From 1990, when the term Digital Marketing was invented and used for the first time, till today; it has undergone a paradigm shift to become the buzzword in marketing. 

Any business today, traditional or contemporary cannot ignore digital marketing alongside traditional marketing practices. The same applies to Start-Ups which nowadays are on the wish-list of almost every professional.

A Start-Up is a new project or company the focus of which is on a single product or service. Most of the Start-Ups are initially funded by their founders, have high costs and limited revenue. To move to the next logical step, the founders look for capital from a variety of sources such as venture capitalists. 

If you too wish to launch your Start-Up and are contemplating whether Digital Marketing is the way to go forward, this article will help you to decide.

So, let us delve right in and discuss the benefits of Digital Marketing for a Start-Up.

1. Advantages over traditional marketing

For a Start-Up, the budget is limited and has to be used optimally. It has to not only compete with other start-ups but with older businesses as well in reaching customers and earning revenue.

For a Start-Up, digital marketing offers various advantages over traditional marketing:

• Lower Costs

Compared to the cost involved in various aspects of traditional marketing such as radio, print and television advertisements, direct mailers, telemarketing, cost of marketing agencies and so on; digital marketing is way more inexpensive. 

The change in digital marketing spending and traditional advertising in the US, according to CMOs  is indicated in the below chart

                Source

• Inexpensive Customer Research

Traditional marketers spend fortunes on customer research to understand what their customer wants.  While a Start-Up through digital marketing can use technology to monitor, track and interpret buying behavior and save a lot too.

• Easy to Track

Compared to traditional marketing and advertising, digital marketing activities are easy to track. The marketing efforts on digital channels such as social media, search engines, email and websites can be tracked and the results easily measured. Based on the results, the marketing strategies can be improved and finetuned continuously.  

2. Optimizing through SEO 

Almost every business today invests in a well-designed website. But a website even with great content alone does not translate into visitors. 

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. Using SEO, your website can rank high in search results, when a potential customer searches for the keyword related to your product or service. It can also help to conduct keyword research, track Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking and provide a competitive analysis vis-à-vis your competitors. 

Since for a Start-Up, doing SEO can prove to be a challenging as well as time-consuming task, a professional SEO company can be engaged with to deliver the desired outcome. 

According to a list of SEO statistics for 2021 by an SEO Agency, 61% of marketers believe that SEO is the key to online success.

3. The allure of social media marketing

When more than half of the world’s population used social media, it is sure to be taken advantage of for your marketing. 

Source

Among the numerous social media platforms, a Start-up needs to focus on the ones where its potential customers hang out the most. Once the right social media channels have been identified, a social media marketing strategy needs to be developed. 

Some of the strategies to connect to your potential customers and convert in business are:

• Start with identifying and building your target customer persona
• Creating and posting high-quality content regularly
• More usage of visuals and videos as they attract higher engagement
• Sharing industry-specific content with followers
• Consistency in messaging 
• Investing in paid advertisements to reach a wider audience

4. Content is the key

Content is still the king and personalized content is going one step further. In comparison to traditional means of marketing, content marketing is a relatively cheap way to market a product or service continuously. 

For a start-up, this can be beneficial, cost-effective and easy using digital marketing. Following are some ideas on content strategy for start-ups:

• Regularly updated Blogs

Though the frequency of blogs, varies from business to business, but according to HubSpot, companies that published 16 blog posts monthly got 4.5 times more leads than those with zero to four posts. 

Blogs should not only be informational. Ensure to create some blogs that solve problems for your audience. Guest blogging on other industry websites is also a good strategy to gain access to a wider audience. 

• Other than blogs, using various other forms of content is advisable. Infographics, GIFs, Memes, images and webinars should all be a part of the content strategy of a start-up.
• Create Content that can go viral and creates a buzz about your product. For a start-up, it is like icing on the cake. Hilarious and sometimes even weird content can go viral.
• Use content that supports your SEO and SMO efforts

5. Employing a multi-device strategy 

According to the Digital 2021: Global Overview Report, 9 out of 10 internet users go online via a smartphone, and two-thirds also use a laptop or desktop to access the internet. 

The data may also vary based on various factors such as country to country, economic development and the median age of the population. Baby Boomers and internet users aged 45 years and above are more likely to prefer computers and tablets over smartphones to go online.

Source 

So, a Start-Up must formulate a multi-device strategy. Their websites must be mobile-friendly as mobile searches now constitute a larger portion of searches than desktop searches. Using digital marketing, it becomes easy to adopt a multi-device strategy.

6. Re-targeting

A potential customer may not be convinced about your product or service, the first time they visit your website. They may sometimes need another reminder about your newly launched product or service. 

This can be achieved by convincing them a second time by using Retargeting advertisements. It is a means of marketing in which relevant ads are shown to those who previously visited your website. 

Effective retargeting has the potential of reviving interest in your product or services among the visitors who had previously visited your website. The chance of conversion rate is high as the visitor is already aware of your product or service.

Although one needs to be careful of not nudging them beyond reason, else it can get irritating. 

Decide for yourself 

To sum it up, digital marketing offers numerous advantages for a start-up. The primary ones which we discussed are as below:

• Reduce their marketing budget
• Better visibility and higher ranking by way of SEO
• Improved customer engagement using multi-device strategy
• Better brand awareness by using social media marketing
• Curated content for a richer interaction
• Retargeting previous customers 

A start-up is your baby and you will do everything in your capacity to make it successful. We hope that this blog has been of help to you in taking forward your start-up towards its first milestone into a unicorn.