Every successful company today was once a startup with big dreams for the future. When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004, it was a startup. He played masterstrokes with digital marketing for startups to establish the enterprise and make it what it is today.
The narrative with AirBnb, Uber, and even Google is no different. The owners of all these enterprises knew that targeting audiences through digital channels could change the game. Which it did! They sought the right path to market their startups that got users interested in the products or services offered.
Finding success for a startup can be an uphill battle, but choosing the right digital marketing strategies can get the ball rolling fast.
What is Digital Marketing for Startups?
Digital marketing for startups means marketing a new business venture online via several platforms. It entails a wide array of strategies that includes search engine optimization, paid advertising, content marketing, email marketing and more.
On a broader scale, the target audience for startups are internet users. However, businesses narrow down the target customer list before launching a marketing campaign. The slimming down depends on the interest of the person, user behavior on the website, location, gender etc.
4 Common Challenges of Digital Marketing for Startups
- Reaching the Right Audience: One of the biggest challenges for startups is reaching the right audience. It takes a lot of market research and understanding to know who the right audience is. As an entrepreneur, you will need to find an audience that might be interested in the product you are offering.
- Limited Budget for Marketing: Marketing efforts can go haywire if the budget is not set right. This is especially true for startups, as they have to dip their hands into their own pockets for their digital marketing budget. A safe way is to limit the number of digital marketing channels to a few in the initial stage. Or you can take a 360-degree digital marketing package from a reputed company to cut costs.
- Existing Competition in the Market: Beating the existing competition in the market can be a challenging affair. It is because your competitors have already made space for themselves in the industry. Hence, it can be an uphill road for you to make space for your brand.
- Know the Market Trends: Understand what works with the customers and which type of marketing tactics they resonate with is another challenge for startups. Hence, if you want to create a solid marketing campaign, take time to understand the current trends using Google Trends, Survey Monkey or SEMrush.
7 Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups to Get the Ball Rolling
Digital marketing for Startups can bolster website traffic volume, higher visibility, more sales and better profit for startup businesses.
Although cost effective, startups often blow the marketing budget out of proportion by dissipating their efforts into every marketing channel. While it is good to adopt a wholesome approach to marketing, you also have to keep budget constraints in mind.
This is why we have put intensive research into finding out the best digital marketing techniques for new businesses. You can choose the marketing strategies that align best with your brand or settle for all the seven strategies of digital marketing that we are discussing. It should depend on your marketing goal and budget.
Here are seven best digital marketing strategies for startup businesses;
- Invest in SEO
SEO is one of the primary digital marketing strategies startups should consider when they set out to put their name on the map.
Search engine optimization means helping search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing discover you. SEO is perhaps the best digital marketing strategy for startups because it yields good results at a relative cost effective price-point.
However, to get more organic traffic through search engine optimization, you have to appease their algorithm first.
Let’s take a peek at how startups can optimize their website SEO to get higher rank on the search engine results pages;
- Set Some Time Aside for Keyword Research
Do some intensive keyword research to find out the most relevant keywords in your industry. Suppose you are starting a startup of scented candles, looking for keywords that are frequent in the search queries of your targeted audience is imperative.
While the keyword ‘scented candle’ is an obvious choice for targeting in your SEO, these are seed keywords and would have high competition.
Hence, try taking the help of a few keyword research tools like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, Serpstat, etc. to understand which keywords are easier to target and align with your target audience.
- Craft High Quality Website Content
Creating high quality content is a non-negotiable aspect if you want to rank high on the search engines results. Whether you are writing a blog post or landing page for your website, set the tonality right. It helps your target audience vibe with the content for best user engagement.
High quality content reduces bounce rate and increases dwell time. These are positive user behavior that sends positive signals to the search engines, which can boost your ranking.
You, as an entrepreneur, might have a good sense of business. However, it is not necessary that you will be equally great at writing website content. Hence, if you are not sure about how to write for your website, hire a content marketing company. Many of the good content marketing agencies charge less and offer a bang for your buck.
- Weed Out Technical Glitches
Technical glitches keep visitors waiting to get to the website. It disrupts the user experience. Issues like slow page loading, issues with core web vitals, and security issues can prove detrimental to your brand.
