7 Broad Ways Of Digital Marketing For Startups

Do you own a startup and want to reduce the marketing budget without sacrificing growth? Find out why digital marketing for startups fits perfectly in your marketing strategy. A strategy of digital marketing for startups could be the stimulus a startup needs. India is seeing the growth of many startups in recent times. There is an atmosphere of risk-taking, experimentation, and innovation in the country. There is a lot of disruption in every industry due to the rise of the new companies who are willing to give it all they have.

The Government is also providing many incentives for startups in the country. Startups always try to find novel and cost-effective ways of doing different things. And marketing is one of them. And lucky for them because in marketing there are many ways where they can increase their return o investment and get more bang for their buck.

Digital marketing is redefining how marketing is done. It is more efficient and easier to monitor. It is versatile, just like startups, and fits well with their approach to the business.

Startups are full of energy and ready to challenge the status quo but many challenges are common to all startups.

Many startups are funded b venture capitalists and investors. They do not have unlimited money and there is pressure to deliver profits and achieve goals for business growth faster.

VCs and investors consider investing in startups a high-risk high-reward strategy. When startups perform investors seem very happy but when they start to show early signs of danger, many investors are quick to pull out money.

This is why startups walk on a thin rope all the time. They have to produce results quickly and also spend on expenses as little as possible.

Most of their funds need to be directed towards expanding their operations and increasing the user base. 

But advertising is one of the essential spendings. It is important to spread the word and create a brand.

But different forms of marketing have different strengths. Some offer more return on the same investment, hence, it is necessary to choose the right form of marketing.

Conventional forms of advertising provide high reach but the cost of acquisition per customer rises high because a lot of advertising revenue is wasted on an audience that is not interested in a product like yours.

But digital marketing for startups solves that problem. The advertising can be shown to a highly specific demographic based on buyer profiles, location, likes and interests, internet search history, gender, age, device type, etc.

With digital marketing, the cost of customer acquisition is much less because most of the advertising money is spent on an audience that is highly likely to be interested in that particular product. This is great for saving money for startups.

Digital marketing can also be very creative. This is great for startups who are challenging existing industries as well as prevailing consumer behavior. 

Creative advertising is cost-effective and can work wonders for startups. They can produce advertising that can generate buzz and free word-of-mouth for startups, by creating share-worthy content.

Social media is another great tool for digital marketing for startups. Social media offers a huge audience of every demographic. Be it a fashion brand for youth or a medical device for the elderly, all startups can find their audience on social media.

Social media is highly efficient and offers a high reach. It is a great way to not only promote your brand but also have direct and two-way communication with the consumers. 

This will give startups deep insights into their products. This reduces the expenditure on user surveys as all the insights on social media are free. 

Posting content on social media also generates engagement and a positive brand image. It is an essential step in branding. This is especially important for startups.

Pay-per-click advertising is a boon for startups. In PPC, advertisers only pay when a user clicks on an ad. This way startups can save money because they do not need to spend money on just showing the user an ad, the user also needs to click on it to show interest.

The conversion rate in PPC is very high. This is because most people who click on the ad are interested people. Unlike ads on TV, where everyone watches the ad including the people who have no chance of buying your product.

Another challenge for startups is to retain customers after acquiring them. Startups have high competition among rivals. The competitors leave no stone unturned to beat their rivals. This is why customers switch brands very quickly to the one that is providing more value, or discounts.

Brand loyalty is extremely low with startup products. They need to do things differently, even marketing. Digital marketing for startups can help brands achieve customer loyalty from ways other than discounts and promo offers. They can create effective marketing with which the customer can relate.

With the help of digital marketing for startups, brands can innovate not just in products but in their marketing as well.

As a startup founder, you can join a digital marketing course to learn the fundamentals of digital marketing for startups. With IIM SKILLS digital marketing course you get

• 16-hour theory and 60-hour practice sessions
• Online classes can be done at home or anywhere
• Lessons from expert trainers
• Certification of digital marketing
• Skills for digital marketing certification from Google, Facebook, and Hubspot.

By doing this digital marketing course you can have complete knowledge of digital marketing.

Learning digital marketing from a professional course has many advantages. It is a small investment that will give you high returns in the form of revenue and growth.

Knowing digital marketing for startups is essential. It can be learned online too. You can learn it at your convenience. This way you can understand the various technicalities of digital marketing.

