Digital marketing for startups offers exciting new prospects and opportunities for entrepreneurs, but it comes with its own set of problems to master and overcome. Maybe you need to build an e-mail list or a strong social media following, but you don’t have the necessary reach. Or maybe you need to figure out what your audience and prospective customers want, but you don’t know who they are yet.
From keyword research to buyer personas, there’s a lot to master when it comes to digital marketing for startups. The rewards are more than worth it, however, because they give entrepreneurs access to a global audience. We talked to Kate Proykova of the digital marketing firm Hop Online to get some advice on how to construct a digital marketing strategy when just starting out in business.
The first step of a content marketing strategy is building brand awareness. What are some ways a business owner might go about this when just starting out?
Brand awareness takes a while to monetize; which is why for businesses that are just starting, we recommend aiming at something that brings more immediate results and is easier to measure, such as web traffic.
For a successful content marketing strategy (that’ll drive in traffic to the site), we recommend that marketers start with buyer persona research (to know their potential users even before they’ve realized their need) and keyword analysis (to identify the search intent. The web traffic comes first by promoting the content to the target audience through social media, and second via ranking organically in search results. Once the traffic starts coming to the website, marketers can focus more on their brand.
Digital marketing is essential to help to raise a brand’s organic reach. Why is this important for a brand that’s just starting out?
Startups need to create a strong online presence and find early adopters in order to survive (here, you can find real-life examples of early user acquisition strategies). They should begin building their brand awareness early since it’s a slow process that won’t give you results overnight. The formula is simple: the more useful resources you provide for your visitors (e.g. how-to articles to help solve users’ problems), the better they know you and the more they trust you. Becoming a well-known brand, even if you operate in a niche market, is very hard to achieve and requires time and expertise.
One of our clients, for instance, came to us with a weak online presence but invested in content marketing services, and within 3 months started seeing a gradual increase in their traffic. Four blog articles per month helped them double their traffic within a year. Three years later, they’re seeing 10X more traffic and have upped the number of premium blog articles to six in order to keep the growth speeding up.
How can the owner of a startup decide what content their audience will find valuable and useful?
The best starting point for identifying useful content is the customers’ pain points; solutions to problems that the users are facing is the best type of content you can create. In addition to that, they should do some:
- Keyword research (find the exact keywords users type in the search field in Google)
- Topic research (find the different aspects of a search, e.g. when searching for “WordPress themes” you might be interested in how to install them, where to find them, how to change them, etc.)
- Competitor research (checking out what type of content competitors share and rank for) to best pinpoint their audience’s needs.
Another use of content marketing is to increase website authority. How can a business owner find out what is trending in their industry to create popular content?
Some of the best ideas for content come via real cases with your clients, so I’d say client communication is one of the best resources for trending topic ideas.
For example, we’ve recently had a couple of clients whose sites had a lot of content, but their traffic was decreasing. The reason behind that was a combination of factors: increase in mobile use (where they weren’t strong enough), relatively poor UX, and lack of social media presence. Users’ search behavior is changing and even high authority sites experience difficulties because they aren’t up to date with the latest trends. Creating content where we explain these issues and offer solutions to them is the type of trending content that will make a difference.
Do you have any advice on how to steer potential customers towards research & comparison?
In order to steer visitors into the research and comparison phase, you should write about their pain points and the solutions you’re offering. The more targeted your message is, the better. For example, instead of giving general advice on time tracking app features, you can write a blog post on time management solutions for lawyers.
What are some analytics a business owner can look at to get an insight into their audience’s behavior and needs? How might a brand translate these insights into new, useful content?
If the business is already operating, customer communication would be the best resource for ideas for useful content. Companies should also check their web analytics and see which keywords are bringing the most traffic to the website, which landing pages have the highest conversion rates, what their overall bounce rate is, and which pages have the highest bounce rates.
To maximize the effectiveness of a digital marketing strategy, a keyword list is highly useful. You’ve talked about “review mining” for pertinent keywords. Can you talk about review mining and how it can be used as part of a content marketing strategy?
Review mining works like this: if you’re planning on offering digital marketing services for startups, you want to know what the biggest problems startups have when it comes to digital marketing. So you search for an interesting and popular book on startups, e.g. The Lean Startup, then visit its Amazon page and read what people have to say (like “Even more practical than I thought it would be”) and you can make your conclusion. Startups need practical advice. This way you can come up with ideas on what people value in content, and what they are not happy about, what other information they are looking for and cannot find.
What advice do you have for a startup that is just starting to build their customer base to build a loyal audience? How might they go about building their e-mail lists and social media audience?
I’d advise on working on premium types of content – not just a single article, but a full tutorial or how-to guide. This type of content can be used both for lead generation and search traffic attraction. Premium content is also performing well in social media. You’ll definitely need a lot of content, but start with one piece and you’ll see for yourself.
How might a startup go about blending digital marketing with getting involved in their local market? Why is this important especially starting out?
Being a local leader is now strongly dependent on your digital marketing efforts. People use their mobile phones all day long for services that are “near,” like “food near me,” “emergency dentist nearby,” and “store near me”. Your local business needs digital marketing efforts to be there in front of the users when they search on the go on their smartphone. So if you’re just starting, focus on mobile and local.
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