Once your new business is up and running, you need to find ways to advertise to your potential customers. But before making your first marketing plan, it is important to understand what digital marketing is and which online channels are the most accessible and affordable for you.
The concept of digital marketing seems simple at first glance. Instead of traditional marketing channels such as radio or television, digital marketing takes place online. However, online marketing is much more than meets the eye.
Hennessey Digital defines digital marketing as “a type of marketing that involves the use of a variety of tools, methods and strategies to increase (the company's) presence online”. The digital marketing agency goes on to explain that the term is both an “umbrella category” and a “catch-all for a wide range of online marketing services.”
- Email Marketing
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Social media marketing
- Content Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
With so many different channels available, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with the concept of creating digital marketing strategies. However, channel diversity actually works in favor of smaller businesses and restricted budgets. This decentralized nature makes it easier to craft effective marketing strategies that use the various channels that best suit your business.
Even better, you can expand many of these digital marketing strategies as your business begins to grow. Although there are many options available, some channels are better than others for new businesses.
Here are a handful of the best digital marketing strategies startups can use to get their name out there:
Social media is a powerful tool in the hands of a startup because it is free to use and provides access to a large number of consumers.
If you want to use social media for your new business, start by researching which platforms your target audience uses the most. Next, create a limited number of profiles for your brand. Keep in mind: It is better to manage one or two profiles very well than to have several neglected presences on social networks.
Once you've selected your platform(s) and created your profiles, you can start cultivating a social media community for your brand.
This can be done as follows
Creating a constant flow of content for your company's social profiles.
Keeping your account information up to date at all times.
Engage with your followers in a personal way.
Maintaining interest, invitation and relevance in all your social media activity.
Social media is a powerful and profitable marketing tool. However, it is also a time-consuming activity.
Even if you have more time than money at the beginning of your business, consider how you will expand your social media strategy as your company grows. To do this, you can use a contractor, hire an in-house social media manager or even use an external digital marketing agency.
Email marketing is a wonderful direct digital marketing channel. It allows you to interact with people who have chosen to listen to what you have to say.
This allows you to reach consumers' inboxes directly with messages about your brands and products, as well as various promotions you may run.
Email marketing is another affordable marketing strategy. In fact, many email marketing platforms offer cheap or even free accounts for new users with smaller followers.
This means that when starting your business, you can have email marketing capabilities without paying an arm and a leg for them. As long as your audience is small, you can use a free email account to grow your business. Only when your audience (and by extension your income) grows, will you have to start paying for the service.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the organic part of search engine marketing (SEM). It involves optimizing your online content to ensure it appears in organic search engine results pages (SERPs).
While pay-per-click ads can drain your bank account, SEO-focused efforts can be much more affordable. This involves creating content that uses various keywords, backlinks, and other elements that favor search engines to optimize your content.
This can apply to blog articles and social media content. SEO best practices can even be used on a new eCommerce website.
Like social media marketing, SEO can take a little time. However, once you have optimized your content, it will stay that way and continue to attract organic traffic from search engines in the future.
The three previous recommendations involve the creation of content of one type or another. It turns out that content is not just a part of digital marketing. It is also a whole digital marketing strategy in itself.
The way you craft online marketing content can have a big impact on your young business's digital marketing efforts. It offers the opportunity to create a unified and compelling message for your brand, regardless of the channel the consumer uses.
With this in mind, your content marketing should aim to:
Consistently reflect your brand's vision, message and objectives.
Align your content messages with the pain points your target audience is looking to solve.
Create compelling sales funnels that resonate with consumers and guide them to your solutions.
Use SEO to increase organic traffic to your eCommerce site.
It doesn't matter if you're posting on social media, creating a landing page on your website, or writing a guest post for an industry publication. Whenever you generate content, remember that you are doing content marketing that, if handled well, can have a synergistic impact on your new brand.
Digital marketing is a broad, intricate, and effective means for any business to reach consumers. As a startup, it is important that you adopt digital marketing strategies that are most effective for your new business.
By adopting affordable options like social media, email, SEO, and content marketing, you can maximize every dollar you spend promoting your brand online. The best part is, as you start to see the effects of those efforts, you'll be able to scale your digital marketing strategies to accommodate your growth.
