Digital Marketing for Startups: Proven Hacks That You Should Know

Understand User Experience

Building a following and customer base begins with attracting, engaging, and ultimately converting your target demographic into loyal customers.

Creating an engaging user experience is the capstone of all digital marketing efforts for startups. As you move through the following digital marketing tips and hacks, remember that a user’s experience is at the base of it all. Everything from how quickly your website loads on mobile to a well-formatted blog post affects whether your user will continue with you. 

Therefore, when you’re creating, sharing, communicating, or doing anything that represents or impacts your brand presence, begin by putting yourself in your potential customer’s shoes and ask yourself, “What does this say about my startup?”

Let us continue exploring more about Digital marketing for start ups by next learning about creating original content.

Create Original Content

While learning about Digital marketing for start ups, content marketing plays a vital role which happens to be an aspect of Digital Marketing. Content marketing refers to the act of creating content to connect and communicate with your startup’s target audience. Great content can provide educational and actionable information to build brand awareness, as well as drive customer action that results in conversions and sales of your product or service. 

For your company to successfully connect with potential customers, you must create a bridge (of content) that will let searchers find you and learn more about how you can solve their problems. Your evergreen content should resonate with the target audience in the form of blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies, social stories, and more. 

Consistent content marketing will build credibility for your startup and give you the chance to grow lasting relationships with your customers. Think about the following tips when creating your content:

• Publish original content

  Original, evergreen content will not only place your company in a position of authority, but Google will rank your website higher than those that produce copied or duplicative content. 

• Write for users

  Whether you’re blogging, tweeting, or writing sales copy, remember who your target demographic is and write for them—not for search engines.

• Check and check again

  Before you publish anything, edit the content, and then edit it again. Have a peer look it over for misspellings, poor grammar, and facts that don’t have sources.

Let us continue our learning on Digital Marketing for start ups by understanding more about the role played by Social media.

Be Active on Social Media 

The online presence you create will dictate how potential customers view and feel about your brand. This begins and ends with your website and social media platforms. Your website is the space to convert potential customers, but your social media efforts are where you show customers who you are, convince followers why they should buy from you, and encourage readers to click through to your website. 

For new startups, it can be difficult to determine which social media sites to focus on. Each platform has a different flow and feel, so to determine the best site for your brand, ask yourself the following questions:

• What category does your business fall into?
• What type of content do you have available right now that you could share? Pictures, products, stories, or ideas?
• Do you intend to make videos?
• How much time per day can you focus on social?
• Which platforms are your customers hanging out on?

How can we improve our digital marketing strategy for start ups? With SEO ofcourse, which happens to be our next topic to learn.

Ramp up Your SEO Efforts

While understanding the role of Digital Marketing for startups, SEO needs consideration. SEO, or search engine optimization, is where you leverage your startup website and other online efforts to increase visibility and rankings on search engines.

A website essentially becomes invisible if it doesn’t consider the search intent of users and isn’t optimized for keywords related to the business offerings. You don’t want your startup to be invisible, do you?

Consider the following tips to help ramp up your SEO game:

• Use an SEO plugin on your website

  SEO by Yoast is one of the most widely used plugins, enabling you to add keywords to your posts, products, and site pages for better optimization.

• Images and videos

  Ensure that all videos and images are optimized for search on your site. It’s best to use original media (i.e. media that you own and unique to you) rather than stock.

• Keep it moving

  Content creation and marketing isn’t only about engaging with potential customers. A website that is frequently updated with new content is favored by search engines more so than similar websites with stale content. 

After having understood the role of SEO while focusing on Digital Marketing for start ups, email plays the next vital role.

Use Email Marketing

While we focus on Digital Marketing for start ups, sending email newsletters to your customers is the most direct way to connect with them. Building a quality email list takes time but is well worth the effort. 

Actively encourage sign-ups to promote your newsletter (on your website, social media, in your email signature) with incentives and promises of future specials. This will not only help you build your list, but this direct connection enables your startup to build a more intimate relationship by offering them email only specials, coupon codes, and insider information that will make your subscribers feel more connected to you and your company. 

After having learned how you can implement Digital Marketing for start ups, we'll next look at how our efforts can be tracked and analyzed.

Look at the Numbers

One of the most important ways digital marketing continues to replace traditional marketing is the ability to run the numbers. 

Every marketing promotion, campaign, and ad that you produce in the digital space can be tracked and analyzed. As a startup, it’s critical to have the ability to pivot to what is or isn’t working at any time. Help yourself by connecting Google Analytics to your website, running PPC ads, boosting posts, customer journey tracking, etc.

How good are your Digital Marketing skills? Try answering these Digital Marketing MCQ Questions and find out now.

Unleash the Power of Digital Channels Today

Now that you've understood well about Digital Marketing for start ups, if you're looking forward to getting certified in one, Simplilearn’s Digital Marketing Certification Course will walk you through the fundamentals of modern marketing, customer lifecycle stages, and how to target them, as well as the technologies you’ll need to become familiar with as a startup business.

Equip your startup with the skills, insights, and digital know-how to be a super-effective digital marketer who generates a positive and measurable impact on your company’s bottom line.