If you’ve recently started your own business, developing a strong online presence will likely be the key to your success – it can help gain rapid exposure without the need for enormous advertising budgets and can offer a plethora of marketing opportunities that can reach potential clients quickly and easily.
Digital Marketing, which includes the use of social media for business promotion among many other online tools and strategies, is the perfect starting point for startups because it can be cheap (even free!) and is easy to scale alongside the growth of your business.
Whether your startup is finding its feet or established and looking to expand, follow these 7 steps for online business growth:
#1 Make Social Media your Go-To Marketing Tool
Timescale: Immediate results with regular posting
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a must for modern entrepreneurs as it’s a low-cost (and often even free) marketing tool that combines networking with persuasive copy, Search Engine Optimization and captivating imagery for more visual businesses. According to HubSpot, social media is the number one tool businesses and professional marketers are utilizing in 2023 and currently boasts the highest Return on Investment (ROI) marketing method.
The best thing about SMM is that it can be entirely free if you don’t want to invest in paid or sponsored ads. That means you can raise brand awareness and interact with potential clients without spending a penny of your marketing budget via platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Threads and TikTok. And don’t forget the professional aspect of brand-building via LinkedIn, too!
#2 Utilize Social Media’s Customer-facing Features
Timescale: Immediate results with plenty of customer interaction
Building a business from scratch is hard, and the most difficult thing is often building trust in your brand. Social media makes that easy, allowing you to reach out to your audience, provide informed and compelling content and establish a relationship where their confidence in you and your business blooms.
Facebook is great for interaction as it houses one of the largest user bases for both B2B and B2C businesses, with full-funnel targeting and a range of ways to engage. Instagram is the second-largest platform for digital marketing as you can be easily discovered using hashtags and is an incredibly visual platform if your brand uses a particular aesthetic to attract clients.
#3 Use A/B Testing
Timescale: Up to a month to gather data and implement changes
A/B Testing is an experimental marketing technique used to determine your audience’s preferences and see which tactic converts better. It involves running two different versions of an email campaign, web page or advertisement, for example, to see which performs better. The analytical data can then inform you on how to interact with your potential leads more effectively, including things like preferred tone of voice and what your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) should look like.
#4 Make Search Engines Your Friend
Timescale: 3–6 Months
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the process used to convince search engines into ranking you higher, making your business easily findable. What many startups don’t realise, though, is that SEO isn’t just a factor on your website or online shop, it should be considered across all of your digital marketing strategies, including social media and blogs.
Search Engine Optimisation includes things like identifying and using keywords in all of your writing, creating high-quality copy and content, producing accurate and descriptive metadata and much more.
By implementing a strong SEO strategy, your business (and, in particular, your website) could generate more leads in a shorter timeframe as it will increase your search engine visibility.
#5 Build a Brand
Timescale: Indefinite
While the notion of building a brand for businesses big and small is something relatively new, large-scale corporations have been using branding in their marketing for years. The term branding encapsulates an entire business’ identity and personality and includes anything that makes them recognisable – from its colour palette and logo to its specific Tone of Voice.
Building a brand that resonates with your customers has many benefits, the most obvious of which being trust and loyalty. Developing a sense of trust in your brand will help create new leads, while loyalty will help maintain your client base and audience.
#6 Make everything Mobile
Timescale: Less than a month
According to Statista, the average adult Brit spent over 4 hours per day on their mobile in 2022, and we’re statistically more likely to use our mobile phone’s search engine to find a business or service than a laptop.
No matter how big or small your business is, you can’t afford to miss out on the market of mobile users.
Social media is, undoubtedly, one of the most mobile-friendly digital marketing options, but it’s incredibly important not to forget about optimising your website or online shop for mobile use too. While it can be a time-consuming process, designing a mobile-friendly website will prevent potential clients from leaving your website if the layout doesn’t present correctly.
#7 Don’t Underestimate the Power of Blogging
Timescale: Ongoing
There’s a reason why 90% of businesses use blogging as a part of their overall marketing strategy.
Blogging is usually part of a much broader Content Marketing Strategy, which is used to create insightful, informative and relevant content to attract a particular audience (i.e. your ICP).
Blogging is a clever way to increase site traffic by answering questions that your ideal customers may have about your product or service, and allows you to feature your SEO keywords and techniques in longer-form content. By presenting your wealth of knowledge on your specialist subject, you’re also continuing to build trust in your brand, while increasing your chances of appearing higher on search engines.
How quickly will your start-up business grow by implementing these key points?
The results rely on many additional factors, such as whether you’ve truly pinpointed your ideal customer, if you’re using the correct keywords for SEO purposes, if you have enough of a presence on social media and more.
If you have established all of these features, however, there’s no reason your startup can’t see notable growth within 6 months of implementing a comprehensive Digital Marketing and Social Media strategy. Once you have started the implementation of your new strategy, however, remember these 3 keywords… Analytics, analytics, analytics.
Credit to supporting data sources
Hubspot.com
Statista.com
Contentmarketinginstitute.com