#4 Digital Marketing Tips for Startups in Early Stages Develop a content strategy and follow it consistently to engage your audience. Don't always talk about the product features and benefits rather talk about the user's benefits in that piece of content.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Startups have limited funds during the bootstrapping stage. One of their crucial goal is to woo the investors so that they can market and grow their product or service. In order to justify their reach, digital presence is an important factor to consider these days. Here are some ways by which one can leverage digital marketing and social media to grow their business.
1) Make Real Fans (Don't buy the fake one's out there)
Social media is a great channel to raise your brand's voice, but when you choose to go for fake likes (Gigs like 20k followers on Instagram/Facebook at Fiverr) it remains unheard. If most of the followers are fake then even publishing the best of your posts will hardly get noticed by anyone. Most social media platforms serve as ad/post to a group of people who follow your page (not all the users) but if they turn out to be fake users and no engagement is involved, these platforms will not spread the post to the next batch, hence lowering the reach for subsequent posts as well.
2) Focus On Your Target Customers
At the beginning, it is obvious for startups to get overexcited and reach out to everyone. However, as exciting as it may sound it is very important to stay focused on your target audience segment which is likely to give you business.
If you don't narrow down your market according to your niche, your message will reach a larger irrelevant audience which is unlikely to grab their attention and thus it will not meet your intended goals. For example, if you are a brand selling stationary products and your audience is set to everyone, that way you might get some sales but not as many as you expected. It's wise for you to segment the target customers according to age, region, gender etc. to maximize the returns of your digital marketing campaigns. Instead of attracting random customers, you should reach out to people who will help you meet your short-term goals i.e. your immediate reachable customers.
Tip - A business which has just started and don't have a large customer base can target custom and lookalike audiences in Facebook marketing.
3) Engage Your Audience
They say, marketing should not look like you are doing marketing. Your posts need not be always business centric, engaging your audience is a more important job. Run unique contests with few giveaways, do Q&A sessions for a better interaction, tag relevant people in the curated content, ask your audience interesting questions using creative graphics, convey information using infographics etc. We have seen visual communications play a great deal in engaging your audience.
Tip - UGC or User Generated Content is an excellent way to showcase brand's connection with the audience. When your customers/users contribute to the content on your page, they're likely to engage their friends too.
4) Content Is Still The King
There's no denying in the fact that content is still the king but people tend to undermine it time and again. While developing the content keep these things in mind:
- What is relevant in your industry?
- What is your target market?
- Who are your existing customers?
Develop a content strategy and follow it consistently to engage your audience. Don't always talk about the product features and benefits rather talk about the user's benefits in that piece of content. If the content is not clear and messages not well-formulated, you will undoubtedly struggle to communicate with the targeted audience. Someone truly said, "Content is the reason the search began".
