What’s the secret sauce for startups to sustain? A unique idea and reasonable funding can help a startup establish itself in the market, but there’s a magic potion to compete with the other businesses and stand out. No points for guessing. Yes, a good  digital marketing strategy helps them thrive in the markets, expand the customer base, and remain a long-term product/service in the industry. Wait, what? Can digital marketing strategy give that edge to startups? Why not?

Why Digital Marketing Is Significant for Startups?

Whether you want to launch a new product or promote your brand, digital marketing can make the reach seamless for you. How important is digital marketing for startups? Well, scroll down!

Establish an Online Presence

To gain market visibility, startups need every bit of assistance they can get. No matter how promising the startup is, it won’t succeed without people knowing it. A startup business can benefit from a variety of digital marketing strategies. Search engine optimization, email marketing, and social media marketing are a few common paths startups take.

Low Marketing Costs

Startups rarely have enough budgets to engage in traditional marketing and advertising, making it difficult to compete with more prominent companies. Conversely, digital marketing   when done by the in-house marketing team or by the founders themselves, with some very inexpensive activities.

Just like how every business starts with an idea, every marketing strategy starts with content. So, the basics of digital marketing starts with understanding the customer and producing relevant content.

Keeping Up With Customers

Think twice before you believe digital marketing is only for advertising your products or services. Building and nurturing relationships with customers is one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing.

Global competition is fierce, and your product may not match others’. Yet, what makes your customers choose your business? It makes a world of difference in how you interact with your customers. At any given time or trend, an engaging company wins over the others in the race.

Boost Your Revenue

Digital marketing drives sales in many ways. For example, SEO can increase traffic to your website. Social media can be a great way for customers to discover you and share it further. Relevant and valuable content can attract customers to your blog. No matter which digital marketing strategy you choose, it will increase brand awareness, and that, in turn, will lead to your first sale. Oh, we know that feeling.

Build Your Brand Beyond Your Online Presence

Even when new competitors enter the market, loyal customers stay with their favorite brands. What does this say? Brand recognition will increase your chances of people shopping with you. Therefore, get the word out about your brand! A brand makes your products and services exclusive, valuable, and distinguishable. Again, digital marketing is instrumental in this process.

What Are Various Digital Marketing Strategies Available for a Startup?

There are a variety of digital marketing strategies that work in their unique style for every business. But what are the most common strategies adopted by startups? Find them.

It Starts With Establishing Personas & Finding Your Core.

Digital marketing has two sides to its core. Business & audience.

The process is all about connecting your business to its audience and prodding them into action. However, how do you reach an audience you do not know? Nearly impossible. The first step of digital marketing must be buyer personas.

In essence, it outlines all the specifications for your ideal customer. So, know everything about your audience and target customers to potentially impact their choices. But, when we say startup digital marketing, does it have to be tough? No! It can start as simple as LinkedIn – The renowned professional hub.

Have You Dwelled On LinkedIn Marketing Yet?

Do you know that LinkedIn tops the choices among social media marketing? Yes, 94% of people reach LinkedIn for all the professional-related content while businesses generate about 80% of leads. Considering those stats, if you’re a startup, the first thing that you need to focus on is being active on LinkedIn.

Linkedin can help you connect your brand with senior influencers and decision-makers. It’s now more than a job-seekers and employer’s paradise. Why wait? Start a powerful LinkedIn marketing campaign to make the most of it.

Email Marketing Is Never Out of Fashion.

The most effective way to reach your audience is via email. That’s right, do you know emails have a return on investment (ROI) of $44 per dollar spent? No wonder it’s a budget-friendly option for most startups. However, note that not every email gets opened. It takes a decent amount of time to decide what your customers like.

Considering it’s a low-cost marketing strategy, it needs the right skills to make it worth it. For instance, a tailored subject line can have 26% more chances of opening your email than a regular one. Another way of staying connected with your customers is through an automated email service. So, how are you utilizing this impactful yet straightforward strategy?

Social Media Marketing Got You Covered.

Do you know that half of the world today uses social media? Social media acts as an influential platform across customers, businesses, and demographics, with millions of daily interactions. This is a perfect reason why startups can’t ignore this strategy.

In light of the fact that 73% of marketers find social media efficient, it is evident that you should pay attention to this medium. But not all social media platforms can suit your business. Know where your audience is and target them regularly with engaging, informative, and relevant content. Include visuals and videos for better engagement. Be quick to reply. Make use of paid advertising to make an extensive reach.

