Launching a startup is quite exciting, but through the process of bringing a venture to life, entrepreneurs must also focus on its digital marketing strategy. This will help create a brand identity and let potential customers know that the business exists. That being said, digital marketing isn’t just one thing, but it is an umbrella of elements that business owners need to understand better when they want to grow their startup.
Benefits of digital marketing
A global reach
Digital marketing allows businesses to establish a presence across different locations and time zones. Unlike traditional marketing, it enables businesses to reach potential clients in the state, country, and world.
Cost-effectiveness
A typical print ad may cost about $2,000. But a modern digital marketing strategy like email marketing could cost much less and sometimes it can even be free.
Measurable results
In digital marketing, one can track nearly every touchpoint users have with the brand, including social media, email opens, organic page views, and ad clicks.
Precise marketing
Digital marketing allows a brand to pinpoint the ideal audience for messages through the online audience and targeting information. One can also collect data for their digital campaigns to see the type of content required to target various customer segments.
Improved engagement
Brands can have real-time conversations with customers over emails, SMS, social media, or blog comments. This will also help get valuable feedback, allowing businesses to improve and adapt as they grow.
Diverse marketing tools
Brands can pick from various marketing mediums to promote their business. For instance, a startup could market through paid ads on social media, create video content, send emails, and engage customers in forums.
Tips to ace digital marketing
Digital marketing requires following some necessary tips to build and grow the startup.
Set up a website
The website could be the center for all digital marketing campaigns. Moreover, a potential customer may look for the brand’s website for further information on its offerings. Through branding and marketing, one should get people to visit the website, sign up for the email list, and eventually buy products and services.
Claim and optimize business pages on all major networks
One needs to create a business page on all major social networks, as social media plays a pivotal role in a digital marketing campaign. All platforms allow one to create a username that is used as the page slug. If one does not claim the username in time, it might be picked up and registered by someone else, which could create problems in the future.
Create quality content
For a successful digital marketing strategy, one should create high-quality content to bring value to potential customers and make them trust the brand. For instance, a brand can choose to post blogs on the website, release podcasts, or market solely through emails. Other things they could do include running quizzes, hosting webinars, and creating guides to keep users engaged online.
Conduct keyword research
Customers who look for something online usually use specific keywords to further their search. This is why things like search engine optimization (SEO) become essential in a brand’s digital marketing strategy. The more relevant the keywords, the better will be the brand’s chances of engaging the right audience.
Optimize knowledge base
An essential part of running a business is to get customer data. This will help influence decision making when one has to decide how to market a product or service. Analytical data usually involves a couple of elements, like the audience, where they live, their age, and their shopping preferences. Other data that might be beneficial include how users behave on the website and how they interact with content.
Conduct a website audit
The quality of a website has a direct effect on the success of the digital marketing strategy. Search engines use web crawlers to read and index pages on a brand’s website and an algorithm with ranking factors that determine how relevant a website is to a user. To improve the website’s ranking, one must conduct a website audit. Various tools will help one crawl the website and get an overall score. The software may offer insights, including statistics indicating where the brand could improve, suggest fixing broken links, and reflect the site speed and its mobile-friendliness.
Consider a free tool to drive traffic to the site
A paid search marketing tool is one of the most effective methods to help startups with digital marketing. But there are also free versions for those on a budget. Such tools can help with marketing campaigns, improve keyword search, analyze website visitors, and show how a website would look on a search engine’s result page.
Implement email marketing
Using emails for marketing is often an underrated strategy. In a mailing list, one has names and emails of people who might be interested in what the brand has to offer. These are typically referred to as warm leads. Through emails, one can get in touch with potential customers and even tailor messages to add a more personalized experience with the brand based on their past purchases.
Cost of digital marketing
The digital marketing cost will differ from one brand to the next. Some factors that might influence the price include the scope of the brand’s marketing, business objectives, assets and materials that exist for the company, the internal skills possessed by the company, and the budget for marketing. Most startups typically spend about 10% of planned annual revenue or roughly $5,000 to $10,000 monthly on digital marketing.