With the internet boom of recent years, growing a start-up has become both unbelievably easy yet increasingly difficult.
This sounds counter-intuitive, but it really isn’t.
Growing your start-up in the current digital landscape has become easier, in that you can reach almost anybody who is online. You could not do this 20 years ago.
However, as more and more businesses move to digital marketing, the space is becoming increasingly saturated, making it harder to be heard above the clamor. It requires you to utilize any tools you have at your disposal to create a competitive edge for your company. To get ahead you’ll need to start taking steps toward establishing your brand online and creating a digital marketing strategy.
Here are 5 essential digital marketing tips for start-ups:
1. Craft an Awesome Website
It used to be that small business owners didn’t need a website as long as they were well listed in local listings and business directories within their niche. However, now that most people are avid – maybe even addicted? – internet users, the importance of having a beautiful website cannot be overstated. Modern customers will make a web search long before they’ll pick up the local business directory or phone book. It’s just easier to perform a web search than it is to rifle through a phone book!
Because of this, it’s crucial that your business adapts to the modern business environment and implements a digital marketing strategy. This starts with an awesome website that communicates your brand image and your marketing message.
Modern customers assume that any reputable company will have amazing web design, and a poor-quality website – let alone having no website at all – will be a warning signal to the customer. Customers view your lack of ambition, in relation to your online marketing, as indicative of the rest of your business, and make negative presuppositions about your product or service.
People are resorting to the internet to search the product or service they need, and if they don’t find your company listed they’ll choose a different brand. This means that it's crucial to the success of your business that you become proactive about your digital presence, or risk losing potential customers to your online competition.
If you don’t already have a website, then now is the perfect time for you to invest in web design for your business. I’m well aware that the initial financial investment makes business owners nervous. However, with a quality website, that initial investment will pay for itself multiple times over through increased customer acquisition.
2. Online User Experience (UX)
The key to a great website is how successful it is in engaging your customers and providing them what they need. As a small business, your audience engagement and conversion rate are the most important metrics to your success. You need to be able to gain the customer’s attention and engage them with your brand, products, or services.
Your audience will have a more positive perception towards your brand if you provide them with a unique user experience (UX) and show them that your brand can provide what they are looking for. We've created a comprehensive UX design guide for this very purpose.
This means that your marketing strategies need to be carefully designed to attract and appeal to your target audience. Before you implement your digital marketing strategy, you need to study audience analytics so that your campaign can effectively communicate to your target audience.
Creating an awesome user experience isn’t all about having amazing content though. You might be able to create amazing content, but if your website isn’t beautifully designed or is hard to navigate, you will lose your audience due to frustration.
Awesome user experience comes down to having amazing content that is relevant and provides value to the viewer but is also presented in a manner that is visually appealing and provides ease of use.
3. Social media platforms
Now that you are set up with a website and have amazing content and products, it’s time for you to be heard.
Social media is an extremely valuable tool for communicating your message to your target audience, as well as engaging with them, personally. Most major brands harness the power of social media to tell the world about their brand, how they are different, and why the customer should care; in short, it's a great way to build brand awareness.
As part of your audience research, you should figure out which social platform is right for your business. Ask yourself these three questions:
- Where are your customers?
- Which platforms do they use to interact?
- Which platforms would you thrive on?
Answer these questions before jumping on board with a social media strategy and then use that information to give yourself an advantage over your competition.
Once you’ve chosen the platforms that you’ll engage on, remember to be consistent with your social media strategy and with your posting so that you can maximize your social growth. If your social strategy is well designed then it can have a huge impact on leads generation, conversions, better brand awareness and even better search result rankings.
4. Video marketing is seeing an upward trend
Videos are quickly becoming a popular format for promos, ads, and other marketing methods to help communicate your message to your target audience.
Social platforms have helped to spark this trend, making it possible for you to easily create and share video content with your customers. A slightly less formal format that has a seen huge success is video content through platforms like Facebook live, Instagram stories, and even snapchat stories. This informal video format allows the customers a raw, “down-to-earth” feel of what your company is all about, and helps to build brand trust.
If you have access to a higher quality camera you can even start producing things like webinars, create tutorials, or even introduce product launches and promote them through your social platforms. Any video content that provides value to the customer, and allows them to see your company or product in action helps develop brand awareness and trust.
5. Search engine optimization
Now most importantly, you need to invest in a good SEO solution. Yes, we might be a little biased in our opinion of SEO, but this is because we’ve seen first-hand what an SEO campaign can do for a company. Whether you decide to do the SEO work yourself or hire it out to an SEO specialist, this is something that shouldn’t be overlooked when you’re creating your digital marketing strategy.
SEO will help optimize your website so that you start showing up at the top of the search results for relevant search queries. Obviously, if you could be one of the first brands that potential customers see when they perform a web search, you can imagine the drastic increase in customer acquisition.
Conclusion
As you can see, a good marketing strategy can either make or break your business’ profitability, customer engagement, and growth, depending on whether it successfully communicates with people who are interested in what you have to offer. Knowing who it is that you’re targeting with your digital marketing strategy will result in a higher conversion rate and better ROI.
Developing and implementing a solid digital marketing strategy is the key to surviving in the modern business environment, and helps communicate and engage with your customers, developing brand trust and loyalty.
This post was created by Leighton Burley. As the founder of Artiiseo web design, a Winnipeg web design agency, he's been privileged to work with some of the premier brands and agencies in Canada.
Top comments (0)