It won’t be wrong to say that the whole world is being digitized right before our eyes! With the rise of mobile internet more customers are online, so every business needs a digital strategy.

Of course every business aims to increase revenues and grow to the next level, but a digital transformation is not just meant to increase revenues. In fact, it is a must for survival in the current times.

Whether you have just started a new business or you are in the process of digital transformation, having an effective digital marketing strategy in place is the key to success. However, there is no one “right way” to create an effective digital marketing strategy for a startup. Digital marketing strategy for a startup that sells clothes will be different than the one for a startup that sells grocery items.

Similarly, in the B2B sector, digital marketing strategy for a design firm will differ from the company that offers data analytics.

Ideally, a business should take a custom approach to create an effective and a result-oriented digital marketing strategy. This article will guide you through the steps you can follow to create a customized digital marketing strategy for your startup.

1- Create Buyer Personas

No matter how amazing a product or service you are offering, if you do not reach the right audience, you cannot sell it. This is where you should know who the potential customers are. With the constantly improving technologies and marketing methodologies, buyer personas are replacing the ‘potential customer’.

A buyer persona is a term used to describe the ideal customer. You can describe the buyer persona using age, gender, occupation, interests, and location. Technically speaking the buyer persona is a refined version of a potential customer segment and having one in place can help you get better results with limited resources.

This step involves a lot of research to identify the target group and filter their details. Your startup can have multiple buyer personas if you are selling more than one product or even if you are selling multiple variations of the same product.

The buyer person creation can be exhausting, but with the right online tools like MakeMyPersona, Hubspot, etc you can speed up a lot of work.

2- Identify Your Goals and Required Resources

No strategy can produce results without having a clear set of goals; depending on your product and startup status, your goals may include increasing website traffic, improving conversions, making an XXX number of sales per month, and so on.

Make sure to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) goals. This article is a great read on how to set aggressive and achievable goals.

With SMART goals in place, you should be able to identify the resources needed, i.e. in order to improve the conversion rate on your website you may need to redesign the website and you will need a web design and development team. If you cannot afford a full-time web design and development team, you may consider outsourcing.

Similarly, if the goal is to drive and increase website traffic, you will need a team to work on SEO, SEM, social media, email marketing and blogger outreach etc. You will also require some tools for each channel to optimize the performance of your campaigns. Creating a list of all the tools and resources is a great help in budgeting and formulating action plans.

3- Focus on Content

Whether it is a blog post, a social media post or a TVC, to make your start stand out, you need killer content!

Content is the backbone of any marketing strategy and based on your goals, you will be required to create qualitative as well as quantitative content. Hiring a content creator is the wisest idea, however, you should be sure that the content producer should have hands-on experience of creating content across all verticals and should have content writing, video editing and Photoshop skills.

4- Consider Marketing Automation Right from the Beginning

Marketing automation is a must for any startup to grow to the next level and working on automation right from the beginning is the best way.

Automation helps you save time and money which you can invest in optimizing the outreach and performance of your marketing strategy.

And if you want a long-term and consistent way to attract clients and experience the benefits of the variety of marketing techniques. The decades of the agency’s expertise can clearly not be given by the internal marketing team. You can get a free proposal from a Michigan marketing firm to start your journey. 

5- Track Your Progress and Tweak Your Strategy Accordingly

No strategy is perfect at once; it requires a lot of tests and trials to know what works and what doesn’t. The key to success is to make a tweak right on time. Changing trends, consumer behavior, technological changes, and many other factors can hurdle the progress, but if you are constantly tracking the progress, you can make timely informed decisions.

The Bottom Line:

The digitalization of businesses is making the field of marketing to evolve constantly. To keep up with the updates and evolving marketing arena, it is important to invest in upgrading your marketing team’s knowledge and skills along with investing in your marketing strategy and tools.