As a startup founder, you can have a better understanding of the various marketing strategies of the company. If you are bootstrapping, this digital marketing course will help you generate a more efficient and optimized digital plan for growth.

These are the various strategies of digital marketing for startups through which they can increase their growth by reaching more people and creating better campaigns.

E-mail marketing

Many people still think today that e-mail marketing is a waste of time, that it doesn’t work or all mails go to spam. But this is a myth. E-mail marketing produces one of the highest ROI (Return n investment even today.

The ROI of e-mail marketing through subscriptions and newsletters is about 3-4 times greater than any traditional marketing channel.

This is especially great for startups who would want to create effective marketing campaigns in the least possible budget. Because e-mail marketing does not involve heavy investment. All you need is someone who can write effective promotional content that aligns with your marketing goals.

Some brands like Swiggy have done excellent work in e-mail marketing. They use cheeky humor to write engaging content that any user would find amusing and entertaining and would end up reading the whole mail. This serves the goal of their e-mail.

There are a few points to remember when writing a promotional e-mail:

• Create a catchy subject line that incites curiosity in the reader
• Do not use industry jargon in your mail. Remember the target audience
• Provide good readability. Use short sentences and bullet points.
• Provide benefit to the reader in some form. People hate being sold.
• Always optimize your e-mails for mobile browsing since it is highly likely that your mail will e read on a mobile device.
• You can use various tools to design and send your e-mail at regular intervals

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• Technical Writing Course
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• Content Writing Course

Social media is one of the most powerful media today in the digital marketing strategy for startups. As said earlier, it can be used to find people of all demographics and users of all kinds of products. 

Any startup cannot afford to miss out on the power of social media. Exposure on social platforms has increased brand perception and differentiation for many startups.

Social media helps develop loyal customers. Many brands often respond when their customers post something related to the brand on social media. 

For example, some hotel chains would comment on a photo of a user and thank them personally for their photo post. This is a communication that was personalized and only directed at that particular user, which makes them feel special.

Posting engaging content on social media may also bring more users on the website or the landing page which will improve the ranking and visibility of the page on the search engine and generate leads.

Another way startup founders can build their presence in social media is by becoming a thought leader of their industry. They can post content related to their learnings in the journey of creating a startup. They could also talk about changes in their industry.

This will help them increase followers who are interested in their industry. This will also help develop a personal connection with the audience as you walk them through various stages in the life of a startup founder.

Many startups have built a brand over social media, but there have been many founders too, who have built a personal brand of their own.

You can also use social media to promote your products directly. For example, Instagram can be used to promote the products that you have listed on sites like Amazon.com and your website.

To build authority on social media, be it any platform, you will be required to post great content regularly. The more your social media account is active, the more exposure the platform will give to your account.

You can also hire social media managers for your startup who post regularly and interact with the users. This way your startup can take advantage of current trends to create relevant content that connects to your brand.

Videos are also a great tool as the content is far more engaging than images and text. All social media platforms allow posting video content, even a micro-blogging site like Twitter.

Video ads are trusted more than photo ads. Audio can also be used for a better demonstration of the product.

There are some things you should keep in mind while digital marketing for startups through social media. First of all, you must choose the ideal social media platform for your startup based on your industry.

For example, Facebook and Instagram suit better for businesses in hospitality, travel, art, and craft, etc. If you have a B2B company, LinkedIn is a much better place to promote to businesses.

You should first, on which platform your target audience spends most of their time.

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click or PPC is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays to the ad network only when a user clicks on the ad. Therefore, PPC gives a much higher rate of conversion compared to any other marketing channel.

The leads generated through PPC are already interested in your product. The only thing needed to be done is to create a great landing page.

With the right bidding strategy, PPC can also help you appear higher on the Google search results page than your rivals. No startup that expects to generate a big percentage of their sales online can afford to miss PPC advertising from the digital marketing for startups strategy.

There are many advantages of PPC advertising. Unlike SEO, there are no speculations in PPC. Results in PPC are also almost instantaneous.

Since the results are instantaneous, the PPC campaign can be monitored, analyzed and manipulated to show results in real-time which is simply impossible in any other channel of marketing.

PPC also gives the startup many insights. The startup can find among which demographic their product is more successful and target them more.

