You just launched a startup and need to get
your brand in front of as many eyes as possible. The problem is you are not
just competing in your industry, you are competing with the millions of other
marketing messages that consumers are bombarded with every day. Not only that,
your bootstrapped startup does not have the funds to invest heavily into
digital marketing. What's an entrepreneur to do?
Fortunately, here are eight affordable (and
invaluable) digital marketing tips for startups:
Let’s talk social
Social media is one of the most cost effective
ways to market your startup. In addition to providing a platform for
growing your brand, it offers an easy medium for promotion and customer service
opportunities.
1. Be frequent and consistent: Social media is a way for you to build your
brand’s voice. You should not only post regularly, but there should be a
uniformed identity to your posts. Additionally, do not over post or deviate
from your brand’s message. Buffer App reports that the optimal number of posts to Facebook is
between five and 10 times a week, Twitter is five tweets a day and LinkedIn and
Google+ tied for one time a day.
2. It’s not about you, it’s about your
customer: Most brands use
their social media accounts only for promotional purposes. This is a failed
strategy, as it provides no value to their followers.
Instead, find and share information that your
customers want to see and occasionally mix in your promoted content.
3. Engage with your followers: Social media is a way for your startup to
interact with current and future customers. Leverage your followers and make
them feel like valuable members of your brand.
Also do not be afraid of social confrontation,
approach any complaint as an opportunity to show your brand’s customer-service
capabilities.
Lastly, do not hide from failures, you are a
startup and are bound to face some hurdles along the way. Strategically
approach these as opportunities to win over customers with good customer
service and express your brand’s long-term vision as frequently as possible.
4. Try small investments into the
platforms: There are a number of
different social opportunities that you can invest in -- all of which have
merit depending on the industry and your unique selling proposition. Experiment
with the below options and see what warrants the best ROI for your startup.
·
Pay-to-play on
Facebook: Facebook is steadily becoming a pay-to-play platform, and if you want to
see any engagement you will need to invest into promoting your Facebook posts.
·
Sponsored tweets:
While Twitter still provides a good amount of organic engagement, the
microblogging platform also has paid solutions for businesses, with one being
sponsored tweet. By providing a sponsored tweet, higher engagement will most
likely occur with followers (and others).
·
LinkedIn’s premium
services: LinkedIn has a number of extremely valuable paid features,
including a Sales Navigator that makes finding leads and contacts seamless.
Best of all, you can try the service free for a month.
Content is still king
Content marketing is one of the most
overlooked investments in launching a startup.
Why is content so important? It is the vehicle
for conveying your brand’s message. If your content is not clear and message
not well-formulated, you will undoubtedly struggle to succeed.
5. Critically think about your message: Content marketing should not be a process of
throwing messages against the wall and seeing what sticks. To effectively brand
your startup, you should engage in industry research and formulate a unique
selling propositions. Your message then needs to keep these USPs as the focal
point. Avoid focusing on your features and instead sell the benefits.
6. Find cheap and creative content: Creative content does not have to be
expensive. You can find affordable and high-quality content on sites like
Elance, Craigslist or Fiverr.
For instance, on Fiverr you can have an
animated explainer video made from a top seller for a fraction of an agency’s
price. Explainer videos are perfect for startups, because they can quickly and
effectively convey your new product or service to potential customers.
There are several other affordable ways to
approach content creation and even small investment into content will go a long
way in building your startups brand.
7. Optimize internal pages for
conversions: What do you want
visitors to do when they land on your site? Your entire content strategy should
be built with this question in mind. Once you know the action you want users to
do then you can find affordable tools for perpetuating those actions.
·
Find free plugins for
capturing emails and then leverage affordable services like MailChimp or Constant Contact for drip campaigns.
·
Use free tools like
Google Analytics to monitor visitor’s paths to the website and once they are on
it, find opportunities to create a more user-friendly experience.
·
Optimize forms on
your site to build a stronger inbound lead funnel.
·
Find cheap and
reliable cart services to sell products directly through your site.
·
Whatever your
objective, there is a cheap and often free solution.
8. Do outreach yourself: One of the most important steps to an
effective content marketing strategy is the content promotion. After you
produce an incredible piece of branded content you need to amplify that piece
of content as much as possible. Leverage your social media profiles, email industry experts, reach out to LinkedIn groups or industry forums, and contribute
to other popular sites that your consumers might visit. Invest a few hours a
week to outreach or off-site writing and your startup will begin to gain
traction.
Running a startup on a
shoestring budget is hard enough. If you can keep marketing costs down while capitalizing on successful
digital opportunities, you will be able to improve your brands visibility
without sacrificing a large budget.
