6 Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups

As a startup, it’s important to have a solid digital marketing strategy in place to promote your brand and attract customers. Picking the right strategies can help startups establish a strong online presence, build relationships with their audience, and drive growth from early on.

Some of the digital marketing strategies for startups that are worth considering include creating high-quality content for specific audiences, optimizing websites for search engines, engaging your audience on social media, investing in paid advertising, creating targeted email campaigns, and leveraging influencer marketing.

According to Mawer Capital’s Rudy Mawer: “There are so many ways to market your business so it’s important to figure out what strategy will work best for yours. When you know your business, and who your offer is for, you can put the right strategy in place to meet your business goals and achieve success.”

Focus on the Right Audience with Content Marketing

The goal of digital marketing is often to attract and engage an audience, usually a particular audience. Content marketing is all about accomplishing that goal through the creation and sharing of high-quality, valuable, relevant, and consistent content. It is all about adding value and delivering what your audience wants. Beyond that, it can be done using almost any format, including:

• Articles
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Social media content

The entire purpose is to establish a brand and stand out as a thought leader to build a loyal following. If done right, it increases visibility, generates leads, and drives conversions. Just remember not to make everything promotional since informative, entertaining, or useful content tends to attract more attention. Says Mawer: 

“My followers deserve to have access to the highest quality content so they can understand just how much I’m able to offer them and their businesses. That’s why I make it a goal with my posts to offer variety – everyone has a chance to see who I am, appreciate my expertise, and the value I deliver.”

Maximize Returns with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a massive undertaking that includes numerous parts, but the goal is to optimize a website or page’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). It centers around relevant keywords and can help attract organic traffic and increase visibility.

While there are plenty of approaches to improving SEO, it usually starts with figuring out the keywords your audience is interested in. From there, you can create content and perfect all of the technical details to ensure the highest ranking possible. Some parts of getting SEO right include:

• Content
• Metadata
• Structure

Backlinks, loading speed, and regular and relevant content all play a role. Additionally, SEO requires awareness of competitors, especially the other websites or pages ranking for what you want to rank for since some keywords will be harder to rank for than others.

There is far more to SEO than the brief overview above, but those are some great places to start. For those who use WordPress, Rank Math and Yoast have fantastic plugins that help with SEO. Ahrefs and SEMrush also provide in-depth analytics and insights targeted at perfecting SEO.

Utilize the Power of Social Media Marketing

It is not the first time social media marketing has come up, but among the digital marketing strategies for startups, it is one of the most important. In fact, it is so valuable that it can make or break fundraising, and social media platforms have started to replace websites entirely for some companies.

Why is it important? Because it is where startups can engage with their audience and get their stories out. It also has the ability to drive a ton of traffic and foster brand loyalty as customers connect and relationships build.

The key to the strategy is to identify which social media platforms your target audience is most active on and to create content tailored to each platform. While Instagram is a great platform for showcasing visual content, LinkedIn is better for connecting with other professionals and building relationships.

Do Not Shy Away from Paid Advertising

Many people do not realize how important paid advertising is. They might think the number of impressions or clicks is not worth the money paid, or they might not think their business is a good fit. However, paid advertising, particularly on social media, is incredibly valuable and can be done with limited financial resources.

Paid advertising is an effective way to generate leads and sales in a short amount of time. Moreover, it can help you reach your target audience, or you can let the algorithms do all of the work.

To get the most out of paid advertising campaigns, it is important to have clear goals and targets, create eye-catching ad copy and visuals, and regularly monitor and adjust your campaigns based on performance data. Remember, ads do not have to be static, and a good video is often more engaging than a stunning photo.

Start Email Marketing Early and Remain Consistent

Email marketing is cost-effective, with a massive ROI that makes it a must among digital marketing strategies for startups. It is one of the best ways to communicate with your audience, and if done right, it can drive conversions. Moreover, email marketing campaigns can be used to:

• Promote products and services
• Share news and updates
• Offer exclusive deals and discounts
• Build relationships with loyal subscribers

That being said, it still requires some thought, especially when it comes to separating your audience to provide personalized content tailored to each group. Fortunately, features like A/B testing and automation make the entire process much easier to get right and keep running smoothly.

The only thing to keep in mind is that email marketing is something that needs to be started early and consistently managed. That means setting it up on day one and building it as one of the primary sources of communication with your audience, if not the primary source.

Expand Into Influencer Marketing

Influencers have a lot of sway over their audiences, and while that is not always a good thing, when used correctly, it can be a great way to promote a brand or reach new audiences. Using influencer marketing, you can tap into large networks and gain exposure, but it does require some caution.

Not every influencer will align with your values and what you need. Therefore, it is important to identify the right influencers for your brand, creating partnerships that align with your values and feel right. If done correctly, influencer marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies for startups, capable of considerably expanding an audience.