Digital Marketing: A Guide for Start-ups and Small Businesses

Digital marketing doesn’t have to be difficult when you know where to spend your time, energy, and resources. Use the guide below to drive your digital marketing efforts to maximize your audience reach.

Stepping into the continually changing world of digital marketing is confusing for every businessperson at first. There are lots of different paths to consider when planning a marketing strategy for a start-up, but what makes it more complicated is that each of those digital paths changes regularly with technology advancements, algorithm updates, and more. Your big priority should be ensuring that your options should be cost-effective and deliver a return on your investment right away, but it can difficult to determine that.

Where should you start when trying to launch a business with no previous digital marketing experience? This guide will introduce the best digital marketing strategies for start-ups and small businesses to help you find your starting point.

Designing the website for great user experience and optimizing for sales

Your business website is your shop and your home and should contain everything a customer would need to know about you, your services, and your products. It is essential that it makes a strong first impression and engages people who visit the site and keeps bringing them back.

Even if all other aspects of your digital marketing strategy are effective at sending visitors to your website if your website is poorly designed with slow-loading pages and confusing copy, they will not stay long, will lose trust in the brand, and probably will not make a purchase. A clear navigation bar with relevant calls to action should be the first item you consider. When you design a mockup of your website, think about how the consumer will navigate and click through. Insert relevant copy to engage readers and educate/inform/entertain them so they stay onsite longer and search through each page or item on the page.

You could also think about hiring a professional website designer or reputable branding agency to ensure your website is a valuable asset to your business. You want to make the best possible impression to all potential customers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) efforts for startups

Now you have a fantastic website that’s clean and easy to navigate, you need to ensure that your target customers can find it. A search engine like Google can interpret what a user is searching for, analyze all the website pages on the internet, and rank them in order from most relevant and useful to least relevant.

As the majority of users do not look past the first one or two pages of results, the objective of SEO is to increase the likelihood that Google will rank your website’s content on the first page (or a featured snippet) for specific keywords and keyword phrases. There are lots of elements involved in successful SEO from researching the right keywords, ensuring the proper URL structure, fast page load times, and making sure all pages are indexed properly on Google. Still, at the most basic level, it is identifying the keywords you want to rank for and creating original content around those keywords. Find out more about keyword research.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) can be effective for startups and small businesses with larger budgets

Where content marketing is creating content for it to rank in search results organically, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is paying to place adverts in search engine results based on target keywords. In the case of Google AdWords, you choose the keywords you want to rank for and bid against competitors for them.

If you are one of the highest bidders, your advert will appear above organic search results in Google. You only pay for the advert if a user clicks on it to visit your website but keep in mind that each click can cost upwards of $100.00 without even having that visitor convert to an email subscriber or customer. There are lots of PPC management agencies like Made by Factory, which specialize in helping businesses to make the most of PPC advertising campaigns. Such an agency can help you craft the perfect SEO strategy that is within your budget.

Social media marketing can be a huge help in building an online brand

Social media platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook offer businesses the opportunity to reach different customer segments in several ways. You can create engaging content and interact with customers as well as placing cost-per-click advertisements that are targeted to your relevant demographic. Pinterest, by far, has the most affordable social media advertising options and is one of the best ways to grow an audience organically.

Content marketing to drive online growth and customer acquisition

Content marketing is the creation of content to inform, entertain, help, and engage with your customers. There are lots of different formats available, but the most commonly used are short and long blog posts, articles, infographics, case studies, interviews, and videos. Your content should be original, engaging, and should showcase your expertise in your industry. For short blog posts, they should be around 500 to 600 words, while long-form blog posts should be 2,000 words or longer. We strive to publish longer content to educate and engage with our audience.

Ideally, users will share it with others on social media, which will increase your visibility, and it will rank for target keywords. Posting regularly (at least once a week to begin) is best to ensure that you draw in new website traffic, build an email list, and maintain a line of communication with your customers.

Email marketing for business growth

Email marketing is one of the originals in terms of digital marketing dating back more than 20 years, but it can still be very effective when done the right way. You need a list of email addresses that have given explicit permission to receive those marketing communications from you. These emails are deployed via email marketing service providers such as Constant Contact or Active Campaign. Again, then you can send them information about products, newsletters, and promotions. Personalizing emails and targeting segments of the list with different campaigns can be a great way to ensure your customers feel valued.

Building an email list takes time and patience but it’s easier to do so when you have opt-in boxes placed strategically throughout your website. We encourage our clients to have a delayed pop-up on every page, one in the header and then footer, and then one in the sidebar. We emphasize how important it is to have an email list to send out regular newsletters and promotions.

Digital Marketing: The Pros and Cons

Digital marketing efforts can be more effective than traditional marketing initiatives when campaigns are tested, measured, and optimized.

You’ve probably heard of the term ‘digital marketing,’ as it is one of the buzziest newer business terms, more than once by now. But what is it, precisely? How can businesses benefit from learning about how to execute them?

If you guessed marketing campaigns implemented online, you’re not that far off. The more standard definition would be marketing strategies that use online-based media (think phones, laptops, and tablets) to market a product, software program, or service. After everything that’s happened this year, there’s never been a better time to try digital marketing. But how can you be sure it’s the right move for you?

Today, we’re going to talk about some of the pros and cons of transitioning into a digital marketing career or executing your own campaigns for your business.

