Digital Marketing Strategy Guide for Scaling Up Your Startup in 2023
We hope our co-working guides have helped you choose the ideal co-working place, wherever you may be based in the UK! Now that you have got that out of the way, it is time to think strategically about your business goals, especially considering the importance of marketing in modern day society. So, we’ve put together a little digital marketing strategy guide to help you scale up your startup and navigate the competitive landscape of today’s market.
What is a digital marketing strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how your business will achieve its marketing goals via online channels like search and social media. Most strategy plans will summarise which online channels and digital marketing tactics you will use, plus how much you will invest in these channels and tactics. Establishing a digital marketing strategy is critical; without it, you don’t have a map for achieving its goals.
What is a digital marketing campaign?
A digital marketing campaign involves executing a marketing strategy across all the digital channels where consumers engage with a brand, usually to improve a company’s conversion rate.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy
1. Outline your strategy
It can be broken down into four main components: business goals, audience, market research, and budget.
- Set S.M.A.R.T. goals
Use specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals to guide your strategy. Think about your start-up’s short- and long-term goals for growth. When starting a new business, it is essential to introduce yourself to your potential customers. You have to tell people who you are, what you do, and what sets you apart from everyone else. If you choose to prioritise brand awareness, your marketing strategy might involve getting people to recognise your brand name, logo, or products. Suppose you also choose to make acquiring new customers a priority. In that case, you’ll need to develop a marketing strategy using effective calls to action that grab people’s attention and make them want to engage with your business. Many start-ups and even successful companies get help from SEO agencies like Tactica when trying to build a strong digital marketing strategy. With SEO link building, web development, and other SEO services they offer, SEO agencies keep up with industry trends so they can provide the latest strategies and approaches to ensure that your startup is seen by more potential customers than ever before.
- Market research
To give your new start-up a great chance, take time to thoroughly research other products on the market and gauge interest from your potential customers. Once you’ve determined there is enough demand to sustain your business, you can start thinking about how you’ll tell your target audience about all the great stuff you have to offer.
- Define your target audience
Ask yourself the following to choose your target audience: What makes you unique? Why would a customer choose you over your competitors? Would your product be more beneficial to businesses of a certain size or within a particular industry?
- Budget
Spend wisely! Think about your goals and focus your spending on the channels to help you achieve them. For reference, most businesses spend £2,500 to £12,000 per month on online marketing.
2. Reach your audience on the right channels
Pick the best strategies for your business. Focus on the techniques that offer the most value for your company and industry. These can be:
- SEO is the process of improving your website to rank highly in search engine results for keywords and phrases related to your business. The more keywords you rank for and the higher you rank, the more people will see and become familiar with your website and business.
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising relies on bidding on keywords you want your ads to show up. Your ad triggers when a user’s search includes your keyword. These ads appear at the top of search results, above organic listings. If a user decides to click on your advertisement, you pay for that click.
- Content marketing (e.g., videos, blog posts, infographics) provides valuable information to your target audience, increases traffic, and generates conversions. From a technical standpoint, content marketing also focuses on optimising your content for search engines to improve your visibility in search results.
- Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective online marketing strategies available. A core part of email marketing is developing and refining your campaigns and growing your audience. Like content marketing, email marketing also focuses on providing users with valuable information and personalised content, like product coupons, that keep them coming back.
- Social media marketing aims to increase brand awareness and conversions and build and maintain your company’s reputation. That is why social media marketing focuses on creating informational and promotional content, plus interacting with users on various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat.
3. Measure the success of your start-up marketing campaigns
Monitor and measure the performance of your strategies by tracking their performance. Use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads to keep a pulse on your strategies and their return on investment (ROI).
Startups That Are Killing It with Their Digital Marketing Campaigns
To help you get started, we have added this bonus section of 3 companies that are absolutely killing their digital marketing strategy. They are not just doing digital marketing; they create experiences and content that captivate their audiences and bring outstanding brand awareness!
TALA
Founded by fitness influencer Grace Beverley, TALA’s sustainable activewear brand has brought affordable and sustainable options to the activewear market. Grace keeps customers engaged with brand updates, launches, discounts and engaging posts on her IG account, which have contributed significantly to the brand’s startling success.
Kylie Cosmetics
Kylie Cosmetics In less than 3 years, Kylie Jenner has built a $900 million cosmetics empire and that’s mainly due to her fantastic marketing strategy. Here’s how: she knew her audience (Millennials and Gen Z) and how to target them, she used social media (Snap Chat and Instagram stories) as a tool to gauge customer approval and using paid social media influencers.
Puggy Smalls
What a greater way of generating revenue than letting your poochie do the work? Puggy Smalls is a pet influencer born and bred in Kent and best known for appearing out of numerous things such as office drawers. Puggy has an Instagram following of over 210K and over a billion views network-wide and is featured on Australia’s Channel 7 and The Telegraph. In 2018, Puggy Smalls helped a superfan get engaged by wearing an engagement ring box on his back, surprising the couple in a London park. Nick Ettridge, Puggy’s owner, became Puggy’s full-time manager about two years ago, and they both live off paid sponsorship deals and social media adverts.
Conclusion
A well-planned and executed digital marketing strategy can help startups to scale up their business. By defining your target audience, building a strong brand identity, optimizing your website, leveraging social media, using email marketing, optimizing for SEO, and using content marketing, startups can effectively reach and engage with their target audience, build their brand reputation, and ultimately drive sales.
