So, you’ve got a startup and you need to figure out how to connect with potential customers. For most businesses these days, digital marketing is the best starting place for getting the word out about their products or services. Digital marketing covers a lot of territories, though, so how do you know where to begin and what aspects of digital marketing will help you achieve the best results for your business?
Here are some of the most important factors that startups need to implement for successful digital marketing.
Audience
Understanding your audience is where all marketing begins. Before you start selling anything, you need to understand who your customer is, where to find them and how to communicate with them. Speaking to the right audience in the right ways will increase your opportunities for engagement and improve your odds for successfully turning prospects into customers.
Website
Your website will be the foundation for your digital marketing efforts. Nearly all of your digital marketing will link back to your website, and it will be the main place most customers go to learn more about your business.
The two main components to think about when creating your website are the user experience and SEO.
User Experience
The user experience of a website refers to the way that visitors experience the site and encompasses everything from design and content to the way the site captures leads, funnels sales, and more. The user experience will help determine how long users remain on your site, how many pages they visit, and whether or not they join your mailing list, contact you for more information, or make a purchase.
SEO
The second critical aspect of your website will be the way it supports your search engine optimization efforts. Your website content strategy will be a huge part of your SEO, but you have to make sure the technical aspects of your website are on-point to support SEO. There are a lot of technical parts important for good SEO, including proper metadata and tags in the code, proper image tags, a keyword-rich URL structure, sitemaps, and more.
Since almost all marketing roads lead back to your website, it’s essential that both your user experience and your optimization efforts work in harmony to provide both a simple and interesting experience for users and an easily indexed site for search engines.
Content
Content is king when it comes to digital marketing. Your content strategy will support all of your online marketing, including search engine optimization efforts, social media engagement, email marketing, website conversions, backlinks, and more. So, it’s important to create quality content that is relevant for both customers and search engines.
Link Building
There are two main types of links that can be used to support your digital marketing efforts: internal linking and backlinks.
Internal links
Internal links are links to pages within your own website. Internal links help guide visitors to relevant information and also move them through your sales funnel or lead capture system. Internal links also help search engines index your site and signals which pages are most relevant within the site for SEO purposes.
Backlinks
Backlinks, or external links, are links from other sites back to your site. Backlinks are an essential part of SEO, because search engines use the number and authority of sites linking back to yours as a key factor in search engine rankings. Backlinks can also help direct visitors to your site from other websites. Guest blogging is a great method for building a large collection of quality backlinks for your site.
Social Media
The most important part of social media marketing is to have a strategy for it. With so many platforms and options, social media can quickly become totally overwhelming. Also, without a strategic plan for posting, responding to comments, creating content, etc, you run the risk of missing opportunities for engagement. Planning a comprehensive social media strategy, targeted to your specific audience will ensure you stick to a schedule and don’t waste time on ineffective platforms or useless tasks.
Paid Marketing
Paid marketing is a perfect channel to help your startup gain momentum and get clients to your site right away, while you work on improving your organic reach and building your customer base. Solid keyword research is the key to effective paid marketing, because it will help you find the most relevant keywords that can bring visitors to your site for the lowest possible cost per acquisition. Paid marketing can be done on a variety of platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and many others. Using your audience research will give you an idea of which platforms will help you reach the right market for your products and services.
Analytics
Analytics is another behind-the-scenes aspect of digital marketing, and is absolutely critical to measuring the success of your marketing plans. By tracking analytics carefully, you’ll be able to track which marketing methods are most effective at driving visitors to your site, where your most reliable conversions come from, where clients are leaving your site, your most popular content, and much more. Tracking analytics and regularly updating your marketing strategies based on the results will allow you to continually improve your marketing to ensure you’re allocating your resources to your most effective marketing channels.
Conclusion
Digital marketing for your startup doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Success will depend largely on the ways in which you implement and follow through with your strategies and how well your messages and products resonate with your audience. Do your research, choose your strategies, implement them with consistency, and monitor your analytics. Following this protocol will help you streamline your marketing process and give you the best opportunity for success in marketing your startup.
Bio: Regex SEO is a Houston-based digital marketing agency offering a comprehensive array of digital marketing services. Created to help our clients achieve online success, and built on a transparent, data-driven process, we utilize cutting edge technology and industry best practices to improve our clients’ online visibility. Our fully custom digital marketing strategies are based on the needs of each business, and we pride ourselves on supporting the success of businesses throughout Houston and beyond.
