Online Marketing is one of the crucial methods that can catapult your small business or startup easily and makes it successful in a fairly short time period. Proper use of Online Marketing Strategy leads to increment in sales, generating more revenue and business growth. That’s why having knowledge of the marketing strategies for startups is kind of compulsory for an entrepreneur(also for small businessmen too).
How to invest money in a proper manner so it gives maximum benefit to the business is something that every Businessman/woman tries to achieve. Marketing is not only about spending money but utilizing it effectively to make more money. There are some online marketing plans that help businesses to grow without costing a single penny.
There are different reasons that you should plan your business strategies, some of them are:
- To have a clear roadmap of how you are going to promote your business.
- To help you visualize the challenges that you will face and how to deal with them.
- helps to plan different channels for the promotion of your online business.
There are numerous benefits of Marketing strategies but the point I want to convey is that it gives a special stand to your business from other competitors. That’s why you should start doing work on your marketing strategies.
Top 24 Online Marketing Strategies for Startups and small business
Not every Entrepreneur is a master in online business tactics and understanding the online marketing term ain’t that difficult as well. That’s why I made this online marketing tactics guide that will improve your business. Also, the knowledge of basic marketing strategies for startups and small businesses that you will gain will help you in your different business endeavors in the future.
- Research on your products/services/niche and also your competitors
- Creating a Marketing Plan after research
- Target only relevant audience and niche
- SEO rules the Digital Marketing world
- Create a Business Card and Brochure
- Do some marketing of your products before its ready
- Take feedback from customers
- Listen to your customer’s queries and act on them
- Special discount retains your existing customers
- Collaborate with your niche community
- Start conversation with Local influencers
- Email marketing is still valuable and matters a lot
- Take benefit of video platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, etc
- Provide the same features as your competitors to customers in low budget
- Strong Products need strong calls
- Understand the power of Social Media and learn how to utilize it
- Create eye-catching Blogs or Posts
- Identify the best timing to promote your business
- Free trails always attract people
- Run an online survey
- Hire Marketing consultants, Copywriters, Sales Managers, Digital Marketing agencies, etc.
- Be Professional and build your own brand
1) Research on your Products/Services and also your competitors
Starting an online business isn’t an easy task when you have a limited budget and resources – We all know that!
The only thing you got unlimited before startup is time. The basic principle of marketing is to know your products.
The more you understand about your product the better it will reflect in your sales and marketing.
First thing first – Make a list of all the things that you will need to research.
For research, there are many paid and free online tools for market research available that help you to find out which product or services are on-trend?
How many people are looking for your products or services?
Are people even interested in that product which you are going to sell?
Without understanding the products or services you are going to offer the customers could ruin your capital, time and reputation as well.
Also, you shouldn’t forget our competitors as well because they are doing the business already which you are going to start. They might know all the benefits and cons of those products/services. First, find out your competition and know their products that surely one of the basic marketing strategies for startups.
2) Creating a Marketing Plan after Research
After research now its time to make an innovative marketing strategy that actually works for your business and boosts it.
Things you have to do for it-:
Pick the research list that you made earlier (at first point) and mark top-selling products or services that can give you more benefits compared to other products.
Also, don’t forget to target those products who are barely selling by your competitors. A product like this make a special stand for your startup among all your competitors and increase the chance to be popular.
Always make a backup of your existing marketing plan because if your first marketing tactic wouldn’t work out then it saves your time to make another marketing strategy.
“Time is Money” and you shouldn’t forget that while doing online marketing for startups.
3) Target only your niche relevant audience
Always target only that audience that is relevant to your niche because it is more beneficial for your business rather than targeting other niches.
It saves your time, energy and money too which you need extremely in startups.
There are tons of groups on social networking sites (like Facebook) that are related to your products and have tons of users who are using or want to use the products you are selling.
By this method, you easily know how many people are interested in the products or services you are offering and then you can easily target them.
Targeting your niche-related audience is easy because of the number of people that is interested in your products or services. Focusing on other niches only wastes your time and you might lose that audience that can buy your products.
For example, If you selling mobile phones then you should focus on a person who wants to buy a phone. But if you are focusing on that customer who is interested in the laptop then you are just wasting your time on that customer.
4) SEO rules the Digital Marketing world
Creating your own website and optimizing it with SEO is the prime tactics in Digital Marketing strategies that experts use for startups. For this, you must have a website. If you already running a website than just start optimizing it with SEO and if you don’t have a website then you can create it easily with any CMS platforms without any headache.
What are the benefits of SEO?
SEO helps to ranks higher your webpage or website on search engines that increase the organic traffic on your website.
If you want to generate real leads and queries for your startup, you need to work with the best marketing agencies in Atlanta. Look for past experience in your industry’s niche, and ask them for past work credentials.
The benefit of this is conversion rates increase so does revenues.