SEO & SEM Ace Digital Marketing Strategies.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the best digital marketing strategy that delivers instant results for your startups. Search engines can help your startup generate more traffic and sales. They help you reach the target audience seamlessly, with a budget for all pockets.

This is because SEM works mainly on pay-per-click. So, your startup needs to pay only for the clicks on your ads. For your startup to achieve maximum results from SEM, you need expertise and experience, as it can be tricky. Take your time in learning and start with small budgets.

No Search Engine Optimisation? No visibility online. SEO for startups is a strategy for obtaining organic traffic without paying for it. Search engines help send organic traffic to your homepage, services pages, and landing pages through blogs. Getting new customers is easy and economical. Not just that, it helps to keep the brand reputable.

Content Marketing – It’s Where Your Story Begins.

Content marketing is a powerful strategy for growing your startup. A majority of organizations use this strategy to make their mark in the industry. Content marketing has the power to pull more leads than any paid search. Nothing beats this approach when done with the right blend of content, great storytelling, and relevant insights.

Did you ever wonder how big brands like HubSpot, Mint, and Buffer skyrocketed their startup success? Yes, by brewing a winning content marketing strategy.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing aims to bring in leads. An affiliate is like a seller who works on compensation. It is up to you to decide how to pay them. The payment structure can be based on the number of sales they generate or a flat rate per product. With this type of digital marketing, you can relax and watch as your affiliates take the weight off your shoulder.

Authority Hacker conducted a survey of 2,270 affiliate marketers and found the average affiliate marketer earns $8,038 per month. Also, these earnings are heavily dependent on the marketer’s experience:

Now, in the pool of such exciting marketing strategies, which one suits your startup? Fret not! We have got you covered.

Startups and Digital Marketing Strategy – Where Do You Start?

In developing a digital marketing strategy, the above factors are significant. Combining them in the right balance makes a robust digital marketing strategy. But first, outline your goals and objectives. Know your audience and their pulse. Learn where exactly your efforts can bring in traction. How? For starters, here are a few simple steps.

1. Start your brand awareness and presence on social media. Use social media networks for sponsored posts to promote your company and product.
2. It’s time to get active in SEO, Content Creation, and Search Engine Marketing on your website.
3. Google Analytics and Search Console can help you figure out how much and from where traffic is coming. Promotions should target individuals who clicked on your ads or blog posts.
4. Check how many sales you got with each technique. Your landing/sales page can be customized with UTM parameters. Make a decision based on what worked for you.
5. As a final suggestion, make use of automated emails to keep your customers engaged. You can talk about discounts, new products, how-to guides, e-books, loyalty program bonuses, etc.

Nevertheless, you must ensure that you do not attempt too many strategies at once. You know what they say about too many cooks spoiling the broth. Remember, Hike Messenger gives us all solicited advice to not incorporate too many features and miss out on the unique selling proposition. Furthermore, any startup digital marketing should focus on cost-effective approaches as a thumb rule.

Finally, a startup can be promoted in a variety of ways. You have to know who your audience is, how they behave, and how your business can make a difference. Startup marketing is no rocket science, but considering the limitations on resources, you need to take appropriate precautions before getting started. Make your unique mark and bring your ingenuity. What? All of this looks too much? We feel you. Wild Creek Studio is all about establishing a robust digital marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. Contact us today and get the best solutions to get your startup off the ground.

 

Search engines generate nearly 93% of all web traffic. Over half of Internet traffic is generated by mobile devices. If anything, the best myth you hear about digital marketing is that it is for large businesses. But what if we can demystify the fact?

How does Digital Marketing Help Small Businesses?

The Digital Revolution has changed the nature of modern businesses. Digital marketing is not just for large companies and brands anymore. B2B marketing is now available to businesses of all sizes. And, small business marketing strategy has evolved beyond ROI.

In essence, digital marketing strategy is centered on creating impact, brand awareness, and fostering customer loyalty. The trick lies in scaling strategies to the changing business needs. The goal is to establish an effective brand identity that drives an exceptional customer relationship. How does that happen? By using three different digital marketing techniques. Scroll down!

Start with a Brand Identity that helps you connect with your customers!

An organization’s brand identity combines what the company believes in, its values, its products, and how it wants its customers to perceive them as a business. Simply put, a brand identity is the face of your business and a commitment you give to your customers.

But there’s a subtle strategy hidden to execute this phenomenon. Can we call it a brand identity strategy or customer experience strategy? Because brand identity and your customer’s trust are intertwined. How will you establish a safe path toward building it? A five-step strategy is all it takes.

