You just launched a startup and need to get your brand in front of as many eyes as possible. The problem is you are not just competing in your industry, you are competing with the millions of other marketing messages that consumers are bombarded with every day. Not only that, your bootstrapped startup does not have the funds to invest heavily into digital marketing. What’s an entrepreneur to do?
Fortunately, here are eight affordable (and invaluable) digital marketing tips for startups:
Related: Make Customers Fall in Love With Your Brand
Let’s talk social
Social media is one of the most cost effective ways to market your startup. In addition to providing a platform for growing your brand, it offers an easy medium for promotion and customer service opportunities.
1. Be frequent and consistent: Social media is a way for you to build your brand’s voice. You should not only post regularly, but there should be a uniformed identity to your posts. Additionally, do not over post or deviate from your brand’s message. Buffer App reports that the optimal number of posts to Facebook is between five and 10 times a week, Twitter is five tweets a day and LinkedIn and Google+ tied for one time a day.
2. It’s not about you, it’s about your customer: Most brands use their social media accounts only for promotional purposes. This is a failed strategy, as it provides no value to their followers.
Instead, find and share information that your customers want to see and occasionally mix in your promoted content.
3. Engage with your followers: Social media is a way for your startup to interact with current and future customers. Leverage your followers and make them feel like valuable members of your brand.
Also do not be afraid of social confrontation, approach any complaint as an opportunity to show your brand’s customer-service capabilities.
Lastly, do not hide from failures, you are a startup and are bound to face some hurdles along the way. Strategically approach these as opportunities to win over customers with good customer service and express your brand’s long-term vision as frequently as possible.
Related: Actually, Facebook Isn’t Failing Brands and Marketers
4. Try small investments into the platforms: There are a number of different social opportunities that you can invest in — all of which have merit depending on the industry and your unique selling proposition. Experiment with the below options and see what warrants the best ROI for your startup.
- Pay-to-play on Facebook: Facebook is steadily becoming a pay-to-play platform, and if you want to see any engagement you will need to invest into promoting your Facebook posts.
- Sponsored tweets: While Twitter still provides a good amount of organic engagement, the microblogging platform also has paid solutions for businesses, with one being sponsored tweet. By providing a sponsored tweet, higher engagement will most likely occur with followers (and others).
- LinkedIn’s premium services: LinkedIn has a number of extremely valuable paid features, including a Sales Navigator that makes finding leads and contacts seamless. Best of all, you can try the service free for a month.
