Small businesses and startups get many opportunities to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth. Entrepreneurs will get potential customers interested in their products/services by adopting innovative marketing ideas. Also, they will combine multiple marketing strategies to facilitate long-term growth.
But no entrepreneur can generate and convert more leads, in the post-pandemic age, without overcoming a slew of small business marketing challenges. Often lack of marketing budget is cited as the key marketing challenge for small businesses. Many entrepreneurs overcome this major challenge by switching from outbound marketing to inbound marketing.
Likewise, many small businesses overcome resource constraints using free editions of marketing automation tools and solutions. However, customer preferences and marketing trends these days change at a rapid pace. Small business owners have to address new marketing challenges regularly to improve customer experience and sustain revenue growth.
10 Small Business Marketing Challenges Must Overcome to Sustain Growth
1. Combining the Right Marketing Channels
Inbound marketing strategies help small businesses create brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales conversion through multiple marketing channels. A small business can further repurpose the same content for multiple marketing campaigns like social media promotion and search engine optimization (SEO). However. small business owners often lack the experience and expertise required to identify and combine the right marketing channels for a specific product/service.
2. Implementing Original Marketing Strategies
Many small business owners save time and effort by copying competitors’ marketing strategies. The copied marketing strategies help them focus on the right marketing goals and reach the right target audience.
However, the outcome of digital marketing campaigns these days depends on the quality of digital content created and published by a business. Also, a business can generate and influence more leads only when the marketing strategies are aligned with its resources and expertise.
3. Tracking and Adopting Emerging Trends
Both industry trends and marketing trends these days change at frequent intervals. Small business owners often find it challenging to monitor competitors and identify emerging trends. Likewise, they ignore the emerging market trends.
However, a business can beat competitors only by adopting emerging marketing trends early. Entrepreneurs cannot influence potential customers and keep existing customers interested without finetuning marketing campaigns according to emerging trends.
4. Creating Relevant Content
Like large businesses, small businesses these days generate, nurture, and convert leads by publishing and promoting a variety of digital content – articles, blogs, whitepapers, videos, infographics, and images. However, no business can make digital content effective in achieving present marketing goals if the content does not meet customers’ expectations and needs.
Small businesses often find it challenging to know what type of content their potential and existing customers want. Many entrepreneurs overcome this small business marketing challenge using analytics and conducting content audits.
5. Optimizing Websites
Inbound marketing strategies help small businesses increase website traffic consistently despite the lack of marketing budgets. However, no small business can convert website visitors into customers and leads when the website does not deliver an optimal user experience.
A website’s user experience is impacted by a variety of factors. An entrepreneur can keep visitors engaged only by optimizing the website’s loading speed, mobile accessibility, data security, and navigability. Also, he must measure the website’s user experience regularly to fix various issues.
6. Delivering Excellent Customer Service
A significant percentage of customers these days choose and switch brands based on the customer service experience. They love companies that help customers find information and solve problems without putting in extra time and effort. Small businesses lack the marketing budget required to build a customer service team.
Many entrepreneurs overcome this small business marketing challenge through customer service delivery automation. They help customers solve problems by interacting with chatbots, accessing free tutorials, and watching videos. Small businesses must overcome this challenge to win the trust and promote customer loyalty in the long run.
7. Changing Policies and Guidelines
Most tech companies these days change their guidelines and policies to protect customer privacy and increase data security. The policy and guideline changes made by tech companies impact the performance of marketing campaigns directly. For instance, the search engine algorithm changes made by Google and Bing impact a website’s search engine visibility and traffic in a short amount of time.
Likewise, email marketing campaigns were directly impacted when Apple updated its privacy protection policy. Small businesses, unlike large businesses, lack the resources and expertise to revamp their marketing strategy proactively to overcome the impact of these policy and guideline changes.
8. Irregular Technological Upgrades
Small businesses these days operate in digitalized environments. They measure customer experience and marketing campaign performance using a variety of software and automation tools. However, small businesses often opt for open-source software and free editions of automation tools to curtail costs.
Some of these software and tools lack the features required to identify emerging trends and get actionable insights. Small businesses must upgrade technologies regularly to boost marketing campaigns by taking the right action at the right time.
9. Confusing Performance Tracking KPIs
In addition to defining marketing goals, most small businesses these days measure the performance of marketing campaigns. However, small business owners often ignore the significance of defining digital marketing KPIs unambiguously. Hence, they fail to get real-time insights into the performance of individual marketing strategies. Also, confusing KPIs often make it difficult to calculate marketing ROI accurately. Entrepreneurs can identify marketing opportunities and challenges by defining marketing KPIs clearly.
10. Absence of Experienced Marketers
Many small business owners overcome budgetary constraints by running marketing campaigns on their own. They find it challenging to plan, monitor, and manage various activities due to a lack of time. Hence, marketing activities often become inconsistent and sporadic.
