Advising startups and small businesses on managing and creating a comprehensive digital marketing program can be challenging. I often give advice no start-up wants to hear; It must be holistic, there’s no magic bullet, and don’t start with paid advertising immediately. I’m usually met with some resistance, but I will outline my reasoning below.
It Must Be Holistic
If you have a crappy product or service, do you want to amplify it by using advertising? What if you have a great product, but poor customer service? That WILL impact sales. What if you have quality control issues or your website’s speed and UX is terrible? Digital Marketing can only take you so far. Your entire business has to be on point with operations, customer service, finances and marketing. It’s holistic! One break in the chain can have a devastating impact on everything else.
There’s No Magic Bullet
Internet and mobile app users are everywhere; they use Facebook, Instagram, Google, Gmail, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc. The point is there isn’t one platform that will “create demand” for your product or service. Use and test each platform and go after the specific audience you are trying to acquire. Eyeballs are constantly shifting. Be in the know and test your creatives.
Don’t Start with Paid Ads
This is strange for me to say since my digital marketing agency manages paid marketing campaigns. You don’t need to rush into paid ads if you’re a start-up. Test the waters organically. Instead of investing money, invest your time in building your website’s content via blogs, testimonials, product details, descriptions, Q&A, and newsletters. This will help with SEO and provide a better user experience for someone visiting your website.
Build an audience on social media using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, etc. Doing so will create awareness and a great way to test the waters to find what works for each platform. Again, all this won’t cost much, but you WILL invest time.
Start acquiring emails using a website capture form and social media. You will own this first-party data and can email market to these people down the road. Using paid ads, you can leverage a look-a-like audience using your acquired emails. Another benefit of starting paid ads later is accumulating demographic and geographic data in analytics so you can accurately target users with your hard-earned money.
Digital marketing can help tremendously and even jump-start some businesses (think of Dollar Shave Club’s viral video). It’s not an end-all-be-all but a tactic with specific goals of building awareness, followers, leads, or sales. Digital Marketing is a very important tool in a startup’s belt, but you still need the other functional tools to achieve your objective. Make the right “impression”.
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