6 Digital Marketing Tips for Startup Businesses
You came up with a great product or service that people will use, you started your small business, and now you need to market it.
The problem is you are a startup business; you do not have a marketing department or a marketing budget for that matter. You are the business owner, operator, marketing department, production and shipping department all rolled into one.
What are you going to do to get the marketing out in front of the people who will use your product or service? Then you realize that you are not only competing with the other businesses in your line of product or service but the millions of other businesses out there that are also marketing their products.
Now you’re hyperventilating and thinking oh my god why did I quit my job? Take a slow deep breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Relax; we have 6 digital marketing tricks to help you get your product or service in front of people who will use it.
Before you start your digital marketing you need to brainstorm, figure out what makes your product exciting. Write down the reasons your product is exciting – how will it help people, save them money, make them laugh, enhance their skills? Use these answers to get people excited. The tone you start out with to brand your product and market it will determine how it is going to end up; something people are excited and want to know more about or just a ho hum ok it’s a new product big deal. You want to make sure it is the excited I want to know more tone. Here are 6 affordable digital marketing tips to put you ahead of the pack.
Social media
Let’s talk social media and how to make it work to get people excited about your product. Before you set up accounts on any of the popular social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on you need to plan. Read about using social media what will work what wont. Then plan for each one that you will be able to use and monitor as well as contribute to. You will have to manage these accounts and post regularly so don’t set up more than you can possibly do without taking time away from other important aspects of your business. Use your personality when posting on the social media sites, use the excitement, and use your wit and humor. This works well for startups since there are no corporate opinions or regulations to deal with so you can be yourself. Remember though, you need to be consistent in posting.
Content
When it comes to content it needs to be informative and hold value to your audience. It should be written in a conversational tone and toss in some humor. You need to create brilliant content for each social media you decide to use; you want to post a different post to each of your social media accounts. This sounds daunting but planning will help. Here is an example; you have Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In so on Monday post to Facebook, use the comments from that post to tweak that post for future use on Twitter. On Wednesday post to twitter a different post again use the comments to tweak that post for future use, in 3 week repost the tweaked post to opposite social media; the one you posted to Facebook post to twitter and so on. So when you are planning you posts, plan 2 weeks ahead this gives you 2 weeks to write for the following weeks. You have to be consistent with new content just like posts or people will stop coming to you for that information that you have been providing. Do not forget about a blog you can use that for your content as well.
SEO
Make sure your site is optimized for all platforms, if it is a site for ecommerce you have to make sure it is secure, and most of all use your tags, headers, descriptions correctly. Use your keywords in your content correctly; do not stuff your content with keywords in order to get higher page rankings.
Newsletter
By running a regular newsletter you can create your future customer base, just make sure the newsletter is filled with information that pertains to your industry. Start out simple with a monthly newsletter which lets people know how your product is working, any changes you have made to make the product better; eventually if you are able you can do a biweekly newsletter.
Network
Once you have produced an incredible piece of content network your social media, reach out to other industry forums, LinkedIn groups and contribute. By contributing to other trusted industry sites, you can reach other potential customers. Show the industry leaders that you are reputable and then ask if they would possibly contribute a guest post to your blog or social media.
Reward your loyal customers
We’ve seen this with brick and mortar stores where you need a card to get special sale prices. In this instance you need to offer something for free, maybe a small E-book or E-report that details tips for your industry an example – 5 ways to save on your heating bill, or 7 things you can do to save on your food budget. Offer more than one if you can and a discount of 10% or 20% on their first order. Ask for referrals and offer them $5.00 credit on future purchases for anyone who signs up and makes a purchase.
These steps alone will not be enough but will provide a starting point for your business to grow on a small budget. Later when you have more of a marketing budget you can upgrade your marketing to include other things that you can’t afford now. Until then this will get your product out in front of potential customers and get the word out in order to get people excited about it.