Also, many entrepreneurs lack the digital marketing expertise required to create high-quality content and plan lead generation strategies. Hence, it becomes challenging for small businesses to drive lead generation and conversion activities due to the absence of experienced marketers.
Conclusion
In the post-pandemic age, entrepreneurs must overcome several small business marketing challenges to achieve sustainable growth. They have to overcome budgetary constraints by implementing the right inbound marketing strategies and investing in the right marketing automation tools. Also, they have to monitor emerging market trends and measure marketing campaign performance to know what is working and what is not.
Like large and established companies, startups can sustain profitable growth only by boosting lead generation and conversion activities. But startups, like small businesses, often lack big advertisement budgets. They can leverage digital marketing to generate, nurture, and convert leads despite small advertisement budgets. They can plan and tailor their digital marketing approach carefully to compete with large and established companies.
According to KeyDifferences.com,
“Digital marketing is the fundamental term that includes each and every online marketing effort. In digital marketing, companies make use of all the digital channels to reach existing and potential customers. The channels may include Google search, social media, email, websites, so on and so forth. Further, the most important technology, upon which digital marketing relies is ‘Internet‘.”
While making digital marketing strategies for startups in 2024, you must focus on implementing a multichannel marketing plan. Your digital marketing strategies must reach potential customers through multiple communication channels. Likewise, your digital marketing plan must explore ways to integrate paid advertising and organic advertising seamlessly. That is why; you need to include a slew of elements to make the digital marketing strategies for startups bring optimum results.
13 Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups to Accelerate Growth in 2024
1) Mobile First Web Design
In 2021, more than 54% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices. The percentage of consumers accessing websites on smartphones and tablets will increase in 2024. You can make digital marketing strategies for startups successful in the future only by adopting a mobile-first approach.
Instead of making the website look good on computers and mobile devices, you need to ensure that the website delivers an optimal user experience on the smallest screens. You must revamp the website to make it look, feel, and function like a mobile app. The redesigned website will keep visitors engaged by offering streamlined content and enhanced download speed.
2) Google My Business
Your digital marketing strategies for startups must make it easier for customers to find your business. Many entrepreneurs these days leverage the free tool provided by Google to optimize their profiles on Google Search and Maps. In addition to sharing important business information with customers, you can leverage Google My Business to interact with customers by requesting them to post reviews.
However, you must consider and compare some of the popular alternatives to Google My Business while implementing digital marketing strategies. Some of these websites allow you to publish business information, while others provide options to add customer reviews and product reviews. You can boost your startup’s online presence by creating profiles on multiple platforms.
3) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In addition to delivering an outstanding user experience, the mobile-first design will boost your website’s visibility and ranking on popular search engines. However, you must implement a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to generate and convert more leads consistently. While optimizing the website for search engines in 2024, you need to keep in mind the latest search engine guidelines as well as the emerging SEO trends.
Also, your digital marketing strategy must boost the website’s search visibility by implementing both on-page and off-page SEO techniques. For instance, you must implement on-page SEO techniques to optimize a web page’s content, title tag, URL, and images. At the same time, you must boost the web page’s relevance, popularity, credibility, and authority by implementing off-page SEO techniques.
4) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
You can implement SEO strategies to boost your website’s organic or unpaid traffic. However, your digital marketing strategies for startups must complement SEO with search engine marketing (SEM). Unlike SEO, SEM focuses on diverting more search traffic to the website through paid advertising. You must implement an SEM strategy to get more website visitors and generate more leads in a short amount of time.
However, startups have to increase their advertising budget to implement an elaborate SEM strategy. You must curtail SEM costs by adopting best practices like creating ads for specific keywords, matching ads and landing pages, and choosing pay-per-click (PPC) instead of pay-per-view (PPV). These best practices will help you to beat the competition and get fast results without breaking advertising budgets.
5) Content Marketing
According to the marketing statistics posted on Hubspot.com,
“Nearly 40% of marketers say content marketing is a very important part of their overall marketing strategy.”
The statistics depict how startups can generate and convert leads by creating, distributing, and promoting a variety of content. While implementing digital marketing strategies for startups in 2024, you must focus on the creation, distribution, and promotion of a variety of content – blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, and ebooks.
At the same time, you must explore ways to influence the purchase decision of customers by persuading them to consume the content. Your strategy can engage and influence leads in 2024 only by sending personalized and targeted content. Also, you must match the content according to the customer’s current position in the buyer’s journey to solve problems or answer questions.
6) Social Media Marketing
According to Techjury.net, an average internet user spends more than two hours daily on social networking platforms. However, most internet users spend more time on Facebook than on other social networks. The massive popularity of social networks makes them one of the most powerful digital marketing channels in 2024. Your digital marketing strategies for startups must keep in place a robust social media marketing plan.
