. Experiment with some options and see what warrants the best return on investment for your startup.
Make your website navigation structure easy to navigate for users
What do you want your customers to do when landing on your website? Your overall content strategy should be made with this indirect question in your mind. Find some free plugins to capture emails and leverage services, including constant contact for campaigns. You may also use free tools like Google Analytics to monitor the paths of the visitor to the website and when they’re on it, search for the opportunities to make a user-friendly experience. Optimize the forms on your website to build a stronger inbound lead funnel.
Rather than going for a digital marketing executive, experts suggest that you go with the senior resource who has 4-6 years of experience when handling digital marketing for brands or startups. Another possibility is to outsource your startup digital marketing agency or get a freelancer to work on your projects to get a better idea of how things work in real digital marketing platforms.
You’ll be coming up with new marketing strategies on time, and your insights will help you in charting long-term plans. While hiring marketing personals, make sure that they are good at all the primary digital channels including social media marketing, SEM, SEO, digital PR, and email marketing. Being knowledgeable about google analytics is also a must.
However, others have noticed that people who come from digital marketing agencies do not live up to the expectation because the agencies have several teams handling all the digital channels. You may hire people from some brands or startups that are in the same niche as somewhat related or like yours.
Having a strong branding presence is key and is often overlooked by startups. If there is one digital marketing tip for any startups is, you don’t want to overlook, it’s branding!
If you’ve launched your marketing activities, start working on your communication first. Coming up with the brand will surely help you identify and define your brand accurately. It’s key to have an interesting brand for your business. This will develop an attachment with your clients and help you set apart from your competitors.
Branding is day-to-day work, not a onetime implementation. It needs to be implemented on every platform in order to reach out to your business. It has to be done by the company internally or can also get it done with a branding services agency.
Content marketing is considered the most reliable way to impact the user’s mind. Having a content writing team on your side will ensure that you will have content that people will like to share and have an interactive engagement. Other than that, good content will ensure individuals get to know you and adopt your service or product. It’s a big opportunity for you to take advantage of this and can convert people who visit your website for just information into a buyer.
From infographics to videos to downloadable content and blog posts, there are several ways you may share and create content. Nevertheless, you must stay away from the fluffy content if this gets the page views, yet no sales or leads. There is no point to having a blog that shares listicles on lifestyle and food while you’re dealing with a real stay.
Therefore, analyzing the impact of the content strategy on your KPIs including leads, sales, and brand awareness regularly. You must always see the content as a way of increasing more sales and not just the channel to get more page views or likes.
Having compelling, engaging, and better user experience landing pages is one of the topmost digital marketing tips for any startups. study shows most startups know that but they still don’t give more importance or spend the necessary time on their landing pages creations.
Since you’ll be starting with your paid marketing campaigns, you should have a landing page, which converts. Being the interaction’s first point with the customers with your brand, it becomes a mandate that you should concentrate on delivering a good experience to them. Rather than going with templates and letting it run on the auto-pilot mode, you must have split testing on every aspect that is important to conversion. This must be an ongoing process and must not be a 1-time affair.
Even if you are a small startup, you need to dedicate some kind of budget for tools. Tools will allow you to automate repetitive tasks, gain so much time and you will be able to focus on what matters most and makes your task easier and manageable. Choosing the right tools (research, Marketing tools, growth hacking tools, analytics, etc.), testing them, and paying for them when necessary is one of the digital marketing checklists for startups you should have.
Now that you already have the funds allocated, you must consider looking at working with the advanced tools that do a better job than the free tools that you have been using at present. There are countless good tools you can use out there that will help you generate leads, SEO strategies, google analytics, and project management. Give free trials a spin and see the ones that fit your needs.
In your eagerness to consider promoting yourself aggressively, it’d be wise if you do not spread yourself very thin. You do not have to do everything to establish your major sales funnel. Often, you’ll see a very few handfuls of the marketing activities providing you with a maximum return or ROI.
When you begin your marketing strategies, you’ll start seeing the importance of the different platforms. Invest in the ones that are more impactful than others. Whether it’s search engine marketing, search engine optimization or product marketing, this can be anything you want. Just remember that running after each marketing channel will not help you, and you have to stay on point. This is the main reason where you should follow the principle of Pareto (or 80/20) to be productive.
Since you’ll only grow your brand presence more in the coming days, you must first invest in branding yourself as the best place to work at. Hiring can be a painful task, and there are many talented people out there. It makes employer branding all more important for you. Having the best team page and company blog always helps you, yet nothing would beat tapping into the contract of your current team through social media platforms and review sites.
Whenever people see their friends having a good time at the workplace, they aspire to a workplace like yours. It’s a positive perception of the brand that comes into force if you ask your team members to share current job openings in the brand within the network.
What it means is first you have to determine what your goals are as a business, know the limitations, how much time you really may dedicate to this marketing strategy, and what makes you different or better than most of the successful and bigger competitors. Once you have figured it out, this will enable anyone to be involved on the same page and resolve any issues that could come up within the business.
Many startups believe they should grow quickly without thinking about long-term plans. This is a mistake, while it’s true that you need to grow fast, thinking long-term will allow you to avoid errors. “Don’t think long term, you’re a startup” is one of the worst marketing advice for startups I’ve ever heard.
In terms of setting goals for the digital marketing plan of the startup, it is essential to consider the long-term objectives and goals because it provides everybody involved a potential target to reach. Nevertheless, what may happen when there aren’t any short-term achievable goals or low hanging fruits is that the optimistic long-term goals may get lost with the passing of time and change depending on the services or products and the people within the business.
One of the worst things that will happen with the marketing plan of the startup is there to be no ownership of the tasks that should be monitored and executed. Whether working with the marketing team internally or hiring an agency to handle digital marketing tasks, there must be some agreed-upon expectations and responsibilities in terms of marketing campaigns. Otherwise, things will be done in a way that makes it difficult to improve, track, and measure as days go by.
As your digital marketing campaign brings in interactions and engagement with the startups, you may learn a lot through watching how things progress and what users like versus what they do not. When the startup gets a sense of what is going well, it enables them to adjust as required and implement CRO or conversion rate optimizations for you to maximize the campaign’s performance.
Digital marketing needs time and effort for it to work successfully. If you are dedicated and committed to your startup, you can achieve your goals in no time and get the results you have always wanted, regardless of how tough the competition is.
As you could see, there are many digital marketing tactics available: social media, emails, influencers, advertising, branding, etc. Don’t hesitate to run tests, tweak your campaigns, hire a mentor or an agency.
Most startups fail, and one of the major reasons is the failure to execute marketing. Owning a startup over a shoestring budget is tough. If you can retain the costs of marketing down while making most of the best digital opportunities, you can quickly strengthen the visibility of the brands without restricting a huge budget. You can’t be cheap and always try to save some bucks here and there. If you find a digital marketing tool, a growth hacking tool, software, or anything else that can save you time, don’t hesitate. Time is not renewable and is your most important value! In all those 31 Digital Marketing tips for startups to be successful in 2021, the one thing you need to remember is that time is your best ally and without it, you won’t succeed!
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