Research – Like any business plan, generating brand identity requires some market research. It should help bring out all the questions regarding who your audience is, the uniqueness that puts you out of the crowd, what can compel them to make you their choice, and what are the pitfalls? Simply put, a SWOT analysis considers the biggest whys and pushes them to be the best reasons for building your brand.

Logo – Although logos are not all that make up your brand identity, they are one of the most critical branding components. Your business cards, website, and online advertisements all feature it. It needs to be interesting, with attention-grabbing colors, hooking templates, and consistency in its use. Make sure your branding is as cohesive as possible.

Connection with communication – Language is the bridge that acts between your product and customer. By that, we don’t mean the formality but the tone and intent. Who doesn’t love stories? So tell some engaging and moving stories in building your brand. Be it your blogs, social media, or advertisements, make sure your communication can connect you with your customers. How would they like that to be?

But Avoid – Language gives the freedom to communicate and connect with your customers. But hold on and revisit your strategies before you implement them. The social presence of people is becoming vast every single day. One mistake, and it’s easy to remember your brand for it. Do you remember the Myntra Logo Issue? So creating sensible and publicly acceptable content across all marketing channels with consistency on both online and offline mediums is crucial.

Monitor – Tracking key performance metrics is vital for knowing what is working (or not) as part of your marketing. Analyze how people talk about and interact with your brand using the right analytics tools. That allows for fixing mistakes or improving your brand identity as needed. Recall that Domino’s revamped its brand to get to where it is today.

Now, with these five strategies in hand, let’s design a traffic-driving social media strategy.

Target your audience with a compelling social media strategy

Social media serves a variety of business purposes. In addition to promoting your products, services, and brand, social media connects you with your audience.

Building a social media strategy differs slightly from what we discussed earlier. How? For example, the above strategy works wonders for creating brand identity. The same strategy with a few tweaks can accommodate a social media campaign plan for small businesses.

Drill the goal: What is your objective for this social media strategy? Is it creating brand awareness? Acquiring customers? Increasing engagement?

Buyer personas: Learn everything you can about your customer – age, gender, locality, interests, pain points, and active social media channels.

Which channel is best for you? With a dozen social media channels used across marketing, knowing which one suits your and your audience’s needs is vital. It’s not a trend you need to catch up on; it’s about the reciprocation and engagement that a channel gives you.

Create a social media content calendar. We mean setting a clean layout of your agendas, what you require for it, who works on it, who designs the creatives, when is the publishing date, etc. It should give an overview of your mission on social media just with a glance.

A bunch of tools, maybe. Yes, for starters, any small business can do their social media posts using tools like Canva for creating designs. Similarly, there are management tools that help the process run seamless clearing bottlenecks. Again, get what suits your needs.

Posting day: Make sure all your posts are published on the set date. Maintain consistency. Start engaging your audience on it by adding them to the other marketing channels. Give them that push to meet your objective.

Analyze: Finally, sit back and reflect. Not every social media strategy or campaign works wonders. Some win, and some lose. So, cheers, find the reasons and act accordingly.   

Now that’s about the social media marketing campaign. But for any marketing strategy, the content remains the king of it. Then how to create a content strategy that gets results?

Build a winning content strategy

You can define content strategy as the process of using content (written, audio, and visual) to accomplish your goals. You will attract and engage your target audience throughout the funnel and even after they have made a purchase with a successful content strategy.

The steps for creating an outstanding content marketing strategy look very similar to the templates of brand identity and social media campaign planning.

It all starts with identifying your audience with whom you need to engage the content and chalking out their likes and dislikes. After knowing your buyer personas, it is advisable to do a content audit of how your current strategies are working.

Now is the time to choose a content management system that helps deal with flowing data silos. This step gives an idea to curate and brainstorms the ideas and strategies that best work for the target group with specified teams.

As a next step, you will now need a content calendar that provides a clear glimpse of how your strategy will take place. This boils down to the final publishing, managing, and finding the right analysis to work down for later.

Finally, there are numerous digital marketing varieties, from social media to influencer, email to content, SEO to pay-per-click, and mobile to an affiliate. The real strategy lies in which one you pick for your business. There is no one approach that suits every small business. But the advantage of being a small business favors a lot. It is easy to break the business sectors, identify the key areas that need attention, and execute an impactful digital marketing plan accordingly.

With that said, if you’re a small business ready to embrace a digital transformation that could change your business game, then you’re at the right place. Wild Creek is a leading digital marketing firm that helps you build your own digital story. Contact us today!