The ads can be targeted based on specific demographics like location, age, browsing behavior, and many more. This can also help the startup know the market behavior which can be used over other channels.

Startups can also limit their ad spending of a day. With the creative use of the marketing budget, PPC can be done cost-effectively since PPC appears costlier than other marketing strategies owing to its many advantages.

Search Engine Optimization

All startups have a website. And in their industry, it is also likely that they are not the only ones offering a particular product. Which means there is competition.

So creating a website and putting content on it is not enough. If users do not know about your site, they are not going to land on it.

Search engine results are one way that users take that can lead them to your website. And that too for free. You do not have to spend any money to bring a user to your website organically.

In SEO for startups, you need to use specific keywords strategically all over your website, in your title, meta tags, content, etc. You also need to create a blog where readers can find information and useful content.

This content will be optimized according to the SEO techniques. This way your blog can also help bring customers who are looking for information, to your website, and promote your product.

You need to give the reader some helpful content to gain leads organically. For this, just writing any content on any topic will not do.

The blog articles must be written on topics that are being constantly searched over the internet, and on which you can provide expert and relevant information.

Many online tools help with keyword research. A digital marketing course can teach how to use these digital marketing tools for the benefit of a startup.

SEO is generally done by an SEO expert. SEO professionals have experience in how to rank a website or an article among the top results in the search engines.

Being in the top results is important as most businesses that generate leads organically rank in the top 3 and at least, on the first page. Less than 2% of users ever visit page 2 of Google searches.

In addition to creating good SEO content, it is also important to generate backlinks. Backlinks are the links of other websites that provide your website or content as a reference. The more the backlinks, the higher is the domain authority of a website.

Without a high domain authority, it is very hard to rank among the top search results, especially in a competitive space.

Another activity inside SEO for startups is to perform regular SEO audits on their website. This is to ensure that your website keeps ranking high and does not lose that position to the rivals.

Influencer marketing

Influencers are people who have a huge following on social media platforms. They have worked at it for years and in many spaces, influencers can ‘influence’ the behavior of their followers.

This power of influencers can be used by brands to promote their brand. This is a very cost-effective and simple way to promote your products to a very specific audience.

Influencer marketing can become an effective tool for digital marketing for startups. Influencer marketing is effective because customers have now become immune to advertisements over conventional channels.

We have to admit that advertising has pervaded many spaces today. Ads are everywhere. And most people do not like being sold. They only want to consume content if it giving them any value.

Social media influencers have made their huge following because they provide valuable content to their followers. This is why it is much more likely that the users will see a product as valuable if it is promoted by an influencer they follow.

If you don’t have the budget for big influencers, you can also find micro-influencers who have a smaller following but it is still big enough.

Content marketing

This is one of the essential steps in digital marketing for startups. This is because content writing or content marketing is done by almost every company, whether a B2B or a B2C.

Content marketing catches the customer in the first stage of the buying cycle itself, ie. information. Through content marketing companies can provide valuable, helpful, and relevant information to the consumers regarding their queries.

But the customers have to visit the website to gain that information. In this way, the website informs the customers about a product that may be helpful to the customer. 

Content marketing is a great way to build customer loyalty through higher visibility. Good and relevant content is always preferred by search engines. 

It is a cheap and organic way of building brand awareness and generating leads. It is a high possibility for conversion because the user is already interested in the product.

This is also an effective way to build credibility in the industry as good content shows knowledge that reflects expertise in the subject.

A big advantage of content marketing is that a startup founder can act as a thought leader and write their thoughts and lessons for others in the industry. This will also help build a personal brand for the startup founder.

However, the content must be highly relevant to the search query made by the user.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is another form of advertising where we can leverage a huge following of a content creator, like influencer marketing. But in affiliate marketing, the affiliates have blogs as opposed to social media accounts.

This is also a very cheap but powerful way of marketing. This is very commonly used by startups selling products on their websites as well as e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart.

The affiliate blog creator earns a commission every time there is a sale made through the affiliate link provided. This is why you only need to pay them where there is an actual sale made.

These affiliate links can be promoted either on blogs, social media, or online forums. This form of digital marketing for startups can also be monitored and analyzed with the help of analytics tools.

These were a few of the common ways where startups can do their digital marketing. Digital marketing offers many advantages over traditional channels of marketing. This is why they fit perfectly in a marketing strategy for startups.

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