Stellar content, superb website design and solid off page SEO would come to a standstill, if you do not work on the technical optimization of your website. Generally these are matters you can fix by putting in a few hours of effort. Resolve technical issues as soon as you detect them to prevent things from snowballing.
- Off Page SEO is Necessary to Bolster Website Authority
Off page SEO are methods that aim to boost the organic traffic of your website with activities outside of the website. It entails social media optimization, getting local citation, outreach for positive customer reviews, and more.
One of the key aspects of off page SEO is acquiring credible backlinks to pump up the website authority. Scour for relevant websites with high domain authority. Send them a proposal for guest posting to add the backlink to your portfolio.
- Pay Attention to Local SEO
If your startup has a geographical address, getting physical traffic to visit your store is essential for business success. In this case, you need to boost your local SEO along with regular SEO optimization.
You can start with simple steps like claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile with basic NAP details and images. Google Business Profile is an important step as it can literally put you on the map. If you do it right, you can even rank in the local 3 pack
- Paid Ads Rule the Roost
Startups are small businesses that should harness the power of paid advertising. In fact, according to statistics, 65% of small businesses use Paid ads to reach their target audience! We can safely say that startup businesses that use Paid ads are steps ahead of their peers who don’t.
Paid ads are digital marketing models that drive inorganic traffic to websites through targeted reaching. In this digital marketing strategy, businesses pay to the publisher platform only when their ads are clicked.
Paid advertising can be a high yielding avenue, especially for startups. This is because, with a new domain, it can be difficult to rank well in the search results.
While paid ads are a wise choice, your digital marketing plan has to be wholesome and to a T. Let’s take a look at how you can use PPC ads for your startup business;
- Target High Yielding Keywords
Getting hold of keywords that people are actively searching in your industry is immensely important for launching a successful PPC campaign. In this case, using a tool for PPC keyword research is a must to find commercial or transactional keywords that people are searching for on the internet.
- Choose the Right Type of Ad
The right kind of advertising can help you aim for the stars. Well, there are about 9 types of Google ads. However, not every type is suitable for a startup. As a new enterprise, it is better to choose ads that target specific audiences. You also have to keep the cost per click in mind while choosing ads for startups. A solid display
While Google does occupy 91.05% of search engine share, yet, leaving out Bing Ads and yahoo Ads can be a mistake. Bing occupies about 3.32% market share of search engines, while yahoo has 1.08%.
It offers 8 types of pad ads that starters can choose from. Do you know that the best part about PPC on Bing is? It is relatively more cost effective than Google ads.
- Do a Split Testing of your Ad Copy
Suppose you are launching an ad campaign for the startup that sells fast food. In this case, your target audience is everyone, which includes the office-goers, homemakers ,and teenagers. However, is it right to target everyone with the same ad copy?
No. You need to craft compelling ad copies that speak to the individual pain points of your target audience. Hence, the ad copy for each target section would be different.
Also, don’t settle with designing only one ad for a section of the audience. Do an A/B testing of multiple ad copies to see which works best.
- Use Negative Keywords
Paid ads work on the principle that you will have to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. Such a mechanism can actually attract a mountain of clicks that are unlikely to convert.
Negative keywords can help you in this regard. Negative keywords are used to prevent adverts from being displayed for a particular search term.
Let us delineate.
Suppose you are a dentist looking to register more patient appointments through PPC. In such a scenario, targeting a keyword like ”dental checkup” is the obvious course of action. However, this ad can also come across to people searching for a ‘free dental checkup’. Clicks from people searching for products or services can result in bad spending.
In such cases, you add ”free” as a negative keyword. It will deter the search engine from showing any of your ads to people searching for something free.
- Budget Your Paid campaign to Refrain Overspending
While PPC is a superb digital marketing strategy for startups, going overboard with it is easy. Hence, it is necessary to set a budget capping for your paid ad campaign for startup.
Setting a budget capping stops your ad from showing when you have reached the weekly limit or the monthly max. Suppose you have set a marketing budget of $250 dollars a month. In such cases, when the CPC reaches $250, your ads will not be shown to people once it reaches the monthly max.
