Digital Marketing Strategy for a Startup
“Quit counting fans, followers and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think instead about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.” -Amber Naslund
Digital Marketing is a modern marketing which totally relies on technology- mobile phones, personal computers, laptops or Internet of things (IoT). They promote their brand message in digital platforms through applications, emails, search engines, social media, video and websites.
The main propaganda of digital marketing is to reach maximum customers through maximum channels. In this fast track era to satisfy the needs of the busy bees, digital marketing became the need of the hour. The Internet is flooded with digital marketers so the new startup must keep the following strategies in their mind to go with the flow:
- Create a Target List-
In marketing be mindful of 3 P’s- People, Process and Physical Environment. To promote your brand, you need to know your audience. The first step of digital marketing is the Buyer’s Persona which contains full details of the buyers. The following details would help the marketers to target their customers:
- Name
- Gender
- Age Group
- Location
- Job/Income
- Their problems
- Search genres- research product online
- Active social media channel
- Customer Support Channel they inclined to.
Buyer’s Persona-based upon values wants and needs. They are very particular about clarity and quality. The startup must be aware of this.
2. Brand Knowledge-
Startups need to clear about -
What does their brand stand for? Brand Value? Brand Objectives?
- You need to know your customers and their reason behind buying your brand.
- You need to know customers’ outlooks- what is going inside their mind relating to your brand? And how your brand is satisfying their needs.
- Benefits acquired by customers from your brand.
- What your brand promises for and how you are maintaining it.
- Find out loopholes and put your full effort to rectify the flaws.
3. Market Knowledge-
Know your direct competitors, indirect competitors and replacement competitors. Then do the proper SWOT Analysis of your brand.
4. 3 Mantras-
The foundation of any Startup depends on 3 Mantras- Vision
Plan
Action
Make an appropriate vision of your brand, then do effective planning to promote and reach.
Lastly, switch that planning into Action-
*Remember-
- What does your marketing strategy want people to do?
- Engage maximum traffic by paid ads, email, social media and search engines.
5. Catchy Content-
Content is the mirror of your brand, so be mindful of the fact to make it catchy and attractive. There are two types of customers in the market Emotional and Mindful so make sure your content includes both-
- Your content should target the emotions of buyers because most of the buyers are emotional, so they prefer to buy any commodity which hits their emotions.
- Your content must satisfy the needs and wants of mindful customers.
*Use Captivating keywords for SEO.
6. Video Marketing-
Nowadays, video marketing is on-trend and the buyers are much into it, so for this make a short attention-seeking video of your in which along with your concerns and benefits include your global reach and virtual reviews of your happy customers.
7. Hit the Channels-
When your business is a startup you face- 3 problems
- Small Audience
- Limited Time
- Low Budget
So, to make your business smooth, you need unique ideas and have to share those ideas in the channels where your customers are the most.
Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Google AdWords, Search Engine Optimization, Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, Retargeting Ads, Viral Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Referral Marketing are the popular channels through which you get an opportunity to grow and reach the maximum audience.
To grow more follow three Generalship-
- Help your customer through your content
- Share much content as you can in different channels and sub-channels.
- Weekly or giving a four-day gap creates original content.
8. Measure Performance-
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) measure the performance of any brand. It will brief what is trending and what is outdated and will not work anymore.
Startups should be well acquainted with KPI to measure their performance in the market.
KPI indicates the following:
- Drive-to Web Traffic from Search Ads.
- Drive -to Web Traffic from Social Media.
- Drive- to Customer Ratio.
- Indicates Social Media Engagements.
- Indicates Revenue from Social Ads.
- Indicates Email Open Rate.
Therefore, along with the strategies for making big success, the Startup should take an account of 4 P’s — Passion, Perseverance, Persistence and Patience. Moreover, they should believe in themselves and must have several plans (at least 4 plans) to run their business digitally. If Plan A fails, Plan B will go; in the case of Plan B fails, Plan C will take the lead- like this startup should go on.
Good Luck
Paramita Chakraborty