If you know how to do SEO then it cost nothing and boosts traffic on your website.
For an Entrepreneur, who is running an E-commerce website optimizing the website with SEO is a must to do a thing. Because of SEO, you can double, triple or even quadruple your website traffic easily.
5) Create an Online Business Card and Brochure
A business card is an identity of any company that should contain the giver’s name, company name, address, contact info, and logo as well.
It is created on a single or multiple static websites (even dynamic websites too) with limited information.
Why online Business card and Brochure is important for Entrepreneurs?
Online business cards or Digital business cards are very important to make engagements for those people who are already searching for your business details. Also, it’s very important in offline business too or if you do mostly business face to face because if someone doesn’t have your contact details they can google it.
Online Brochure is a great way to present your products or services digitally.
Visitors or your existing customers can look at the products or services that you are offering and takes decisions easily.
“First impression is the last impression” that’s why always make an attractive and eye-catching digital business card and brochure for your customers.
6) Do some marketing of your product before it is ready
If you are thinking to wait to do your product marketing online and offline until your product ready then it can prove to be a bad decision. Here are some reasons why you should start marketing your product before its ready:
- Doing Marketing before your production-ready saves the time that you can use later on other important works.
- Pre-marketing of your products or services give a hint of your product’s popularity and consumption.
- If your product or services are not getting good reviews by people then modification/changes/Update is easy compared to after the production of products or services.
Marketing your products or services before releasing is pretty much smart work and it creates awareness of your product or services.
Ways to do Pre-marketing with digital technology
- Optimize your website with SEO
- Run paid ads on top search engines like Google, Bings, etc.
- Use Social Media to create awareness of your products and people engagement
- Create Flying Broucher
- Email Marketing, etc.
7) Take feedback on your products or services
G.S. Alag said-“Satisfied customer is the best source of advertisement” and it’s definitely true.
Taking feedback from your customers helps you to understand more about your products like required changes, pros, and cons, etc. If your customers didn’t like your products or services then know the reason behind it. Otherwise, someone else will do and you’ll lose a customer.
Give an option of feedback on your website so users can give their valuable opinion on your products or services.
Using feedback openly is a sign of trust and an open relationship between Seller and customer. A relation like this also preferred by Search engines and gives a boost to your website’s pages.
If you are running a startup and your customers are happy with your products/services then trust me you are doing a great job.
Because a happy customer always gets back to that company where he gets the best offer. Also, he/she suggest your products or services to their known ones too.
8) Listen to your customer’s queries and act on them
Occasionally customers have some queries which need to be solved.
Solving their questions might bring the sale of that particular product. That’s why you should always listen to your customer’s queries when you are in the early phase of your business.
This marketing strategy helps to build a bond with your customers and grow your business.
For example, the Customer drops the queries related to the product on your website’s comment/feedback section or another website like Quora. Start listening to their queries and try to provide a satisfying answer. Every satisfying solution can bring a customer to you.
Difference between Customer Feedback and Query
Customer queries and feedback are two different things.
Customer queries refer to some question which is related to buying your product or curiosity about your product.
Where customer feedback is only given by the customer when they buy the product and use it.
9) Special discount retains your existing customers
Giving discounts to your customers is one of the old tactics that is used by business-man to retain their customers.
Once they get attached to your offers they look occasionally for this type of offer. You can gives this type of offer on your E-commerce website and highlight the percentage of discounts you are providing.
Two main things a customer always check when a business website gives a discount:
- Product features and reviews
- Price and given discount
For an entrepreneur, it is compulsory to express the features of the product and clearly mention the discount when you offer a discount on products.
10) Collaborate with your niche online community
A community is normally known as the group of people who share the same interest in a particular product or service.
Collaborating with these communities and building trust with them can give a boost to your startup.
Things to look for in the best online community
- The total amount of people
- Total number of active users
- Related queries, etc.
Once you build trust and authority in a community then you can easily influence the people to use your products or services you are offering without facing any lags.
11) Start conversation with Local influencers
Who are Influencers:– influencers are those people who have strong connections in an area. People give value to their opinions and follow their advice.
If you just started a startup then collaborating with Local influencers can help to grow your business very fast.
Local Influencer can create your brand awareness in their followers and that proves to be the best pre-marketing strategy that boosts your business.
12) E-Mail marketing is still valuable and matters a lot
E-mail marketing is one of the oldest methods that are used by marketers from long times. Somehow, some marketer stops giving importance to E-mail marketing but still if you consult with experts they will suggest you add this strategy too into your strategy list.
What exactly is E-mail Marketing?
In E-mail marketing, An Individual or company makes a list of their customers/subscriber email id and then sends their running & upcoming offers through email.
There is some software like MailChimp that provides free and paid e-mail marketing services so you can use it to grow your business.
13) Take benefit of video platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, etc
Youtube is the second most popular website that is used by users after Google.
