Sitikanta M. is the Founder of Creative Dgital. He helps businesses with 360 Digital Marketing Services.
New and innovative brands are launching every day, but the path of success isn’t easy for them because of the rapidly growing competition. Not every new startup can plan for full-fledged marketing (above the line and below the line) as it often requires a significant investment. Startups often have limited budgets, which means they have to 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. Digital marketing allows startups to reach audiences at a much lower cost than traditional marketing. Here are some of the advantages of digital marketing for startups:
• Exponential reach
• Precise targeting
• The ability to establish brand awareness across channels
• Greater visibility
• Better tracking (everything is trackable)
• The ability to generate sales/leads at a lower cost
• Access to real-time data
Although many startups have adopted digital marketing, it’s important to develop your own strategy if you want the best results. Drawing on my experience as the founder of a digital marketing company, I’ve compiled some best practices for promoting your company across digital channels.
Select The Right Channels
There are many facets of internet marketing, and finding the right channels is crucial for meeting your business goals. Your marketing mix can include the following channels:
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Influencer marketing
The selection of channels depends upon your target audience, your location and your business goals.
One of the best ways to start is by looking at your competitors. There are some good tools like SEMrush, SpyFu, SimilarWeb and Ahrefs that can help you see what’s working for your competitors. Once you know what marketing channels they’re using, start with test campaigns to determine the engagement you get for each channel. Messaging is also an important element in marketing, so try A/B testing with your messaging to see what resonates with your target audience.
Focus On SEO
Whether you are a service-based company or a product-based company, your customers’ journey often starts from search results. Your potential customers are probably looking for similar services/products on search engines; therefore, it’s critical to have top rankings in search results. If your website is optimized for search results, you can get relevant traffic (i.e., people with the right intent) to your website organically.
You can boost your search engine rankings with the following do-it-yourself SEO techniques:
• Search for profitable keywords. There are many tools (free and paid) that can help you find the best keywords for your business. Google Keyword Planner is one example.
• Optimize your meta tags. Well-written meta tags (title and description) will not only help you build keyword relevancy, but they also can help you improve your click-through rate in search results.
• Optimize your content. Include targeted keywords in your content. Add more content pages on your site, and use long-tail keywords as such keywords are easier to rank for then more competitive ones.
• Build backlinks. Backlinks are still an important factor in improving rankings. Getting quality links from relevant and high-authority websites can help boost your search engine rankings. See where your competitors have backlinks and try getting similar links.
Optimize For Mobile
Smartphone usage is on the rise. The number of smartphone users in the United States is predicted to exceed 290 million by 2024, according to Statista. Subsequently, businesses are getting a lot of traffic from mobile devices, and consumers’ journeys often start there. As a result, Google has started using the mobile version of websites for indexing and ranking.
I believe it’s time for micro-moment marketing. Micro-moments are small, intent-rich moments when people turn to their mobile device to discover something, to get DIY tips or to buy something online. We call people in these scenarios “in-market audiences,” and you can target them on Google and partner networks. Run hyperfocused campaigns to show your ads to people who are in your market looking for products/services similar to yours. For instance, if a person is looking for the best mountain bikes on Google, a bike brand can show them a banner ad when they are reading through a blog post during a break.
Final Thoughts
In this day and age, when your audience is scattered across many different digital channels, it’s essential to have an omnichannel approach. There are so many channels out there, so test them out and see what works best for your business.