7 Ways To Keep Your Startup Marketing Lean

If you've recently launched a startup, you know your brand needs as much exposure as possible. When you don't have much capital to work with, however, you may require a more cost-effective strategy. 

Luckily, digital marketing is highly scalable. You can start working on effective, goal-producing activities right now, and build on your strategy as you get more resources.

Building Brand Awareness And Value

The more people who recognize your brand from a distinctive logo, voice, and design, the better your chances are of getting content in front of them and driving conversions. Products and services evolve naturally the longer a company stays around, but a recognizable brand is like an insurance policy for your business goals.

Don't think you'll get away with a catchy yet vague slogan like Visa’s “It’s everywhere you want to be” and create brand value. You haven’t gained enough market penetration. Startups have to use explanatory and emotionalcues in their messaging to build awareness and trust.

Yet today's startups have more power than ever to create brand awareness and value without spending money. Even young individuals on social media can create an impactful brand that resonates with followers. Popular YouTube stars Jenna Marbles and PewDiePie both make more than many actors and actresses, and it all started with a free YouTube channel. The key is finding where your target audience spends time and using those platforms to emotionally connect.

Every piece of content, including tweets, infographics, and short- and longform video, has the potential to resonate with your audience in a meaningful way. Having a social impact also increases the likelihood that current customers who believe in your product offering will recommend your product to friends and colleagues.

Optimizing Digital Marketing on a Budget

You don’t need to invest millions into marketing as a startup. Take Zillow. It's now a public company that does spend millions on TV ads and more. But when it first started, it didn’t spend anything on marketing. Its website was its product, and optimizing it at every level ensured the site acted as its own marketing. Email, search-engine optimization, content development, and PR don’t have to cost much money in the beginning.

Consider investing in these areas:

A Strong Web Presence

Websites are at the core of digital marketing. Without one, you have nowhere to direct inbound marketing activities. Your page will serve as a data repository you can tap to gauge success, and it's also the only place online that's completely yours to create. Find ways to add value through your websiteto encourage traffic.

For example, Dropbox used free extra storage as a promotion for referrals, and Pinterest used an “invitation only” tactic to create an image of exclusivity before making the site available to anyone. Each tactic added value without costing the company much upfront.

In addition to traffic-driving tactics, update your website for visibility on search engines. These boring maintenance tasks will continually boost your visibility and become a source of value for inbound visitors.

Social Media

Find out where your audience spends its time. Are they younger folks who prefer to Snapchat, Instagram, and Yik Yak—or are they an older generation who's more comfortable with Facebook and Twitter?

You can always buy your way to prominence on social platforms. But companies that really succeed in social media use these channels as a natural extension of other marketing activities. Social media is a forum for natural engagement that builds credibility, not revenue generation. Consider how Dollar Shave Club used YouTube and companies like Red Bull and Oreo used hashtag campaigns to generate conversations. People of every age use social media, making it a fantastic forum for startups to tap into—you just have to figure out where your users are hanging out.

Your Personal Network

Every entrepreneur has to become a brand champion, and every business owner needs to get the word out. Grassroots marketing is effective because it allows you to leverage personal relationships for the benefit of the business, and almost every company uses it in some form. Get on social media, call up friends and old schoolmates, go to LinkedIn and take advantage of those professional connections, and ask your family to get in on it.

Request that everyone do something to promote the brand, whether that's reviewing the product on a third-party site, sharing content on social media, or mentioning your company online. Every extra link your network puts out has the potential to reach hundreds more people than you could on your own.

Content

Content is the bread and butter of the digital marketing world. Whether you use slideshows, quizzes, surveys, blogs, videos, articles, or infographics, take the time to make each piece of content feel like an extension of the company. Think about what types of content other successful companies have used. 

Although Target is a large company, for instance, its recent holiday marketing campaign told a story across digital and traditional platforms to inspire an emotional connection and engagement. Startups can do the same thing on a smaller scale to generate brand awareness.

Engage With Your Customers

Part of the beauty of digital marketing is the ability for brands to create a personal connection with consumers. Companies are living, breathing organisms that consumers care about. Brands such as Google, Lego, and Uber all outperform their competitors because they make a personal connection with their audiences.

Companies that win at engagement have created an emotional connection. They respond to feedback quickly and publicly. They understand what their target audience finds valuable. Startups can mimic these larger successes with fast responsivity and by sharing in consumer experiences online.

Mobile And App Marketing

Since many startups focus on providing app-centric services, earning visibility in Apple and Google's app stores will yield the best marketing results. Make sure users looking for products like yours can find your app. There are more than 1,600,000 apps in Google Play and more than 1,500,000 in the Apple App Store. Spend time on app-store optimization, including keywords, icon graphics, and descriptions and screenshots to encourage users to download.

Email

Email still offers a lot of bang for your buck. Most online consumers check their email many times a day, and many use a mobile device to do so. E-commerce companies, in particular, invest in email marketing over every other type of marketing activity—and they're smart to do so.

On a small budget, you can find an email marketing platform that allows you to create, send, and monitor responses to your campaigns. Add a subscription form to your website, and start building up your consumer contact base. Send out regular newsletters with the last few blog links or highlight promotions. 