Capping the budget helps keep things cost effective for enterprises that are just starting out. It gives the option to do paid ad campaigns without breaking the bank.
- Rely on Email Marketing for Outreach
Email marketing means sending out emails to people for the purpose of transaction, information or promotion.
Email marketing is a cost effective digital marketing strategy for startups. However, you might have to spend some time crafting an email list of the potential customers ideal for marketing your startup. Using email marketing tools like EmailMarketingFX, MailChimp etch can reduce the hassle to a considerable extent.
You can even take the help of an email marketing company who will take care of the campaign from end to end.
- Create Separate Email Lists
Not everyone can be approached in the same way to market your products or services. This is the very reason why you should do thorough market research. It helps you draw key distinctions between different customer demographics.
You can create separate email lists based on interest, customer age, stage of sales funnel, and more.
Making a separate email list helps you to craft hyper-personalized email letters that resonate with them. Which translates to a skyrocketed lead conversion rate.
- Craft Personalized Newsletters
Email marketing is a pocket-friendly digital marketing solution for startups, but it is also risky waters to tread.
Did you know that 69% of emails are tagged as spam solely because of their headlines? Remember, if your email headline comes across as salesy, people are likely to keep it pretty unopened.
The trick is to not come across as ‘imposing’ while addressing their concerns at the same time. Using words like ”might, perhaps or can” instead of ”should, must and now” can help you cut it.
Today’s customers are wise. They can choose for themselves. You do the marketing and leave the purchasing decision on them to make the most out of the digital marketing campaign.
- Regulate Email Send Time
Email marketing is one of the best weapons in the arsenal of digital marketing strategies for startup businesses. You might think that sending an email at any point during the day would fetch the same response. But that is not the case.
Sending emails when people are likely to check their inboxes can yield the best results for your marketing efforts.
If you have a startup that sells toilet paper, it is best to regulate the email send time in the morning when people actually need it. Similarly, a startup for a new brand of beer might like to hit the email box after office hours when people party.
The most important thing is to avoid a time (between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m.) when people are asleep. Your email is likely to be buried under a heap of mail and is unlikely to make the desired impression.
- Use Social Media to Connect with Potential Customers
According to statistics, 62.3% of people are present on at least one social media site. It is a super source to fan out your marketing reach. Social media marketing strategies are cost-effective and can garner high-quality leads for your business.
Social media marketing for startups is an online technique for brand promotion on one or more social media platforms.
For startups that want to keep their marketing budget under check and yet want to hit a gold mine worth of leads, leveraging social media channels is the key to their success.
- Start With the Basics
If you want a zero-cost digital marketing strategy for startups, this is it. You can start social media optimization with as little as a few photos, along with the basic business details.
Albeit, there is social media marketing with paid ads, but we shall discuss that later. For now, let us delve into how you can optimize the basic brand promotion strategy.
First, create a separate business page on all major social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. While LinkedIn is a professional forum, you can leverage it to reach out to corporations (i.e., if your product targets this section).
Update the basic business details. It includes the business’ name, contact details, and service area. Don’t keep uploading images for a later date. Upload images of your business, office, products, and events while optimizing.
In fact, try including images in posts. Data suggests that content with visuals has 150% more user engagement than content without images.
Please do not use your personal account for brand promotion. You are unlikely to find the exposure you are looking for, and frankly, it looks unprofessional!
- Be Smart About Your Campaign: Use Paid Ads If You Have To
Social media optimization is a good strategy to start, but you might need something more to etch a mark on the industry. This is where social media marketing with paid ads can come to your rescue.
You can use social media ads like Meta ads and YouTube ads with smart targeting to reach out to leads with high potential for conversion. Social media advertising can offer an extensive reach, ranging from local to global audience base.
Much like search engine advertisements, Social media ads lets you target an audience as per your business requirement. The best part is the ad format flexibility with social media marketing you can create a range of ads and run them. These ads can be as creative as you want, which helps you secure a winning place in the target market.
Unlike SMO, social media marketing will take some considerations. You need proper planning before execution. If you have enough experience with SMM, launching a great campaign should not be an uphill road. However, if not, consider getting help from a professional social media marketing company. Expert help from professionals can help you make the most out of your marketing efforts.
