Are you planning to startup or already have got one established? If yes, then you are on the right page. Digitally Social’s team has studied numerous Digital Marketing strategies for Startups to understand which ones are ideal and fits flawlessly for small scale and medium scale business models under Indian business conditions and we have enlisted these strategies to help you understand what digital marketing actually is about?
The data from our research study highlights about 94% of Indian Start-ups fail to make it big where the reason is neither funds nor the idea but lack of creativity in strategizing and executing plans and not leveraging the full potential of the digital environment.
Only possessing a unique idea, team, and funds won’t be enough to grow your business in the Indian market. Focusing more on the process than the end goal can bring better results. Entrepreneurs must stress more on the maximum reach and conversion rate than on the volume of customers, sales, and profits at least in the first few phases of the project.
Most of the new entrants in the market do not understand the game of tapping prospects. Founders and other pioneers exercising in this market dimension need to realize the significance of reaching a large audience and measuring success by practising statistical methodologies and probability-based deductions by understanding the real-time industry status and level of market saturation, consumer psyche, Competitor and incorporating PESTEL analysis.
Digital marketing for Startups is an entirely different ball game. Decision making progresses by keeping multiple verticals in mind, along-with limited funds to invest in the right marketing channels and at right time based on germinated unbeatable strategy. This is the first hard step that any Digital Marketing Agency needs to take to ensure that the startup grows.
Now is the era of smartphones, data and the internet according to recent reports. It suggests 370 Million smartphone users are in India alone where 285 Million of them are on multiple social media and spend around 3.5hrs daily interacting with their phone over the internet. The world has acknowledged that Marketing has mutated in recent times. From Corporates to startups, everyone is centring on Digital Marketing and are trying to expand companies and customer base. But, are they doing it right?
To clarify, we have come up with a set of digital strategies and approaches to help visionaries like you find a way out and attain those biz dreams by making your business remarkably Digitally Social.
Social Media Marketing
SMM in digital marketing plays a key role by directly influencing customers, driving sales, architecting brand image and personality and building community. It can also act as a Point of Contact (POC) for the brands to address queries and direct consumer interest. Therefore, this suggests Social Media is an inevitable stone in any entrepreneurial journey.
In 2021 there are dozens of social media platform having millions of user base and, you have to decide which aligns best with your brand image and interest plus where you can find the right set of audience.
1) The platform selection process requires creating a consumer persona first and then examining the platforms where a similar type of personalities can easily get traced.
2) Once Consumer Persona gets developed, understanding platforms and then reasoning about why a prospect would be on such a medium becomes easy. It gives a clear justification regarding which platform to choose and why.
You can also consider evaluating Brand Persona and deduce the best fit for your business. By incorporating Aaker's Brand Equity Model in germinating a business identity, one can get a unique breakdown of the diverse components that suggests what a brand should be known for in the industry. This model explores four different quadrants:
Brand as a Product
Brand as an Organization
Brand as a Person and,
Brand as symbol
3) Once done with the Brand and consumer personification, you would know where you can find your prospects effortlessly. The ideal number of channels to incorporate in a strategy for a startup would be 3-4 platforms. Expanding presence on more than four platforms could potentially drain time, energy and resource whereas, restricting it under three would be perceived as dodging a growth opportunity.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most economical channels that deliver tremendous ROI than any other marketing techniques.
Every startup needs to concentrate on SEO along with SMM more than any other channel. It is the process of generating organic traffic from search engines without any supplemented cost. Hence with SEO, it is easy to acquire new customers, without any cost. You can always write a blog weekly to optimize your homepage and landing page rank on search engines to get organic traffic. Practising SEO regularly also dilutes the brand's CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) enormously and simultaneously gets massive visibility, trust and brand authority.
We understand subscribing to all those fancy SEO platforms out there does not fit in a startup's monetary framework so, we won't be suggesting the paid packages. All you would need is a high market and trend awareness with a spirit to take spontaneous situational actions.
1) Keyword Research
You can always leverage Google's Keyword Planner tool to get all relevant data regarding a keyword. The game here is not to pick the best one but the ideal one for your brand. Initially avoid considering keywords with high competition and ensure all the that you choose, has a volume of at least 1k - 10k. For any startup, it is recommended to consider keywords with Low Competition and search volume of at least 1k-10k+ per month for exemplary results.
