11 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies For Startups

Digital marketing refers to using digital channels like social media platforms, websites, search engines, and mobile devices to market your brand. It involves increasing brand visibility and boosting business appearance online with the help of several marketing strategies.

Digital marketing enables you to reach a wider audience and create brand awareness worldwide. You can tell your brand story through these channels and grow your business. The best part is that it works for all types of startups. You can also use these digital platforms to acquire zero-party information to help in improving customer experience.

Research conducted in 2021estimated that 2.14 billion people worldwide will shop online for products. In this regard, many businesses are adopting these digital marketing strategies to help boost sales and grow their online brand.

Marketing isn’t the only aspect of going digital. Every business sector is transforming digitally, even the handling of daily operations. For instance, even professional gardeners are now using landscaping business management software to streamline tasks like quoting for jobs, invoicing clients, managing client information, and appointment scheduling and monitoring. You may want to follow suit and be at par with your competitors.

As for marketing, you’ll need to come up with the best mix of strategies for guaranteed results. Here are 11 effective marketing strategies you could use for your startup:

1. Search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO) helps you attract organic traffic without paying for every click made to your site. Your website has to be well polished, considering the number of competitors in your niche.

An SEO strategy will help you reach the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). Many factors influence SERPs ranking on google. However, you could manage this by building a productive SEO strategy. To do this, you should:

Analyse your SEO performance against your competitors
Create a firm SEO plan
Track your SEO content
Come up with a list of keywords
Create engaging content
Concentrate on content design
Create links to your page

Creating an SEO-optimised website will draw the attention of many consumers, resulting in increased sales and production activities.

2. Social media marketing

Social media influences the buying decisions of consumers. Businesses are using different social media platforms to market their products. As such, it helps create brand awareness, boost sales, measure brand performance, and engage with your customers more personally.

The social media marketing (SMM) strategy uses social networks and social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and others to reach a large base of new customers. This is because these platforms have the most users. There were 4.26 billion social network users in 2021, and the figure may rise to around 6 billion by 2027.

You have to create a social media strategy for your startup to enjoy the benefits that come with it. To come up with an effective social media strategy, you should:

Set social goals that are in line with your business objective.
Research and understand your audience’s needs and expectations
Analyse your competition
Set up accounts on different social network platforms
Create engaging and captivating content

3. Email marketing

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that allows you to send emails to customers informing them about your products, offers, promotions, and discounts. Businesses using email marketing as one of their marketing strategies are experiencing high returns on investment (ROI). For you to benefit from email marketing, you must:

Create an account with an email marketing tool
Install a lead generation software
Offer incentives to people who sign-up on your email list
Start marketing campaigns

A recent study conducted in 2022 showed that there were 10 billion downloads of the Gmail app on the Google play store. This means billions of people have Gmail accounts. Just think of the audience base you can reach if you were to start using email marketing. You can even use it to educate people about your brand and the value it brings to the table.

Don’t focus on advertising only; you also have to personalise your emails to make your audience feel special. Make your audience feel like they’re part of your brand’s success. By and by, orders for your services will start increasing tremendously.

At this juncture, you may also need to use cutting-edge solutions like the free estimate templates developed by companies like Jobber to fast-track your job quotation process and increase conversions. You know how demanding today’s customers are; they may not wait for days to get quotations on services they want to order. The faster you do it, the higher your likelihood of landing a contract.

4. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses product mentions and endorsements from influencers. It’s a very effective marketing strategy as these influencers have built trust with their followers. Hence, whatever recommendations they make will be received with open arms. Influencers sway the attitude of their audience toward your brand with their tweets, blogs, and other content.

Most of your competitors realize the benefits of influencer marketing, and you wouldn’t want to be left behind. It’s easy to reach your audience when you use their favourite TV star or celebrity to market your product. People are more cooperative when they see your brand popular among celebrities.

To create an effective influencer marketing strategy, you have to:

Come up with a management strategy
Set a budget and goals
Know how to locate and pay influencers
Decide on the message to communicate
Track marketing campaigns

5. Content marketing

Content marketing is a digital advertising strategy that involves publishing visual and written materials online to drive more customer interest in your brand. You can do this by posting videos, captivating images, and others. However, you can’t post just about any blog or video and expect results. You must be highly creative and produce content that’s well-tailored and engaging.

Content marketing is essential for your startup to be successful, whichever your business domain is—whether business to customer (B2C) or business to business (B2B). Research conducted in 2021 showed that 97% of marketers have integrated content marketing into their marketing strategies, a 20% increase from a previous study done in 2019.

