Being an entrepreneur isn’t just being a business owner or an investor. It’s a lifelong occupation – it’s about creating ideas and opportunities around your existing resources. It’s about making decisions that affect a large number of people and your company, believing these decisions, and achieving the target despite the challenges. Sometimes, it involves taking unnecessary risks to bridge a niche towards your vision.
From the beginning of the 21st Century, there has been a boom in entrepreneurship and startups. Entrepreneurship is very crucial now, a sign of progress. Many people have established small businesses, going for self-employment rather than working for a large company. Entrepreneurs give job opportunities to others by starting their business with the added benefit of being your own boss. They no longer follow the old-fashioned plan or ideas of doing a 9-5 desk job.
The mindset and opinion of people have now changed, now more and more are focussing on business. While every entrepreneur with a new idea may not always be successful in their ventures, they are without any future if they lack entrepreneurial thinking. It is one of the most important skills in the world for the future development of entrepreneurship.
How much do entrepreneurs rely on digital marketing and why?
Entrepreneurship can be overwhelmingly challenging; today the challenges become more critical due to the increased advancement in technology. Technology makes the business world go round. It has enabled a current generation of entrepreneurs, using the present-day digital technology, to disrupt old ways of doing business.
Digital marketing has become such a fundamental part of modern business and it’s hard to believe that 30 yrs ago, entrepreneurs were starting up in business without a computer, mobile phone and even without an internet connection.
But before moving on to how a startup can be benefited by digital marketing, we will look into some common challenges that entrepreneurs face:
- Low Budget
- High demand for creativity to grab attention, especially for marketing
- Having an effective social media presence
- Constraints in marketing medium and channels
- Acquiring and retaining customers
Not to alarm you, but one study published in Forbes, says 90% of Indian Startups Will Fail due to Lack Of Innovation.
As much as the product is innovative so does the marketing and promotion, if not you are out of the game.
What is Digital Marketing and why does one need it?
Digital Marketing is known as the marketing of products, solutions or services using digital technologies, mainly via the web, mobile phones, display advertising and the other forms of the digital medium.
The importance of digital marketing
- Vast and specific reach (Target Ideal Customers)
- Video marketing is the future of Advertising
- Email marketing
- Social media presence
- Easy to measure and analyzed
Vast and specific reach (Target Ideal Customers)
With the increased internet penetration in India, don’t you think that it’s much more viable and feasible to focus on the absolute audience or consumers online through the digital platform than the traditional media which is impossibly expensive and often cannot target your specific niche? The increasing Internet-using population is a strong sign that digital marketing is the finest approach to for Startups.
Video Marketing is the future of advertising
- According to Nielsen Wire, 36% of online consumers trust video ads and Video Marketing will account for quite 82% of all Internet traffic by 2022 – 15 times above in 2018.
- Videos are the most impactful content marketing mechanism than other media.
- In 2021, Video will represent over 80% of all Internet traffic says a new study from Cisco in its Global – 2021 Forecast Highlights.
- YouTube reports mobile video 64% of consumers are more likely to shop for a product online after watching a video about it, and it continues to rise at 100% per annum.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is an integral part of the digital marketing plan and it is one of the cost-effective and powerful methods
Many often underestimate the significance of this seemingly simple marketing strategy. Most big brands have a great understanding of E-mail Marketing and using it primarily for brand awareness, announcements, acquiring leads, and so on.
Social Media Presence
Social media has made great leaps in recent years and it is no longer just about posting pictures. Social Media They are getting used for several objectives by people and organisations today, out of which social media marketing helps businesses to retain and manage clients, engage and also drive the traffic.
The social media giant Facebook itself has embedded features like “shop” which shows that social media is one of the best approaches in digital marketing for startups to connect with your targeted audience, especially true for B2C communications.
Easy to measure and analyse
The move with failed predictions is always better than the undetermined outcomes. If you can’t able to compare the desired or predetermined goals, then the stake of business is questionable.
Web Analytics and other online metric tools will help you to find out and establish how effective your digital marketing campaign is and can help you stay on the right track.
Types of Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing is not a single term definition, digital marketing certainly encompasses all the online marketing activities and it might include few offline activities too.
The main topics of digital marketing you should consider for business are:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing and Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Phone Advertising
Search Engine Optimization
A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is considered as a powerful tool for any startup and doesn’t need to kill the budget. For entrepreneurs, SEO is an inherent part of building a successful startup from the bottom up.
How SEO helps entrepreneurs:
- SEO delivers customer behaviour data to startups.
- SEO results in higher traffic and conversions.
- SEO can be free along with many of the tools necessary to use it, like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
With Google Analytics, it’s possible to see what users are doing on a website or platform. Google Search Console shows a founder exactly what was searched and how visitors landed there. Broken links or 404s, which are bad for SEO health, also can be identified.
- SEO helps startups make informed business decisions.
- It helps startups build relationships with potential customers with minimal effort. When a business shows higher on the search results, it builds customer trust. From there, the organisation can work toward building respect and credibility, which are necessary for a present-day brand counting on digital channels for conversions.
- SEO helps businesses provide their visitors with the content they want. Instead of having traffic tanks in the short time a billboard runs out, SEO will build an audience over time.
Don’t forget to check out 7 common SEO mistakes to avoid.
Search Engine Marketing & Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Search Engine Marketing or SEM covers the base SEO ignores, paid traffic from search engines. With SEM you buy advertisement space that appears on a user’s SERP. The most commonly used paid search platform is Google AdWords.