Digital marketing is becoming the biggest name in the marketing world. It has changed the way people used to think marketing should be done. It has created a lot of opportunities that people are taking up to make money in the business. For example, YouTube has become a great platform for many content creators. However, there are a lot of people who are not doing it right. They just create a website and expect all the traffic to come to them because they have a website. They don’t do anything to attract traffic to their website. The result? Their websites fail! This is where having a proper Digital Marketing Strategy makes a huge difference.

“You can’t just place a few ‘Buy’ buttons on your website and expect your visitors to buy.” - Neil Patel

What does your digital marketing plan look like? Is that a straight line that works forward purposefully? Or is it more of a squiggly line that creates a lot of question marks? The second scenario will seem familiar to a large number of companies that operate online. Many have clearly stated on paper what the ultimate goal should be, but the way to get there is often still unknown.

The reason? They lack a digital marketing strategy that offers guidance and clarity. We explain below what this specifically means.

1. Without strategy you are out of control

“A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.” Lee Bolman

Businesses without a strategy don’t have a clear goal about what they want to achieve online. If you don’t have a goal, visitors can continue to flow in, but there is a good chance that you will not achieve enough results. It is clear that you want to sell, but there is no clarity in the way you are going about it. A strategy creates support and bonding. A common thread that you and your colleagues can always fall back on.

2. You want to know your online audience

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.- Peter F. Drucker”

Traditional sales channels are very different from their online counterparts. Knowing your customers well doesn’t mean you know their online needs. Customer demand for online services can be underestimated if you haven’t properly researched these needs. Fortunately, there are great tools available to help you get to know your customers. For example, take a look at the favorite search terms of your target group via Google’s Keyword Planner and ensure more interaction via social media.

3. Prevent competitors from taking over

“Anticipated, personal, and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.”  – Seth Godin

Do you pay enough attention to online marketing trends or do you opt for an impulsive and rudderless approach?

If you chose the latter, then it is highly likely that your competitors will run off with your customers. After all, your competitor is just two clicks away. Your target audience will find the answers on your competitor’s site and their needs will be properly met there. An online strategy is crucial to stay ahead of competitors.

4. For a powerful online value proposition

“Always provide value. Value builds trust. Once you have that trust, you have the ability to do some selling.” - Mike Volpe

A clear value proposition will help you differentiate your online services from other providers. You tell that and visualize it online. For example, with meaningful blog posts and social media posts that really benefit your customers. Speak to your audience, captivate them, and keep yourself captivated. With a bit of luck, they will become ambassadors for your company.

5. To get to know your online customers

“The basics of business is to stay as close as possible to your customers-understand their behavior, their preferences, their purchasing patterns, etc.” – Indra Nooyi

It is often said that digital marketing is so measurable. But Google Analytics and other tools will only tell you more about visitor numbers and other static data. They won’t tell you much about the sentiment of visitors or what they feel. So, you will have to use other feedback tools to find out the feelings of your visitors. How? For example, by creating an online poll or by reading the comments on your Facebook posts. You will need to reach out to your customers, start conversations and constantly stay engaged. A careful gathering of customer sentiment and feedback will help you meet every one of their needs and satisfy their expectations completely.

6. Combine with traditional marketing

Marketing is a broad field and online marketing falls within it. It therefore still happens that online marketing is the neglected child in the complete marketing plan. However, online marketing works best when integrated with traditional media. So be active online, but don’t forget the basics: you also have to be there for your customers offline.

7. Sufficient budget is important

“Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.” - Henry Ford

It is important to approach online marketing as a separate branch of marketing. This means that enough attention must be paid to it and therefore a sufficient budget must be kept available. How do you justify a budget?

By having a well-defined strategy.

8. To avoid wasting money

Even if you have sufficient financial resources, waste cannot always be prevented. This is especially true in larger companies where multiple departments buy the same tools or do overlapping work. A clear strategy prevents this.

9. Staying Innovative

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” - Socrates

The biggest online brands have one thing in common: they are all innovative. To be innovative there must be a direction, just like a goal, and therefore a strategy. After all, there are countless developments in the online world. It is important to use your resources in innovations that suit you. Only in this way can you remain effective and permanently put the competition at a disadvantage.

Final words

A strategy means optimizing: Every company with a website has data, but not always the same amount of time is set aside to analyze it. Online marketing is continuous optimization and therefore continuous analysis. This is the only way to ensure more grip and more progress. With a strategy you ensure that analyzing and optimizing becomes one of your permanent pillars.

The good news – Now that you now have valid reasons to develop an online digital marketing strategy. Try to assess how other companies approach this and see how that would work best for your company.