If you go through the Youtube stats it might surprise you for sure.
Youtube also plays an important role in the digital marketing of any startup because people prefer visual communication more compared to any other way of communication.
You might be thinking about how youtube helps business. Let me clear your doubt first.
On Youtube, you can create your business online channel and can upload useful videos of your product or services on it. Several more things you can do on Youtube:
- You can launch your product on Youtube.
- Promotion on Youtube is easy and cheap.
- You can solve people’s doubts about your products.
- Making of How-to videos also engage more people that can easily convert into customers.
14) Provide the same features as your competitors to customers in low budget
Providing high features in the costly budget won’t always work out when you are running a business that is just on the starting phase.
For an Entrepreneur/Small businessman it is a must understand a thing that if you want to give a tough competition to your competitors then you have to provide the same product or services(try to provide more features on that product) at a low price.
People prefer mostly that product which is under their budget and gives high feature compared to other products. You should go with the same mentality and start thinking like a customer.
Highlighting your products or services features and prices make a huge effect on people’s mind and you can share that with the help of digital technologies.
15) Strong products need strong calls
Making strong calls of the product is a great way to shows your confidence in your product. The more you show confidence in your product the more it will make an impact on people’s minds.
For example, you have an amazing product/service that can give you more sales then you should invest more of your time and energy into that. It doesn’t matter how amazing the product or service you have without proper marketing it can’t give you that profit which you expected.
Running ads, Creating a flying brochure, email marketing, social media, and some other digital marketing plans can be helpful for a strong call of your products or services.
16) Understand the power of Social Media and learn how to utilize it
Having a presence in Social Media platforms gives a huge benefit to your small business or startups.
Billions of people use social media every day and if you are in connection with your niche people on social media that can drive traffic(customers) to your E-commerce website.
How to take the benefits of social media platforms for business?
- Create an appearance on social media sites(like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc) by creating an account by brand name.
- Provide full information about your business so people can find your business easily.
- Connect with your business niche pages, groups, peoples, and community.
- Try to solve regular active users’ queries daily.
- Share your products or services features and other information on your account.
- Try to reach more people every day.
Investing in social media community management might just be one of the best decisions you will ever take on behalf of your business. Social media can help drive awareness, generate visibility, help you reach target audiences, and drive sales to your business.
17) Create eye-catching blogs and posts
For engaging more people with your business creating eye-catching blogs and posts is an amazing lean startup marketing plan which is used to bind customers.
You can write amazing blogs on your business niche or create visual content like images, infographics, and videos too.
Don’t forget to use your product or service into blogs or content.
What exactly is eye-catching blogs and posts mean?
Eye-catching blogs and posts simply mean if you are writing blogs that it must be grammar and spelling error-free. Using an attractive color combination in images and infographics grab the attention of users.
18) Identify the best timing to promote your business
A businessman must know what exactly time is best to promote their business on different platforms otherwise it can prove to be a waste of money and time.
Like if you want to promote your products or services on social media sites you must know which time users are more actives so more people can see your offers.
Every social media platform has different timing to post or share your content.
Once you know which timing has more active users on which social media platform then you can save plenty of time and can invest that on other works.
19) Free trials, Discount coupons always attract peoples
Free trials mean that a paid product or service is given to users for a specific time period with limited features.
Usually, people like to purchase those products or services which they used earlier.
Also, giving free trials attract people to use your products or services and once they liked your product possibility of a sale of your product/services increased.
For example, there are many top companies that provide free use of their product or services for a short time and after this, they charge an amount.
Providing special discount coupons on a product also increases the probability of sale of that product/service.
20) Run an online survey
The online survey helps to understand a businessman that what people do think about a product and services.
It is very helpful because by people reviews you can easily know which product of you have less interest and which product is used by people more and why.
After getting all stats it becomes easy to make an absolute marketing plan that gives a boost to your startup.
You can also launch a new product on the basis of the survey.
21) Hire Digital Marketing Agency, Copywriters, Sales Manager, etc.
To take your business to the next level you should hire some excellent copywriter who knows how to write amazing SEO friendly articles and blogs.
Hiring some sales staff and manager could help you to grow your small business more(if you have enough budget to pay them).
If you are running short of money to hire marketing employees for your business then you can hire a digital marketing agency(affordable one) too.
Once you start making money then you can start to hire employees as per need. This marketing idea is a great move to take your business to the next level.
22) Be Professional and build your own brand
Entrepreneurs and small businessmen should be careful about their behavior and actions. People do observe a lot of things about you in daily life.
Before building the reputation of your business, a businessman should start building his brand image first.
Being professional helps to build a clean image of you that helps your business also.
Small mistakes can damage your reputation and that can make a bad effect on your business too.
Businessmen and business reputations work parallel, so you should think well before any decision that can affect your business.