The program charges a marketer a predetermined amount to display a billboard at several places on a SERP generated from specific keywords or phrases during a specific period. This is done in a startup when it came to acquiring stable goals.
One of the SEM work is Pay per click (PPC), PPC refers to a digital marketing method wherein search engines charge an organisation whenever their advertisement is clicked.
Social media platforms started to adopt PPC advertising in recent months. These ads show up within the news feeds of a company’s focused audience. This system is a great example of how the various sorts of digital marketing bleed into one another to make an entire digital marketing strategy.
Social media marketing
Social media is advancing each day. Years back, it was known as a medium of socializing and making friends. Now, it plays a very important role in digital marketing. Many entrepreneurs take advantage of its capability of a strong marketing tool to manoeuvre their businesses to the subsequent level.
As social media is becoming more valuable every day, many entrepreneurs haven’t broken down to harness its power for the expansion of their businesses.
- Social media gives you an opportunity to keep a pulse on your customers’ interests and opinions. Customers can also easily send a direct message via a brand’s page or profile. This makes it easier for entrepreneurs to stay in touch with their potential customers. This means they will provide necessary solutions when a customer faces any difficulty.
- Social media marketing helps entrepreneurs spend less. TV advertising has become less relevant now as it cannot be targeted as much as a social media platform can. The comparatively low cost of using social media is an attractive feature. As an entrepreneur whose services and products are location sensitive, with the help of social media, you can market your products to the definite audience in a definite area or locality, online at a definite time.
For example, with Facebook ad targeting features, advertisers can get their promoted content shown to a targeted audience living during a specific location or a specific description and demography.
- Increase brand awareness and Brand authority which results in an increase in traffic and sales
Content Marketing
Content marketing is an entrepreneurs’ ally. It’s the one thing which can work when virtually nothing else does for the entrepreneur.
Think about it: most traditional marketing is expensive and time-consuming. While large enterprises might have the budget and the in-house staff to accommodate that, entrepreneurs seldom do, and content marketing can be much more accessible.
Why content marketing is best for entrepreneurs?
- Content Marketing is Amazingly Cost-Effective
- It helps you develop your unique brand voice and can enhance engagement
- Content marketing is a great method to build trust.
- Also a basis for SEO
Here’s more on the benefits of an effective content marketing strategy.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is composed of three parts: the affiliate (you), the tracking software or affiliate network, and the merchant (the company delivering the product or service).
It refers to the process of paying for conversions. Think of it like hiring a salesperson for your product or service. That affiliate earns a commission. You determine the rate for affiliate marketing. You only pay for conversions. This means there’s no upfront cost to affiliate marketing. Many bloggers or e-commerce websites use affiliate marketing, and this is one of the best ways to get conversion without losing the money unnecessarily
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a popular addition, especially when it comes to social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. Companies hire Instagrammers with a large follower count to market their brand by posting one or more photos with the merchandise. Companies now attract Instagram or Snapchat “takeovers” where the hired influence controls the company’s social media platform for a given amount of your time, most frequently each day
Ensure that you do your research on an influencer before you decide to do business with them. You might want to verify their Google analytics and confirm their following proves legitimate and not filled with fake accounts.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the foremost popular methods of digital marketing. To put it shortly, it’s the utilization of email for promoting one’s products or services.
If you go a touch deeper, email marketing can additionally help you in building relationships together with your customers. Ideally, emails you send to your clients shouldn’t only speak at them but also encourage meaningful interaction together with your brand.
How Entrepreneurs can improve email marketing to get better reach…
- Personalized email content
- Avoid certain words
- Choose the right time to send your emails (Scheduling emails)
- And, Optimize email for mobile
Do read our step-by-step Email marketing guide for more information.
Mobile Phone Advertising
Mobile marketing is growing rapidly with more and more people switching to smartphones from generic mobile phones. Due to the increasing number of smartphone users, a troublesome rivalry has emerged within the field of mobile advertising.
Nowadays all mobile marketers want to attract their audience with different strategies, increasing the competition among the publishers, advertisers, and marketers.
Most digital advertising can happen on a mobile device too. These include SMS advertising which has proven to be an asset to local marketing efforts. You can prompt your consumers to receive special offers, coupons, and updates from your company through SMS
Reasons why mobile advertising is essential for startup…
- Around 80% of Indians and 2 billion of the world population prefer mobile phones for internet usage. So mobile advertising is the primary mode of digital advertising
- Mobile advertising may be a lot cheaper and provides an efficient solution to all advertising-related problems. It’s not only affordable but also leads to fast conversion rates.
- Mobile advertising is a direct medium where the advertiser can directly connect with the audience to sell the product. This also builds up a better understanding between the brand and the consumer where the brand can understand the needs of its consumer in order to better cater to them.
- Developing a mobile application for your startup is taken as a most efficacious way for consumer engagement.
Digital Marketing for Startups is exciting to begin your journey with. It is cost-effective which is one of the greatest advantages and fits well with any small business or startup that doesn’t have the big budget to spend and grows quickly as it can serve many marketing goals at one time.
Campaigns run on digital platforms give you the big picture of your plan. Knowing and understanding the importance and advantage of digital marketing, both national and international level companies are integrating it into their marketing plan.
If you are looking to get started on your digital marketing journey, reach out to us at Bunjy.co today!