While it’s true that a startup’s resources are best spent on perfecting what it offers, overlooking digital marketing is a mistake. HUGE mistake actually.
Startups like you need an online presence if you want to be noticed. Take social media presence, it can boost a startup’s growth up to ten times faster.
But we understand if that one statistic isn’t enough to convince you.
Don’t worry. This blog post is dedicated to answering why digital marketing is important—much even more if you’re just starting out.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is marketing translated online. Yes, it’s that simple. It works similarly to traditional marketing, but now it leverages digital technology to reach people and encourage them to take action—whether that’s by making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter list.
This typically includes anything from search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, email campaigns, website design, content creation, and online advertising.
But, let’s be clear about digital marketing:
- It’s not about complex coding
- It’s not a matter of buying the most expensive digital tools
- It doesn’t simply about having a website
- It’s not only about posting
- It isn’t about pushing out as many ads as possible
- It’s not about following trends that haven’t been proven successful in your industry
- And it’s isn’t definitely about spamming people with emails or messages
Really, digital marketing is just all about connecting and building relationships with your market through various digital channels.
5 Reasons why Digital Marketing is important
Firstly, it empowers businesses to adapt to the changing habits of consumers today—your prospects are increasingly online and using digital devices to shop, communicate, and research products and services.
Let’s look at five other reasons why digital marketing is important in detail:
- It lets you reach and meet a wider audience
Digital marketing gives companies access to a larger market. Through online marketing, businesses can expand their reach to potential customers across the globe and break down geographical barriers that would have otherwise been limited to traditional marketing techniques.
- It lets you target a specific set of prospects
With digital marketing, you can be very specific about who you target with your advertisements and messages. You can segment users based on demographics such as age, gender, and location or even based on psychographics like behavior, lifestyle, and interest. Then, of course, you can create tailored campaigns that resonate with them.
- It lets you engage with your current customers
If you already have a client base, digital marketing also helps maintain relationships with current customers. It equips businesses with the means to engage like email marketing, social media, and chatbot messaging. You must note that connecting with your customers on a personal level builds trust and loyalty.
- It lets you make informed decisions based on data
Back when businesses could only use print ads, it took weeks to months to see how successful campaigns were. But now with digital marketing, you can gain real-time insights that let you understand how well you’re performing. It gives you invaluable analytics that allows you to track user engagement with your campaigns. This helps you understand how well each campaign resonates with its target audience so that you can make changes quickly if needed.
- It lets you keep up with the competition
Yup, not all businesses leverage digital marketing. Those that do enjoy a unique advantage over their competitors by allowing them access to data about their target market. By understanding customer trends, interests, and buying habits, you can develop customized campaigns tailored to their target market instead of a general marketing strategy. Further to understanding what customers are saying about your company, you can also use digital marketing techniques to maintain the visibility of your brand.
But do startups need an online presence?
Yes, so let’s get into it.
Just in case you’re so new and asking what online presence is—it refers to any of your information and content that exists on the internet. Potential customers can learn more about who you are and what your business is through a strong online presence.
So, do startups need an online presence?
Absolutely! A solid online presence is crucial for any business, especially startups trying to establish themselves. Good visibility online is your key to success—and you’ll only get that through digital marketing. Let’s look at the benefits for you:
Why digital marketing is even more important for startups
Start-ups can benefit from digital marketing in many ways. Here are the most important reasons.
- Cost-effectiveness
Not all but generally startups often have limited budgets for marketing and advertising. Compared to traditional approaches such as television or print ads which can be costly, digital channels are cheaper (some are even free) to use. Also, you have more control over your budget since you can monitor your digital campaigns.
- Brand identity
There’s so much business out there, but your unique marketing helps you differentiate yourself from them. When you create a unique image that resonates with your target demographic, it’s easier to engage, establish credibility, and thus, build trust. It’s also worth noting that consistent visuals convey professionalism.
- Flexibility
Okay, you’re a start-up—but will you stay that way? Your goal is always to grow, right? So might as well prepare your marketing for when you scale up. And that’s the power of online marketing—digital marketing campaigns can be scaled up or down as needed, allowing you to adapt to changing business needs.
- Lead generation
Getting leads is critical in today’s startup world. With the internet, you can customize your lead generation and only use digital channels that fit your brand. Digital marketing provides many opportunities for lead generation like creating targeted content on social media platforms (for example if you’ll offer a free webinar).
Getting started with digital marketing
Before you jump into digital campaigns, it’s important to create an overall strategy for your digital marketing efforts. The first things to prepare include:
- setting goals for what you want to achieve with your campaigns
- determining who your target audience and understanding their pains, needs, and wants
- choosing the digital marketing channels to use
Website building and design
Your website is the foundation of your digital presence—it’s the hub of your digital marketing efforts. You should build and design so that it reflects your brand’s identity and gives visitors an engaging experience. Take note that it’s important to make sure your website is optimized for both desktops and mobiles and for search engine crawlers for maximum visibility.
Social media marketing
Statista estimates that there are 4.89 billion social media users worldwide today. That makes social media marketing definitely the way of the future when it comes to advertising and expanding your business. Instead of relying on expensive television and billboard ads, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter make it relatively cheap to promote your products and services to a much broader audience.
Content marketing
If you already own a website, then you know how it’s essential to drive traffic to your site. And this tactic that involves creating to sharing valuable content greatly helps in that. Content creation involves writing blog posts and creating infographics or videos. Any kind of content you create should always be high-quality and relevant to your target audience.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO helps your website rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs) when someone searches for terms related to your business or industry. It’s about getting more and more quality (and quantity) organic traffic to you from search engines. This usually involves search intent, keyword volumes, optimized titles, and headings.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Think organic traffic isn’t enough? Then give your marketing a boost using PPC ads. These ads are hosted by search engines like Google and calculated per click on your ad, so you only pay for the actual visits that you get. You can target potential customers and give you a higher conversion rate than other online advertising channels
But here is the best part—all these digital marketing services that are beneficial for startups are offered by BrightMinds digital marketing agency. And we understand that every brand is unique, so we only offer services tailored to our client’s needs
Should you still ask what digital marketing is for?
Startups today are being challenged in ways that never existed before. And there should be no doubt as to why digital marketing is important. Digital marketing can help you not just survive but thrive.
These are some digital marketing tactics to get you started—you should take advantage of the various ways they can be used strategically to get ahead.
- Social media marketing
- Website building and design
- Content marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
But, if you don’t think you have enough time, you don’t have to do it all alone. BrightMinds Digital Marketing Agency got your back. An experienced digital marketing team can make a big difference in the quality and success of your campaign when implementing your strategy.
Get in touch with us today so we can help bring your digital marketing vision.