A well-planned content will boost conversations, outline the benefits your brand will bring to your customers, and educate your audience about the products and services you offer. There are several types of content marketing you could use. They include:

Infographics
Paid Ad
Podcasts
Social media
Blogs
Online
Videos

6. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy wherein you pay commissions to publishers to promote your product and services. You can choose to reward them once they make sales, give leads, or direct free-trial users, depending on your prior agreement. It involves promoting a brand by sharing it on social media platforms, websites, podcasts, or a blog.

Before adding this to your marketing strategies, you need to research the benefits it brings to your business. You also need to understand the different types of affiliate marketing. They include:

Related affiliate marketing: In related affiliate marketing, the publishers promoting your products are not consumers but have the same target audience. They create awareness through blogs and content creation on social media platforms.

Unattached affiliate marketing: The publishers in this type of marketing have authority over the niche you’re in. You advertise your products through their websites and hope to draw attention to your site.

Involved affiliate marketing: Unlike in related affiliates, the publishers in this type of affiliate marketing are consumers of your brand.

7. Retargeting ads

Retargeting ads marketing strategy is essential because it helps you display targeted ads to potential buyers who visited your website and didn’t complete their transaction. These ads help convert window shoppers into buyers because they drive knowledge of your brand every time an individual sees your marketing ads. They also help control costs spent engaging uninterested customers because retargeting ads target interested customers checking out your products.

There are two different types of retargeting ads:

List-based retargeting ads: Just a few businesses use list-based retargeting mainly because these only use your email lists to target ads. However, they give you an added advantage because you could use the data collected to study customer traits and to personalize ads.

Pixel-based retargeting ads: Pixel-based retargeting ads allow you to show ads to users after leaving your site. With this, you can display ads to all users even if they haven’t provided their contact information. It’s the most used type of retargeting ad by many startups, so you shouldn’t be left out.

To come up with the retargeting ads, you should:

Focus on keywords
Retarget depending on the interests of your audience
Collect and connect data to all devices
Segment your targets
Use your customer relationship management (CRM) data

8. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing strategy (SEM) is one of the most used digital marketing strategies. It involves using paid advertisements to get a higher ranking on Google, Bing, and others. This marketing strategy helps you increase your visibility. The function of SEM is to promote brand awareness and to trigger and generate leads.

Before advertising your startup, conduct adequate research on how search engine marketing will boost your sales. For one, you should avoid using broad keywords. Although it helps increase traffic to your site, it also attracts many uninterested customers. You may want to hire a professional web designer to help generate appropriate content linked correctly.

9. Referral marketing

Referral marketing boosts your lead generation. It multiplies your customer base because potential buyers are more likely to believe spoken communication than constant advertisement ads. You should, therefore, try to motivate and mobilize referrals to enjoy its benefits. Research shows that the average value derived from a referred customer is over 16% higher than that derived from a non-referred buyer.

Create referral incentives and rewards to motivate your customers to join the refer-a-friend program. You build customer loyalty through such programs resulting in repeat purchases. For an excellent referral marketing program, you should:

Advertise the program
Select a referral marketing software
Communicate your values
Prove the best product experience
Decide on the referral incentive and rewards to offer.

10. Pay-per-click ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing strategy, also known as Google AdWord, is a marketing strategy that involves using search engine advertisements to draw more traffic to your site. It’s a very effective marketing tool you could use to generate leads and increase sales because it has much to offer and is cost-effective. However, you’ll have to put more effort and time into getting it right, or you could hire an expert to take the hassle off your hands.

Pay-per-click marketing is very effective, so you should consider adding it. Other strategies like SEO may take longer to yield results due to the high competition. Reaching the top search rankings can be challenging, depending on your market niche. But, once you pay Google for every click, your problems are over because your site will appear whenever someone searches for something in your niche.

11. Video marketing

A study conducted on the average revenue derived from digital marketing showed that video marketing contributed 9.7% of the total revenue and continues to grow at a rate of 43.5% yearly. Adding video marketing to your marketing strategies will take your startup to a different level. However, your content has to be captivating and relevant to your audience. You take this chance to educate them about your products. Don’t be too formal; throw in a joke or two every once in a while, as it’ll help engage your audience.

For an effective video marketing strategy, you must know how to create engaging videos relevant to your audience. Here are five tips on how to build an effective video marketing strategy:

Come up with goals for your video
Know your audience
Be creative
Consider the story you want to tell
Have a realistic timeline
Stick to your budget

Conclusion

Many startups are now using digital marketing strategies to increase revenue. Digital marketing strategies such as influencer marketing, social media marketing, video advertisement, content marketing, and other marketing strategies will help take your business to another level. You can use it to reach a broader customer base, create brand awareness, and increase sales. However, you may want to hire experts to help with web designing and content creation to have an effective strategy.