2) Trend Analysis
Having a perfect combination of volume and competition won't bring returns if the keyword is either irrelevant or out of trend. You need to filter down keywords or topics which are currently trending in the digital market. This can be done by practising regular Market Research and Competitor Analysis. Scanning Social Media Platforms, Industry Relevant Pages, Buzzing News articles and your direct and indirect competitors reaction to them can give you a clear map of what to do and how.
Apart from Scanning and researching, Anchoring platforms like Google Trends, Ask the public and Also Asked in your plan can help you understand what people genuinely want to know about a specific topic or at least what they are typing to get those answers in the engine's search box.
Technical SEO blueprint
One of the most typical concern, when a startup fails to consolidate SEO into its plan, is the emergence of technical SEO issues later on down the road.
While Google and other search engines have made a big improvisation in their ability to assess sites, technical SEO issues can still create difficulties which can make it challenging for your site to be accurately indexed and rank well in search results and under appropriate search query.
To combat this issue, it’s necessary to have the technical slants of SEO addressed as the developing your site and other web properties, to avoid costly complications that could be difficult to fix down the road.
This is a very large topic that would require far more depth than possible within this post to fully address, which is why it is a good idea to know a technical SEO expert on staff or as a consultant during the process of developing and launching your site.
Nonetheless, here is a list of some typical technical issues that oftentimes arise and convert difficult to approach:
1) No automated or cohesive method for removing or updating pages without creating links to missing pages, dropping authority from external sites that linked to those pages, or redirecting users to irrelevant or inappropriate pages unrelated to the original.
2) Incorporation of URL query strings for campaign monitoring, user tracking and filtering operations, and personalization that generates pages with mostly identical content but are located at different URLs. These should be bypassed or addressed using the 'canonical tag'.
3) Duplicate title tags issues.
4) Lacking original and updated content or excessive duplicate supplementary content on pages.
5) Links to “infinite spaces” where a virtually perpetual number of pages are dynamically created that would be inappropriate in search results.
6) Loosely implemented or missing .htaccess, robots.txt, and XML and HTML sitemap.
7) Defectively set up analytics that fails to track user actions or loses information about their referral source.
Ensure that your startup SEO plan addresses the necessity of clean technical SEO during the development process as well as a part of regular site maintenance.
Search Engine Marketing:
Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a significant marketing channel to foster Brand Awareness and Conversion Rate. It is an Inbound mode of Advertisers where potential customers gravitate towards the product and not the other way round. Because of the known consumer intent, it can sometimes be really expensive for marketers. The opportunity to reach huge volumes of customers when they are ready to buy means a lot of competition on the paid search advertising networks – Google Ads and Bing Ads. That can be both a blessing and a curse for startups, depending on their ability to understand and manage SEM.
We recommend shelling money particularly in YouTube Ads and Lead generation ads as both the ads are reasonably priced and the bidding involved here doesn’t drill a hole in your pocket. But before launching on this stage you need to know your conversion funnel inside out and appropriate important trigger points that align with your budget. This will define your targets and will determine how well you can compete against other advertisers who are trying to reach the same prospects as you.
Finally, once if you have crafted the most amazing ads, your conversions rate will still struggle if you don’t take the time to create visually appealing landing pages with a polished user experience.
Some marketers send Google users straight to their site’s homepage, which distorts the user’s experience as well as expectations. Hence, we would suggest linking your ADs to an appropriate landing page that has been optimized for conversions or at least gets you leads out of it.
You can also incorporate testimonials for social proof and remove any distractions that may divert the user’s attention from clicking the call to action button.
Are you ready to race digitally?
Establishing a prosperous startup is a strenuous battle of fervent competition in the contemporary business world. However, by adopting the right digital marketing strategies, you can stand out from the masses.
Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Search Engine Marketing have proven to yield a high ROI which is why Digitally Social suggests them to any individual w
Who is looking forward to starting their entrepreneur journey?
What do you think? We encourage you to share your thoughts, ideas and add any strategies or tips to this list you feel we missed! Share your thoughts in the comment section below, as we would love to read them.