Understanding the steps, tools and strategies needed for a startup to grow with the help of digital marketing is critical to the success of any brand.
Digital marketing has revolutionized the way small businesses and startups access millions of possible followers and clients. Starting with a basic digital marketing plan and strategy, anyone can follow these steps and get online fast. This is our guide to setting up a strong digital marketing strategy to launch and distribute your brand:
1. Objects and Key Results (OKRs)
At Asia PMO we institutionalize this agile management technique throughout much of our consulting work, including digital marketing. If you are heading the digital marketing team for a small business, it is essential to start your marketing plan with clear objectives, key results and actions for you and your team to follow. A strong OKR depends strongly on transparency within the team, and the ability to adjust your OKRs as you progress. Here is an example of OKRs applied to an Instagram digital marketing plan:
2. Defining your target audience
If you don’t know who you are selling to, you probably wont sell anything. Your strategy hinges in large part on understanding your target audience, knowing their age range, their interests and why they might be interested in your product. Here is an example of a well refined target audience, as provided by https://www.brafton.com/ for a potential travel startup:
3. Keyword research
Finding out what people are searching for is a fundamental to understanding your target audience. Your keyword research depends heavily on using the right tools and using them wisely. The truth is that the internet is rife with tools, and it's quite frankly overwhelming for anyone trying to fine tune their list to just the essentials. Here at Asia PMO our keyword research depends on a these two free tools:
When you sign up for a google ads account, this tools comes free and it allows you to research what terms people are searching for in what country. Here is an example of a keyword search results:
Answer the public is a very useful tool if you want to find out exactly what sentences and questions people are searching for in your niche. Answer the Public essentially aggregates data on what questions and sentences people are searching including what prepositions people are using, here is the result of the keyword research regarding a digital marketing business:
4. Build a Beautiful Website
Now that you have your target audience, defined and the keywords, sentences and phrases that they are looking for in regard to your niche, it's time to build a website. These days it's easier than ever to build a beautiful website without hiring a developer or learning HTML code. The most common webdesign service that digital marketers tend to use is of course Wordpress, which is an open-source web design tool. Wordpress usually comes with most common hosting companies such as Bluehost and Hostgator.
At Asia PMO however we researched other tools and settled with the new up-and-coming, drag-and-drop, web service WIX. We found WIX to be the easiest way to create a website exactly and to our specific needs. It's easy to redesign the layout of the pages for both desktop and mobile devices.
5. SEO strategy #1: Start a Blog
SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is elemental in order to bring in new eyes to your web page and services. Starting a blog page on your website is necessary if you want people to find you via google search. Using the keyword tools mentioned above, every startup needs to set up a strong blogging strategy, producing new articles weekly ( at least ) and producing high quality and unique content.
Related: For a full list of Marketing services go to asiapmo.com/digital-marketing
6. SEO strategy #2: Back-links
Your strategy to get potential clients through google search depends heavily on the legitimacy of your website. Google checks by seeing how many other websites link back to yours. The textbook definition of a backlink is:
"Inbound links, also known as backlinks or external links, are HTML hyperlinks that point from one website to another."
Creating backlinks can be difficult in the beginning, and it depends on a solid outreach strategy.
7. Using Social Media to Distribute your Content
Where are your potential customers? With over 2.5 billion monthly users, Facebook is a good start to find them. Creating a Facebook page to boost your brand, and creating a Facebook Group to encourage conversation about your brand is encouraged. The same goes for Instagram, now owned by Facebook, which has reached 1 billion monthly users. However with the last few updates to Facebook's algorithm it's becoming more and more difficult for small businesses to grow their audience organically. Therefore, to overcome these limitations your Facebook and Instagram strategy includes having high quality original content .
8. Linked In for B2B
LinkedIn is more important than ever these days. Since being acquired by Microsoft, it has become the go-to platform for businesses to market to their peers. If you have any intentions of being or becoming a B2B startup, getting on LinkedIn, optimizing your profile, creating a network and bringing value to that network will be key to your success.
9. Finally: Measure, Adjust, Repeat
Of all the tools mentioned above understanding digital marketing analytics is key to maintaining your success and staying ahead of the curve. Every social media platform mentioned already has a "analytics/insights" feature that will allow you to study the performance of your posts, your customer behavior, your growth rates ETC. To measure the performance of your website, setting up a Google Analytics account is a must. Google analytics will give your everything you need to understand the traffic to your website and the behavior of your viewers.
Need help with your Digital Marketing strategy? Head to our Digital Marketing services section or Contact us for a consultation.
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