While all businesses are in the pursuit of growth, not many are as aggressive with their tactics as a start-up company. This is apparent across all fronts, right from lead generation to branding, tonality, and marketing tactics. Naturally, this is to be expected as the importance of digital marketing for start-ups is immense. Moreover, start-ups typically struggle with recognition in the early stages and employing strategic content or social media marketing can help build a following organically.
Given the pace of development on digital platforms, digital marketing has proven to be quite effective for start-ups. It can be a lot cheaper compared to traditional mediums and comes with the potential for virality. However, not every digital marketing strategy for start-ups is beneficial and mismanaging resources can prove to be quite costly. While growth hacking is recommended, doing it right takes experience and marketing knowledge.
To help you take the first step in the right direction, here are a few digital marketing strategies that start-ups can rely on for early growth.
Referral marketing
In terms of getting recognised, a start-up greatly benefits from personal recommendations and referrals. This is primarily due to the fact that audiences don’t know who you are as yet and, as a result, can’t trust you enough. However, when a recommendation comes through from a trusted source, research has found it to be effective. In fact, 92% of people trust personal recommendations, which means that there’s very little chance of any type of referral marketing strategy failing.
Here, you have several options to choose from depending on the market you’re in. If you have access to influencers or have the budget for influencer marketing, you could find a way to turn their audience into your customers. Some of the best digital marketing plans leverage the power of influencer marketing. Additionally, you can also carry out referral marketing by simply offering incentives to both, those who promote your offerings and those who become patrons. Common strategies include freebies and discounts or special perks.
Email marketing
While many consider email as a dead medium, the numbers prove otherwise. A digital marketing strategy for a start-up lacks follow through without email. With an ROI of 122% as per a survey by Demand Metric and the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), email marketing is an incredible way to put your start-up on the map. Some studies even peg email marketing’s ROI at 3800 - 4200%! Email campaigns are cost-effective, easy to execute, and can now be personalised to a great extent.
Gone are the days when a promotional email felt like just another piece of promotion or spam. Today, you can make it irresistible with alluring subject lines, creative copy and design, and timely delivery. In fact, there are tools you can use to deliver customised emails to audiences based on their interactions with your website or e-commerce service. For instance, there are services which allow you to send ‘Abandoned Cart’ emails and bring the customer back into the purchase cycle with an attractive deal.
Search engine optimisation
As a start-up, building your digital presence is crucial in today’s day and age. To do so, it takes more than just having an incredible website, as it may count for little if it isn’t optimised. That’s why SEO is among the best digital marketing strategies for start-ups. Here, optimisation is mainly to do with the site’s on-page content but extends to tactics you can use to be found locally on Google, for instance.
You need to make sure that your website shows up among the first few search engine results when people search using keywords that are relevant to you. If not in the top 3, on the first page at the minimum. This should be your goal as good SEO doesn’t only help with reach and traffic, but also plays a key role in building trust. Potential customers are less likely to trust brands that aren’t high ranking on search results.
Blogs
Blogging is an incredible way to generate buzz and educate audiences about your brand’s products or services. As a start-up, you want to get the information out, but not all platforms are built for explanatory and long-form content. However, this does not mean that long-form content is dead; on the contrary, research proves otherwise. Longer blogs post were found to be 9 times more effective in generating leads than the shorter counterparts and those that blog are more likely, up to 13 times, to experience a positive ROI.
Based on these numbers alone, blogging should be a part of online marketing strategies for start-ups and hiring blog writing services may be the best way to go about it.
Social media marketing
It is a no-brainer that social media marketing should be a part of a start-up’s growth hacking strategy, if not at the centre of it. All you need to do is consult start-up marketing case studies to see why. Almost no digital platform offers the potential for growth as these social channels do and this is mainly due to the fact that over 2 billion people access these sites. Even something as small as a live ‘AMA’ session on an influencer’s podcast or social media segment can do wonders towards driving exposure.
Using digital marketing for growth hacking is definitely a smart idea and shouldn’t be done carelessly. Historically, organic growth has proven effective and simply chasing empty metrics will not bring in returns. This means that as a start-up, being creative should be a priority as you’re looking to capture the market’s attention before anything else. Don’t be afraid to experiment too, as your position allows you to do so with minimal fallout if things go sideways.
Given that digital marketing is quite a complex process that not only requires foresight but also technical mastery, hiring a professional marketing agency is smart. At Edisol, we create tailored marketing strategies that not only focus on growth but also on organic traffic for long-lasting results. To take your start-up to the next level, grow your business with us!