How can digital marketing improve your business? Why should you consider implementing such a campaign? What are some of the primary benefits?

You Marketing People understand the pains that come part-and-parcel with traditional marketing campaigns: exorbitant costs, less accurate response methods, fewer audiences reached, longer execution time, and, most importantly, decreasing interest in traditional marketing methods. This waning interest, in tandem with the lightning-quick evolution of online technology, has produced a prime environment for digital marketing campaigns to flourish.

For starters, digital marketing campaigns cost a fraction of their traditional counterparts to run and evaluate. Social media marketing paid campaigns provide an excellent example of this. For just under $3, you can reach over 1000 people through a social media campaign. Compare this to direct mail campaigns, which can reach the same amount of people for a whopping $57. That means direct mail campaigns are nearly 20 times as expensive as social media marketing campaigns. Running an advertising campaign on Pinterest or Instagram could be even less than that.

The last promoted Pin campaign we ran here at FemFounder.co to launch our latest PR course, we only spent .55 per qualified lead, and the last Facebook ad campaign we ran, we only spent $1.00 to acquire each new customer. And according to WebFX, driving web traffic from Pinterest is generally .10 to $1.50 per engagement with the minimum bid starting at .10. Additionally, Wordstream.com reports that Facebook ads cost approximately $1.72 per click across all industries.

Digital marketing campaigns also let you zero in on your target audience at a granular level. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, you can choose the precise consumer who will see your ads through filters by location, interests, age, annual income, ethnicity, gender, interests, and family size, for example. You can also test and measure the effectiveness of any campaign you run with free online tools. Digital marketing is a great way to reach targeted consumers at a reasonable price.

What are some digital marketing cons? What should you be aware of before developing and executing a digital marketing initiative? How can a digital marketing campaign hurt your brand if you’re not prepared to monitor the web and social media?

Of course, not all that glitters in online ads is gold and effective. The same goes for digital marketing, too. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, digital marketing campaigns tend to make less of a visual impact on their viewers and, therefore, are likely to be less memorable. The internet is a pretty crowded place as it is, so you’ll have to work harder to make your campaign stand out.

Moreover, any negative reviews that your campaign garners can exacerbate an already bad situation. People can see just about everything that happens online. They’ll probably know the fallout of a bad digital marketing campaign as well, which could translate to lost revenue and a chunk of time dedicated to damage control. In other words, your brand’s reputation is more at stake online, so you’ll have to execute your campaigns more delicately than you would via traditional marketing methods.

Lastly, your online digital campaigns are more likely to get overlooked by consumers. In the era of the unmonitored spam folder, thousands of smart email marketing campaigns go unnoticed every day, leaving digital marketers scratching their heads. So ensuring that your emails are deliverable and only distributed to people who signed up for your email list will help increase deliverability. Some sophisticated strategizing may help you overcome this obstacle, but it will require the help of someone who knows what they’re doing.

As you can see, digital marketing is not the foolproof marketing industry that many tech entrepreneurs and aspiring digital marketers might make out to be. However, that doesn’t mean that digital marketing hasn’t come about in a dazzlingly opportunistic age for it to grow, evolve, and thrive. Only time will show how digital marketers and savvy entrepreneurs fine-tune their skills in response to the increasing diversity of online commerce.

3 Ways to Build Your Business's Online Presence

How is your business performing online? When it comes to online presence, there are always areas that companies can improve. If you are concerned that your company isn’t using its online presence to its full potential, you certainly aren’t alone. 97% of business owners say that their online reputation is essential. It is crucial to recognize the importance of your online presence, and it’s vital to put plans in place to help your business maximize its online presence to achieve its potential.

Businesses that do not take active steps to improve their digital presence put themselves at risk of being left behind and allow their competitors to gain a significant advantage.

With increasing numbers of consumers carrying out product research online to inform their purchase decisions, and even more people regularly shopping on the web, your online presence matters more now than ever before.

In 2020, the question is no longer ‘should I invest in digital marketing methods?’ Instead, the real question is, ‘am I using digital marketing methods effectively?’ If you are looking for ways to strengthen your online presence, and ultimately give your bottom line a boost, these digital marketing tools will help:

Get Your Website Seen 

You may be selling the best products in the world, but if your website isn’t performing, no one will see these life-changing products, let alone buy them. 

Taking steps to improve your website will help to increase the amount of traffic that it receives, and ultimately, this should increase sales. To gain increased traffic, your site needs to achieve a high ranking on the search engine results pages so that it is visible to your target audience. Improved search engine results are achieved through effective search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing your site can be complicated and requires up to date SEO knowledge, so getting some professional help with this vital.

Be Sociable

Engaging with your customers and potential customers is vital to strengthen your online presence and is also a great way to develop brand loyalty and increased sales. Using social media platforms to your advantage is incredibly worthwhile and is the perfect way to engage with your customers, both present and future. 

To achieve social media success, consistency is vital. Your social media posts should be scheduled to go out regularly, and your page will need to be monitored so that you can respond to any comments made on your posts. You need to ensure that your posts are consistent with the image of your brand and are suitable for your followers.

Use Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is a fast-growing area and offers significant potential for businesses. Affiliate marketing has many benefits and is an ideal way to help your brand reach new audiences. Affiliate marketing may sound complicated, but software can help. You can Get launch reviews and bonuses to help you expand your knowledge and improve your affiliate marketing methods. Some of the software even picks the best influencers for your brand and does the hard work for you.