- Use Hashtags to Broaden Your Reach
Using hashtags in your social media posts can really get you the results you want. All you have to do is use the # symbol before the target keyword on the caption of your post. Hashtags help interested people in your business find you.
Hashtags help categorize social media posts. For instance, you caption your social media post with the hashtag ‘Best Startup of the Year’.
Now whenever someone searches with keywords ‘best startup of the year’ you post will show up in the social media search results. Using hashtags is a solid digital marketing strategy that you can apply for free.
- Remarketing & Retargeting Can Chart Up the Profit Figures
Both terms ‘remarketing’ and ‘retargeting’ are used synonymously. However, they are not the same.
Retargeting means leading prospective customers down the sales funnel. Popular techniques to retarget customers are search and social media advertising. Remarketing, on the other hand, means marketing your services to past customers. Email marketing can be a superb strategy for this.
While the two are different, you need both as parts of a sustainable digital marketing plan for a startup.
Let’s do a molecular breakdown of how you can remarket and retarget your products and services the smart way;
- Retarget Funnel Drop-offs
Retargeting people who dropped off at any point in the sales funnel is necessary. These are interested customers who went on another track because of a reason. It could be because they got the same product for a lesser price or simply lost interest.
No matter what the case is, retarget them through paid or social media adverts. Create a sense or urgency if necessary, offer them personalized discounts.
- Bid Less on People Visiting Your Home Page
If you are using a paid channel to remarket or retarget, then you ought to know where you should place your money. Bidding to target visitors who went to your home page, or about us page might not be the best bet. These are probably people trying to find out about your business, or worse, studying your SEO strategies.
People who visited the services pages, on the other hand, are leads that you can convert easily. These are people who might have been genuinely interested in your offerings. Hence, using channels to retarget them is a wise choice.
- Stress on Content Marketing Efforts
Remarketing or retargeting for startups would only work if you market your brand well enough. You have to stress on the USP. It should tell the audience how your product can alleviate the concerns of those who purchase it.
Do you know what works in conveying this message?
The Content!
Yes, stress on content marketing. Whether it is an ad copy, newsletter, or plain SMS, the content should speak to the audience.
Divide your target audience into small sections and craft personalized content for them. This is not the avenue where you can run a one-size-fits-all campaign. Hence, content marketing is extremely vital for lead conversion and better online visibility.
- Exclude People By IP Address
You have to understand that approaching someone time and again might be futile. It will not change their mind about wanting your products.
Digital marketing strategies like remarketing and retargeting generally cost a good sum of money. Hence, it is necessary that you market it to people only a couple of times. This should be enough for people to make up their minds. If they aren’t clicking or converting, chances are they won’t.
In this case, you should drop the idea of reattempting paid ad marketing. Track the IP addresses that have already seen your ads a couple of times. Once you have a list, refrain from remarketing your brand. It saves a considerable portion of marketing costs and also makes a pathway for you to dedicate funds for better quality leads who are likely to convert.
- Consider Time Factor Before Remarket Efforts
Remarketing means targeting existing customers to make another purchase from your brand. Just because a customer bought curtains from your website does not mean that they will not buy cushion covers from the same brand.
The thing is, when a customer makes a purchase of an item, try remarketing your brand for related items to the same customer. If necessary, lure them in with a discount offer.
For related items, such as cushions and covers, frames and posters, you don’t really need to wait it out. People often purchase such items together. Hence, remarketing your startup right after one purchase can register more sales in the record book.
If you are remarketing the same product, wait a while before you do it. It is because the need for the same item is more likely to arise after a time interval.
- Leverage Video Marketing to Grab Attention
Video marketing can work wonders for startups as they have an exponentially higher user engagement quotient. In fact, 79% of consumers prefer learning about a new product through video.
Video marketing is a digital marketing technique to promote a brand through several types of videos. These videos can be of any length, depending on the marketing intention and the platform.
This marketing tactic is not limited to videos on the business website. You can do video marketing on several platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, or through Video Ads.
