Every start-up that ends up as a success story is able to build successful awareness. If you are a new business, the first thing you need to do is make your potential customers become aware of the fact that you ‘exist’.
If they are not even aware that such a business is there and that it offers specific products and services, how do you expect them to buy from your start-up?
We are living in a day and age where online and digital platforms have become second nature. The first thing that we check up on right after we wake up is work emails and social media profiles. The last thing that we watch before going to sleep is YouTube videos!
There is no denying the fact that any business, be it a start-up or a fairly well-entrenched one needs to focus on online traction through digital marketing.
In this article, we are going to look at the following important aspects of building online traction for start-ups-
- Identifying Digital Marketing strategies that can work for start-ups
- Benefits of online presence and performance for start-ups
- The role of great design in building a successful start-up
- Defining what traction means for start-ups and why it is important
- The Final Takeaway
If you are a start-up founder or CEO that wants to scale your organization, this article will prove to be a strong guiding force.
Digital Marketing for Start-Ups: How to go about it?
The first and probably the most important thing that you need to know about digital marketing is that it is never static. This means that best practices, tips, and challenges change faster than seasons. To be able to effectively control this animal, you always need to be on your toes.
In this section, we are going to list down three digital marketing strategies that can reap rich dividends for start-ups looking to gain online traction-
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-
Start-Ups often struggle with limited resources and do not have enough funds to keep investing in PPC ads. A better alternative, one that helps build a solid digital foundation is SEO.
If done right, SEO can help you with everything from spreading awareness to branding, website traffic, lead generation, and sales conversions!
A successful SEO strategy requires to you work with leading agencies and professionals that offer specialized SEO services. SEO is a long-term, intensive and cost-effective digital marketing strategy that helps you gain online traction.
- Content Marketing (CM)-
If every brand would understand the power of content marketing, there wouldn’t be a single business that would be unsuccessful on online platforms.
Content Marketing involves creating high-quality text-based content, images, videos, infographics, and more. The purpose is to showcase the start-up as an authority leader that understands the problems and expectations of the customers.
If you are able to pitch and present your business as a solutions provider, you will be able to gain new customers, revenues, and profits from content marketing.
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)-
If you are not doing social media, you are not benefitting from the 4 billion+ users that are on such platforms!
Branding, outreach, relationship building, sales- social media gives you all this and much more. By having an outstanding social media strategy that is fresh, engaging, and insightful, you will be able to generate online traction.
People will start following your brand on social, and this will help you increase reach, awareness, and ultimately sales. The key to a successful social media marketing strategy is great content!
Benefits of Online Presence and Performance for Start-Ups
If you are a start-up that wants to invest in digital marketing, you should know about the benefits of the same first-
- Online marketing and presence can help you reach potential customers that are already using and engaging on such platforms.
- Digital platforms can become a real asset to build branding, drive credibility and increase a start-up’s initial awareness.
- There is a rapid increase in the number of users that are using search engines, eCommerce platforms, we well as social media platforms.
- The returns on investments in digital marketing are measurable and can be broken down in data. This means that you always have an idea about your investments.
- Online platforms can help in driving real sales, revenues, and profits for the start-up. It can also help in building relationships with stakeholders, vendors, and investors.
- In terms of growth, online marketing and performance allow you to tap into customers and markets that are situated beyond national and international borders.
- Digital presence and knowledge can help in building a better and more robust product. You can get great feedback in real-time from users that can help you improve.
- Scalability becomes possible for start-ups that are able to leverage online presence and growth. You can hire more people, improve processes and boost sales drastically.
- In terms of investments, digital platforms and marketing are still very much cost-effective when you compare the same with offline or traditional models of advertising.
- Using digital tools, work processes and software can help in streamlining internal efficiency and boosting the work productivity of your employees.
If you are a start-up in 2022, you need to ensure that 75% of your entire focus is on building the brand on online platforms. This is where the growth and money are going to come from.
The Role of Great Design in Building a Successful Start-Up
First things first. No great or successful start-up that you see today had a great first website!
It just doesn’t happen. Building a great, performance-oriented website is not something that you get right the first time around.
This is why almost all the successful businesses that we see in different industry niches have gone for Website Redesign Services from leading professional agencies.
If you want to set up the right digital foundation, you need a great website, period. A good website is your brand’s first point of interaction with a potential customer. In other words, for millions, this is going to be the first major touchpoint.
If your website is not delivering in terms of engagement rates, enjoys high bounce rates, and is failing to live up to your expectations for conversions, maybe it is a good time to think about website redesign.
The following are some of the major benefits of opting for a website redesign project-
- Going for a website redesign project helps in improving your site’s SEO performance and growth.
- It allows you to give your existing content a fresh boost. You can add, subtract and modify the existing content.
- Website redesign ensures that your site is optimized in terms of mobile and tablet screens.
- The redesign has a heavy emphasis on elevating your site’s technical strength and prowess that helps in improving performance.
- Two areas that benefit from website redesign are improved site security and better speed. These two are very important from a UI, UX, as well as SEO perspective.
If you have been thinking about why your site isn’t performing as you hoped it would, maybe now is the right time to go for a website redesign project.
Why Online Traction is Important for Start-Ups?
When it comes to running a start-up, every founder knows that the struggle is between- building your product versus focussing on acquiring customers!
This is at the core of what is the foundation of any start-up business organization.
While some founders and CEOs believe that the former is important (product development), others point out that without customers, you won’t have anyone to sell your product to.
To be honest, it is impossible to take a one-sided argument with regards to this topic. A better idea would be to understand this as a pure 50-50 split.
In very simple words, traction refers to movement, a positive one at that, which a start-up enjoys after investing in a specific set of strategies.
This means that successful strategies that require larger investments end up generating better traction for start-ups. Not the case always!
According to experts, for start-ups, testing traction, should be important. They can do this by investing a small sum of money in a strategy and then seeing the ROIs that are being generated.
This is how leading companies and businesses the world over-identifying growth tactics and strategies. If you see that an investment in one area is yielding traction, you need to keep pushing in terms of both the investments, as well as the effort.
The Final Takeaway
If you want your start-up to start performing, you need to focus on Website Redesign Services, SEO, SMM, and Content Marketing. This is going to set up the best foundation to scale your business. Given the competition in different niches, you should be focussing on ensuring both qualities, as well as quantity. If you have any specific questions that you would like us to address with regard to the topic, please feel free to let us know in the comments section below.