As more entrepreneurs face the fear of failing while launching companies around the world to solve challenges both big and small, the challenge of growth remains very glaring. Digital marketing strategies play an important role in the growth of a company from a new venture into a successful business.
Thanks to the internet, startups can now do marketing without necessarily spending huge amounts of money on traditional marketing.
TV and Newspaper ads, billboard placements among other traditional advertising methods would have milked startups dry today if they were the only marketing channels available. Without a huge marketing budget, it would be very difficult for a lot of startups to stand out. The growth of the internet now means that startups can afford to dictate their marketing budgets and use digital marketing strategies to stand out from even the biggest companies around.
In fact, many entrepreneurs are now launching new products with a more positive outlook for the future. For companies that have launched and are still trying to figure out how to command their place in the market, it is important to do things differently from the competition.
Having worked with over 100 startups this past year, we at Pressfarm have seen the struggle that comes with marketing and the growth of new services and products. The most interesting thing we’ve learned is that startups can no longer work without analyzing their data to understand exactly what the numbers mean.
Big data is a concept that is used to apply to companies like IBM and Microsoft. Today, whether small data or big data it doesn’t matter. Startups have to care about both regardless.
Digital Marketing Strategies
It is nearly impossible for companies to make any sound marketing and product decisions without looking at what the data is telling them to do. However, sometimes the data is not quite right. Jeff Bezos has explained how ignoring data analysis and just doing the right thing has helped Amazon become the giant it is. While that is true, looking at both sides (with data and without data) can be quite telling.
We believe focusing on the following digital marketing strategies will propel rising startups to generate revenue, and continue to grow further;
1. Evergreen Content
Startups need to create that company blog now more than ever before. The main reason is that your blog provides you with a platform to explain what your startup stands for, drive your brand message, and get prospective customers informed about what they can achieve by using your product.
It’s true that it might take a while for any noteworthy blogger or media outlet to write about you and your company’s services. However, you can start it off by telling your own story. That is the function of your blog.
While media companies can afford to churn out breaking news stories for immediate traffic, startups cannot afford the same. So what to do?
For starters, you can produce evergreen long-form content. These kinds of blog posts are still relevant a year from the date of publishing the blog post. Unlike short news stories that target traffic for a day or two, evergreen content will keep bringing visitors to your company’s blog day after day, month after month.
Such content is usually very in-depth and it doesn’t take a short time to create. Do not try to compete with media companies because breaking news stories will not be bringing traffic to your company a month from the publishing date. In order to keep up with these massive media outlets, you will have to play on their level on a daily basis. Unfortunately, this is an expensive affair that no startup can afford to maintain.
The other thing about long-form evergreen content is that it markets itself and gets mentioned widely on social media channels. In this way, your evergreen content will earn backlinks day after day, therefore boosting your search engine rankings. Ultimately, this will bring your company some much-needed daily traffic.
2. Giveaways and Contests
Organizing giveaways and contests will encourage people to engage with your brand. Moreover, this strategy helps you to grow your mailing list when you are still trying to get traffic to your site. Once the contest is done, you can use email marketing to market your services or products.
If utilized well, contests and giveaways can land you initial customers as the contests run, and some leads to follow up on after the contest is fully completed.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Developing an SEO strategy might seem like a chore, but it’s worthwhile. It’s true that it is possible to successfully use other marketing strategies that are more predictable. Even so, investing in SEO helps you get traffic very passively, and allows you to reduce your marketing budget once you start ranking for some focus keywords. You can channel advertising funds to other things knowing your traffic acquisition through search engines is working very well.
Using the long-form content and ranking for the target keywords allows you to passively get traffic to your blog which you can channel to your company’s sign-up page. The most successful brands do a lot of search engine optimization. When used right, an SEO strategy will generate traffic to the company site effortlessly, allowing you to focus on other aspects of the business.
4. Social Media Marketing
Companies like Buzzfeed and Mashable have leveraged social media to become multi-million dollar media outlets. The same can be achieved by startups today.
A lot of startups are growing because they’ve developed an active social media presence. In order to use social media the right way, brands need to understand the strengths of each social media platform. Once brands know how each platform works, then they can leverage this information to build a powerful brand image. Furthermore, social media platforms present the perfect opportunity for brands to engage with their audiences.
Here is a piece of free advice: if you have a business you cannot avoid Facebook because it is the largest social media network and the second biggest online advertising company. Your customers spend a lot of time on Facebook. For this reason, it is best to adopt Facebook as an alternative marketing stream even if you will be spending a few dollars a day. Since the Facebook algorithm was tweaked to boost brands that pay for visibility, it can be worthwhile to pay for their advertising services.