Let’s take a look at some of the video types that startups can use to gain better online visibility, more sales and higher traffic to their website;
- Brand Promotion Video to Establish Market Presence
A brand promotion video tells clients about your brand. It is a good way to get your brand under the limelight.
In a brand promotion video, you can speak about the unique selling points of your brand and how it is different or better than the competitors. You can even stress the price points in these videos.
The main aim of such videos are promotion and not sale. So, keep in mind to focus more on the quality of the products or services you are offering.
- Use Product Videos to Educate Customers
Product videos have the intention to get more sales. Startups can create individual videos about their best-selling products. They can lay stress on the ingredients and timeframe to get results and talk about the benefits.
You should stress how the products can help the viewers in their lives and that they should invest in them.
- Client Testimonial Videos Establish Trust
Leading the campaign with testimonial videos of clients is a terrific way to earn trust in the industry. See, it is not tough. All you have to do is reach out to a couple of previous clients and place a request to record a video. The video should be an honest account of how your products or services worked for the customer.
If you post such videos on YouTube, your business website, or anywhere else, it is bound to attract the attention of more customers. Customer testimonial videos register as an honest account of the quality of your Startup brand. Hence, more people tend to trust such videos. If you can market it right, your website traffic and sales are bound to skyrocket.
- Influencer Videos can be the Real Game Changer!
Influencer videos are one of the best methods for digital marketing for startups! 27% of adults follow some or the other influencer. If you add up the figures, this is quite a large section.
See, traditional marketing with real celebs can cost thousands of dollars. This is a large sum, and frankly it can be out of means for many startup businesses. Hence, if you want to add a dash of glamour to your digital marketing efforts, influencer marketing is the right answer.
However, there are a few prerequisites for that. First is, the influencer you choose should align with your brand image. Then they should have a considerable follower volume, which can pique the volume of potential customers. Lastly, the marketing strategy should be within your budget.
Record a few videos of influencer brand promotions and keep them in stock. You can market these videos on several channels as and when you like.
- Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing for startups means promoting the brand through mobile phones. 96% of people who access the internet do so via mobile phones. It makes the smartphone a superb medium to market brands as people can access information while prospective customers are on the go.
- SMS Marketing
The open rate of promotional SMS is between 90% and 99%. With such a high percentage of open rate, SMS marketing is one of the most sought after mediums for digital marketing for startups.
It is permission-based marketing that uses texts for brand promotion. Brands can send deals, coupons, codes and other offers via SMS to customers. Startups can also attach the link to their website to get higher website traffic. However, the content body has to be less than 160 characters.
As mobile marketing is one of the most cost effective solutions with a high deliverability rate, it should be one of the go-to approaches for startup business marketing.
- Proximity Marketing
Often, when you pass by a restaurant (or any other shop), you receive a flash message that promotes the business. A typical Ad copy for a restaurant can say something like ” Hungry? Get a discount of 10% at our Brunch Buffet between 2 PM and 3.30 PM (or something similar).
Now, this is a hard-to-miss message as it is right in front of you, written in big, bold letters. Often, the template is engaging enough to get you to actually visit the business if you have some time in hand.
This is exactly what proximity marketing is. In this type of digital marketing technique, startups with a physical store use Bluetooth to find out which people are near their business. Once a device gets on their radar, they market the brand to people who are physically close to the store.
- In-App Marketing
You can also do mobile marketing by joining hands with the maker of some ads. For this, you will first have to find out the type of apps your target market of customers would use.
Let us invoke the example of a Restaurant startup yet again. In such cases, restaurant owners might want to run in-app ads for users who play cooking games or use food delivery apps.
You can do in-app marketing for startups through display ads, video ads, native ads or interstitial ads.
Wrapping Up
Launching a startup business takes a lot of hard work. What takes more hard work is establishing it as a superior brand amidst the competitors. If you have already started a startup and find it difficult to market your business, we hope this blog will help you through the path.
One important thing to keep in mind for startups is never to bite off more than you can chew. This means that as a new business, you have limited funds. Digital marketing for startups can give you great results. However, resorting to an array of marketing channels can be financially damaging at the same time.
Choose marketing channels carefully. And if you need any help on the way, you can always bank on a digital marketing services company to help your business grow.
