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By Maria Koblish

It’s no secret that launching a startup is a considerable risk that requires a lot of work. From product development to marketing to sales, executives have their hands full. In an ever-expanding tech-savvy industry, startup businesses must understand the vital role digital marketing plays in their success. 

Digital marketing is essential for any tech startup to get off the ground. Digital marketing efforts can have a direct impact on the following actions: 

• Increasing Brand Awareness
• Product Promotion
• Building an Audience
• Capturing Leads
• Acquiring Customers
• Sales

We have looked back on our work with leading tech companies and startups to ease this impending workload. Here are seven essential tips to help any tech startup with its digital marketing strategy.

1. Identify the Target Audience

There’s no better way to begin a list of digital marketing tips than here: defining the target audience. Step one of any business plan, marketing strategy, or PR activity starts with understanding who you’re speaking to. Start with generally defining — who is your audience? What are their demographics? Then you can get business-specific. How would this group benefit from your business? How would they research products online? How do they use social media? 

Marketing connects a business to its intended audience and entices them to interact with its product or service. Once you define that audience, the actual campaign can begin. 

2. SEO Optimization is Key

Keywords aid in search engine optimization (SEO) to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising; they act as the first step to bringing in target audiences and awareness to your startup. The more relevant the keywords are, the better your chance of bringing in that awareness and desired audience. 

How do you determine those keywords? Google is a handy and free tool that many marketers use. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and search away, but pay attention to Google’s predictive text suggestions, aka the “people also ask” and the “related search” features.

Along with gathering the correct keywords to use, be sure to: 

• Identify the funnel stage: Your keywords must differ for each potential customer at different sales funnel stages.
• Track existing similar content and keep your keywords organized: Don’t let two or more pages on your website target the same keyword because you will be competing against yourself, hurting your rankings.  
• Collect branded keywords: This is geared toward PPC ads: target branded keywords in your marketing campaign to differentiate yourself in the digital landscape. 

3. Monitor Competitors

While your competitors may seem like enemies, they can be your greatest asset. Here’s how to leverage their strategies for your benefit:

• Differentiate from competitors via messaging and content
• Review competitor case studies and learn what works for them
• Check their social media accounts to see what’s resonating with their audience 
• Review the content they are publishing 
• Identify their rank in terms of SEO, content, media coverage, and more

Everyone’s information is out there. You can use it to your advantage while maintaining the integrity of your business. 

4. Maintain an Optimized Website

Google is the driving force behind website optimization. It works off of algorithmic scanning to assess the quality of content to provide the most relevant content to the user. 

Google’s ranking system is activated by how long people stay on your site — the higher the quality, the higher the engagement, and the more optimized your site ranks in a keyword search. Knowing that makes it all the more important to play Google’s game and use the algorithm to your advantage. If you want to learn more about how SEO works, check out this blog post. 

Maintaining a quality website not only makes your business look better to the customer, but to the search engine as well. 

5. The Importance of Social Media

Today, globally, more than 4.74 billion people use social media. Your potential customers go on social media daily to interact with peers and favorite brands. It’s essential to position yourself through organic and paid social media as a key part of your audience’s online life. It will drive lead generation and create a sense of community. 

6. Keep an Active Blog

Prioritize keeping an active blog on your company website. Offer personal findings oriented towards your business, tips and tricks, and general content to support your audience during their time on your site. Demand Gen Report revealed that 47% of buyers viewed at least three to five pieces of content before they engaged with a sales rep, making the content you post essential. 

These blogs are a great asset on social media channels. Sharing blogs on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., increases traffic to your website and creates a community within your audience. Blogs can also help you to rank for more keywords on search engines, garnering more activity and lead generation. 

Staying on top of a blog on top of everything else that comes with launching a startup can be challenging, so getting all team members involved keeps the work dispersed and consistent.

7. Have a System to Track Results

It doesn’t matter how much work you put into your digital marketing strategy without one thing: analyzing the results. All the planning and execution in the world mean nothing without it. Ensure that you can measure the impact of your efforts on marketing channels like social media, email, search engines, and your website to track your startup’s growth. In another blog post, you can learn more about how UTM codes can help track results.   

 

The complexity of launching a startup continues after digital marketing. But prioritizing these practices can simplify the process, setting your business up to welcome impressive success and growth.