Having said this, the ideal social media outreach strategy is a combination of content marketing, native advertisements, and influencer marketing.
5. Video
Video has grown to become a proper marketing channel on its own. Thanks to the existence of social media as well as YouTube, all it takes is a tap on the mobile phone and anyone can get whatever video they want to watch. On social media networks, videos can get lost after a couple of days when new updates show up. On the other hand, YouTube videos can be highly effective when they rank for specific terms.
Posting content on social media, sharing the videos, and letting them go viral helps a lot in marketing. Moreover, short, snappy, authentic videos are all the rage on video-centric platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Startups with the creativity to create viral videos will shine in the coming years by using the video marketing strategy to get more customers.
6. Press Coverage
Getting media coverage no longer means you have to be on TV or Radio. Almost every news outlet in the world now has an online platform where they publish their news. Their journalists are always on the hunt for new stories, research, data, or groundbreaking companies.
By using various tools and partnering with PR agencies like Pressfarm, it has become easier to get in touch with journalists and get your startup featured in the media. Such press coverage is a great marketing strategy for putting information about your company in front of the right eyes.
7. Google Advertising
Google Search receives over 5.6 billion searches per day. Think of that number for a minute. Google also controls over 90% of the search engine market share worldwide. YouTube, which is owned by Google is also the second-largest search engine. YouTube is bigger than Bing, Yahoo, and Ask combined. The first three results for most search queries are Google ads. 40% of the search clicks go to these first 3 results. These stats are fun to read, but brilliant entrepreneurs turn them into gold by investing in Google Ads marketing for their companies.
The Google Ads platform has helped a lot of companies sell their products. From Saas to eCommerce, every company that is worth its value in gold is using Google Ads to sell at some point. This is why every startup that wants to start getting immediate sales and important marketing data needs to adopt Google advertising as soon as it launches.
8. Guest posting
Guest posting can help you establish a reputation as a thought leader in your industry. By collaborating with other authorities in your niche to write guest posts on their sites, you can boost traffic to your website. Furthermore, a good guest posting strategy will attract attention from high-profile personalities in your industry. Once these people have identified you as a credible source of valuable information, they will start linking to your content.
Ultimately, the more links your content attracts, the higher your SEO score will be. For this reason, it’s worthwhile to develop a strategy for your guest posts and hire a good writer to produce this content.
9. Social media
Spending time building an active social media presence is a good idea because this fosters a sense of community around your brand. By creating a space where you can engage with your target audience, you can also build positive relationships with these people. Moreover, interacting with these people on social media will help you get valuable feedback on your product. This ultimately gives you time to solve any problems before your customers start leaving.
Overall, creating an engaged community on social media will help your target audience feel seen and valued. People who feel valued are more likely to turn into paying customers and develop brand loyalty. Creating a sense of community among your consumers is especially important now, at a time when people value authentic connections. The pandemic followed by the economic downturn that we’re experiencing has resulted in lots of customers switching brands at an unprecedented rate. Even so, customers who feel valued by your brand are more likely to stay.
User-generated content such as photos and videos of your product can work wonders for your brand image because this content is authentic. In fact, this kind of content is seen by consumers as more credible than any advertisement you could design.
10. User-generated content
Potential customers are more likely to believe consumers like themselves than they are to believe your marketing department. For this reason, if you share social media posts related to your product as well as testimonials from your consumers online, you are likely to convert potential customers into paying clients.
In order to encourage your customers to help you generate this content, you can create a referral program with rewards. This will not only help you to receive more user-generated content but also generate a sense of brand loyalty in your current customers.
Do you want to harness the power of digital PR to boost your brand and generate the publicity you deserve? With a team of professionals who have experience working with brands from different industries, Pressfarm can do that for you! Pressfarm provides personalized public relations services that will help you tell a memorable brand story to capture media attention and inspire your target audience. We have experience writing press releases that will win journalists over and feature articles that will excite your target audience. We’re also skilled at designing media kits that showcase the unique personality of each brand.
On top of taking care of your content creation, we’re committed to helping you find the perfect journalists to cover your story. For this reason, we give all our clients access to our media database of over 1 million journalists across different niches. In addition, we build curated media lists to help you connect with the best journalists in your industry. With access to these media contacts, you can forget about having to comb the Internet for journalists every time you have a story to pitch. Check out our packages and let us help you tell a brand story that moves your target audience and inspires action.