To Market, To Market

The world is your oyster. You can go social all the way or you can focus on using data to carefully market to a niche looking for more than a snippet of information. However, every business is different. Try out a few tactics and measure the results to see what works for you. If you can only spend money on one digital marketing front, invest it in your website. The rest you can DIY until you hit the big time.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KbudGx

The Latest Rules of Social Media Marketing

Social media is no doubt an ideal way for you to acquire new fans/followers and engage with them. It’s also an ideal tool to boost the reputation of your company/brand. In a way, social media has become an integral asset in marketing your business.

But how are you going to maximize its tools for your company?

Listed below are some new do’s that you should follow when it comes to your social media marketing so you’d be able to achieve your goals in no time.

Social Plan

Do you have one?

Most of us don’t.

Social plan is essential to make your social media marketing more powerful.

It’s a plan that compiles all fresh contents on your social media. You can create a daily, weekly or a monthly theme.

With a plan, you’ll have consistency. This will also allow you to send out your social updates at the right time.

When your audience knows when you’re going to post your content, they’ll go back to your site and wait for your next awesome piece of content.

Then again, what you post should provide them value. Else, they’re going to leave or unfollow you.

Even though you have a social plan, you should still monitor your channels.

Don’t just post and leave. You want your social media accounts to be as professional as possible as they reflect what your brand is.

That said, you’d want to monitor your channels and take out those spammy comments or inappropriate remarks.

Monitoring your channels will also help you find some comments and questions posted by your prospective clients.

When you’re there monitoring, you can make an instant reply and begin a real-time conversation with them.

Content Should Reflect Your Brand

It simply means that your content must provide value to your audience by sharing content that’s information and educational.

This gives them a sample of what they can expect when they visit your site. It also gives them a preview of what type of information is housed on your own site.

You already have followers. So, give them a reason to click through your link and visit your site.

But never assume what your audience wants. Just because you share your content on your social media accounts doesn’t mean that you’ll increase your CTR.

For that reason, you should know the profiles of those who interact with your content. In this way, you can share content that attracts attention to your potential customers.

Test the Times and Types of Content

A good social media marketer will always test the best time to post content in a social media channel. In this way, you’ll know what content works and what needs to be improved.

As you survey the activities on your social channel, you can generate useful pieces of information that may increase engagements and schedule your post during optimal times.

The best time to post is different from one company to another. That said, it’s necessary that you know your audience.

You can do so by using Google Analytics and check out your demographics, location and so on and so forth. Use these pieces of information to get to know more about your followers.

Source : http://bit.ly/1P7peIf

5 ways to use GIFs to make your PR and marketing efforts soar

GIFs aren’t only for powerhouse social media users anymore.

Employing looping visuals lets PR pros and marketers say a thousand words—or more—in shorthand. When used wisely, GIFs are a great way to connect with your audience, increase views and make your brand more relatable to consumers.

Here are five ways you can jump on the GIF bandwagon:

1. Add a touch of sass to consumer interactions.

As Internet culture becomes more pervasive, brand managers are embracing new ways of reaching out to online audiences. In April, Ikea replied to consumers entirely through memes, and Chevy made headlines for its all-emoji press release.

However, brand managers can take things one step further and use GIFs to respond to consumers through Facebook, Twitter and even emails. Just make sure that your GIF use fits your brand’s voice.

2. Spice up social media posts.

As visuals grow in popularity, PR and marketing pros are looking to infographics, videos and more in order to attract eyeballs and hold followers’ attention.

GIFs can add life to tweets, Pinterest pins, Flipboard magazines, Instagram posts and Facebook content.

Though Facebook business pages do not have the option to post GIFs, Facebook profiles do—and it’s a service Facebook is considering rolling out to brand managers. The social network also recently announced that users could now employ GIFs as profile pictures. Savvy marketers could reach out to brand advocates with large Facebook followings in order to implement these features for a campaign.

If you’re looking for something more subtle than cat or reaction GIFs, use or create cinemagraphs. Several brands are using cinemagraphs to add flavor to Instagram posts.

3. Make stories—and emails—more interesting.

GIFs can boost your content marketing efforts by adding engaging elements to stories, newsletters and promotional emails.

Though you don’t have to emulate Buzzfeed, add GIFs to a how-to article or list of tips to attract (and keep) your audience’s attention. A story sprinkled with Olivia Pope GIFs or other popular figures can spike both views and shares.

GIFs can also pack a punch to an otherwise mundane marketing email or newsletter. Show off a campaign, contest or announcement, and your message will probably stick longer in readers’ minds.

4. Repurpose instructions and videos.

Looking to get more play from a list of instructions or a video you created for consumers or employees?

Turn them into GIFs and share across social media, in story roundups or email updates. About.me showed followers how to cook bacon perfectly to celebrate Twitter allowing GIFs in 2014.

Use gifs to turn any YouTube video—including your own—into a looping visual. The tool is easy to use: Pop in a YouTube URL, select the portion you’d like to make into a GIF. and download your finished project. We even immortalized one of our very own editors at Ragan Communications.

5. Show off your prowess with a collection.

Increase your Internet cred by curating the best GIFs through a Tumblr blog or Flipboard magazine.

You can also sign up for a Giphy account and mark your favorites from the website for future use, making it even easier to grab visuals for social media posts and stories. You might also create your own Giphy channel, which displays the GIFs you’ve uploaded to the website—including each GIF’s source information and tags.

By sharing your GIF collection with others, you not only offer followers fun and useful visuals, but you also let them know that your organization has its finger on the pulse of current trends.


Source : http://bit.ly/1L5ctrf

The future is digital!