Digital Marketing Strategy: 12 Ideas and Tactics That will Kickstart Your Startup

The difference between a successful and a mediocre startup often has very little to do with the product it offers, but rather how well they market themselves. Digital marketing is growing rapidly as consumers have more resources within easy reach at all hours of day or night.

To complicate things further, most social media sites are free and easily accessible by users worldwide who can freely share ideas and information. Digital marketing is a global effort involving significant costs to the business involved, so it’s important for startup founders to have a practical strategy that focuses on brand awareness as well as increasing revenue.

In this article, we are going to describe the basics of what you need to know about online marketing and how you can improve your startup’s awareness, user engagement, and sales.

Digital Marketing Strategy: 12 Ideas and Tactics That will Kickstart Your Startup

1. Define your Digital Marketing Objectives

Before you begin your digital marketing efforts, it’s important to have a clear purpose. When you are limited on time and resources, it can be easy to get scattered with all of the different tactics available for you to use. But if you don’t know why you are undertaking these efforts in the first place, it’s easy to get lost and lose focus. Defining your objectives will help you stay on track and determine which actions should be given priority.

2. Know who you’re marketing to

There are many different groups within the broad audience of users that make up your potential market, including geographical location, age, gender, interests, and purchasing power. The best marketing strategy for your startup will take these differences into account. You need to know which of these groups are most important to reach with your efforts, and you will likely need multiple strategies for different groups since they may respond differently to the same message.

3. Define your target audience

Knowing who you’re targeting with digital marketing can help you choose the best way to reach them. For example, if your audience is mostly male and between the ages of 20 and 30, social media channels like Facebook and Twitter may be better choices for you than LinkedIn or YouTube.

4. Define your goals

Your marketing strategy should match up with your business objectives as well as your target audience. Once you’ve identified your target audiences, it’s helpful to know what you want them to do after they view or hear the marketing messages you are giving them. If your goal is to get them to download an e-book, for example, an effective strategy may be a giveaway with a blog post encouraging users to sign up for future information.

5. Track your progress

Digital marketing efforts are not always obvious to the casual user, but that does not mean they are useless. You need to take some time at the beginning of your strategy to analyze the data you are getting from various sources. This includes social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as well as traditional ones like Google Analytics. Agency project management software like Function Point are helpful for compiling all of the information you get from these sources in one place so you can analyze your efforts more easily.

6. Leverage engagement

Digital marketing is all about relationships. It doesn’t matter how many followers or friends you have, what matters are the connections between them. When your users find something they like, they will share it with the people in their social circles. If someone leaves a positive review of your company online, for example, this is useful data to the search engines that may send more users your way.

You can also encourage engagement by promoting conversations between users, either on your website or on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

7. Use Paid Ads Strategically

Paid ads are one of the most effective ways to reach new audiences right now, but it can be hard for startup companies to come up with the funds to implement a successful paid ad campaign. But even if your budget is small, there are some effective ways you can use paid ads strategically. Get more mileage out of your advertising dollars by bundling related offers together or using an affiliate program to promote products for other companies in exchange for a commission on sales.

8. Don’t neglect mobile marketing

The explosive growth of smartphones and other mobile devices means that marketers must take these users into account with their strategy. Mobile usage is by no means the same as desktop, so you will need to spend some time researching how your target audiences are accessing your website or content through this type of device.

You should then adapt your marketing strategy to reach them on the go.

9. Expand into new markets

If you want to grow, there’s no better way than expanding to new geographical regions. One of the best ways to do this is through digital channels like YouTube and Twitter since they are so international in scope. But you will need more than just a solid ad campaign to make it work. You will need to research the best time for people in the new region to view your ads, ensuring that your target audience is online at that time.

If possible, you should also localize your website or app so that it is more appealing and relevant to customers in the new region.

10. Personalize your message

Ready to take your digital marketing efforts to the next level? Then you’ll need personalized, segmented messaging so that each user sees only what they are interested in seeing. That means you should create different ads, content, and offers for each group, creating a much stronger impact than generic messages would have.

If possible, you should personalize your website or app as well so that users see only the content they are most interested in.

11. Create offers that convert

Creating an offer that people can’t resist is one of the best ways to make sales through digital channels, but getting it right can be difficult. You need to think about what your target audience is most interested in and what they would find valuable, offering it at a price that is not so radically low as to devalue your brand. You should also create multiple offers for different types of users so you can reach different segments of the market more effectively.

12. Harness social media trends

Digital marketing is all about staying ahead of trends and staying relevant, and there’s no better example of this than social media. By taking note of the latest trends online you can adapt your strategy to capitalize on these as they rise in popularity. You should pay particular attention to platforms like Instagram that are growing rapidly, hosting a vast number of users who may be interested in your company.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed digital marketing strategies that will help your startup generate more qualified leads. No matter your budget or the size of your company, one or more of these tactics is sure to work for you. So don’t wait any longer to implement a digital marketing strategy that will launch your business into a new orbit of success. Good luck!