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.