The social media marketing plan must be tailored according to your startup’s digital marketing goals by choosing the right social networks, creating relevant social media content, and keeping the brand voice consistent across platforms. For instance, your strategy must focus on creating a variety of social media content – posts, stories, photos, and videos – regularly. At the same time, the strategy must create a content calendar to ensure that the content is posted across social networks in an organized and consistent way.
7) Email Marketing
While implementing digital marketing strategies for startups, many marketers these days ignore email marketing.
But according to the digital marketing statistics compiled by wpforms.com,
“49% of consumers say they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis.”
Your digital marketing strategies can engage and influence customers in 2024 by sending personalized and targeted emails.
Your strategy must focus on creating an email list by persuading website visitors to share their email IDs using techniques like sign-in forms and lead magnets. Also, you must create informative and interesting emails that keep the recipients engaged and convey the desired message. You can easily make the recipient take the desired action – visit your website, subscribe to the newsletter, or buy your product – by including powerful call-to-actions (CTAs) in the email.
8) Influencer Marketing
The massive popularity of social networks creates opportunities for startups to promote their product or services through an influencer. Your digital marketing strategies for startups must explore ways to promote products/services through product mentions and endorsements from influencers. While launching this style of digital marketing campaign, you can focus on individuals who are considered experts in their niche and/or have a dedicated social media following.
But the outcome of this digital marketing strategy will purely depend on your choice of social influencer. You can find the right social influencer for a particular demography using online platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Likewise, you can use specialized tools to identify and shortlist relevant social influencers for your niche and monitor their activities.
9) Video Marketing
While planning content marketing campaigns, you must focus on creating both text-based and visual content. But you must remember that video content is more effective than text and image content in engaging customers and making them absorb the desired messages. Also, you can influence the purchase decisions of customers directly by posting explainer videos.
Your startup can get a higher ROI in 2024 by launching video marketing campaigns. The video marketing campaigns will focus extensively on showcasing and promoting your products/services through a variety of videos. Your digital marketing strategies for startups must focus on the creation and distribution of different types of videos – product demonstrations, explainers, customer testimonials, company culture, and behind-the-scenes.
However, each type of video must be tailored according to your marketing goals and target audience. You must use the video as a powerful tool to strengthen the sales funnel by choosing the appropriate length, tone, and style. Also, you must implement a video SEO strategy to keep the video popular and achieve marketing goals in the long run.
10) Referral Marketing
You can leverage referral marketing to acquire new customers through word-of-mouth of existing customers. Your digital marketing strategies for startups must run a referral program that incentivizes existing customers to tell and recommend your products or services to their family, friends, and coworkers.
The referral program will incentivize existing customers by offering a variety of rewards – discounts, cashback, gift coupons, and referral bonuses. The rewards and freebies will encourage customers to refer and recommend your startup in their circle. However, you must use analytics to set up referral programs across websites, mobile apps, and social networks.
11) Retargeting Ads
While making digital marketing strategies for startups, you must focus extensively on engaging and retaining website visitors. Also, your strategies must make the visitors return to your website and perform the desired action by displaying retargeting ads. Your startup can display retargeting ads to convert window shoppers into customers.
According to Google Ads,
“Retargeting ads allow your business to show targeted ads to the users who visited your website and didn’t complete a conversion – purchase an item, fill in a contact form, download a file, etc.”
Popular search engines and social networks display retargeting ads to your website visitors based on the pages visited by them. The relevant ads will remind the customer about your product or service while they visit other websites. Also, retargeting ads often increase conversion rates by seducing customers to revisit your website.
12) Viral Marketing
Unlike other digital marketing strategies, viral marketing requires your startups to spread information about a product or service on the internet through consumers. Social networking platforms create opportunities for you to launch viral marketing campaigns successfully without escalating advertisement costs.
However, startups often find it challenging to make consumers spread organic and word-of-mouth information about a product/service. You have to come up with out-of-the-box ideas to create content that more and more consumers will share on social networking platforms. Also, you must include the appropriate message or CTA in the trending content to persuade viewers to visit your website and take the desired action.
13) Customer Service
Many startups these days outperform large companies by delivering outstanding customer service. At the same time, there are many instances when awful customer service damaged the reputation and credibility of startups in hours. In 2024, you can promote customer loyalty and beat the competition simultaneously by leveraging customer service as a new-age marketing channel.
While implementing digital marketing strategies for startups, you must focus on keeping in place a multichannel customer service program. The program will enable every customer to solve problems and avail assistance using her choice of customer service channel. Also, you can enable customers to solve problems on their own by adding blogs, FAQ pages, and knowledge bases to your website.
Your startup can achieve and sustain growth in 2024 only by implementing a slew of digital marketing strategies. But you must remember that digital marketing trends change at regular intervals. Hence, your strategies for startups must focus on monitoring and boosting the performance of individual campaigns continuously. You must not evaluate the performance of every digital marketing campaign using the same metrics or KPIs.
For instance, you cannot use the same set of metrics to measure the impact of SEO and social media marketing activities accurately. Your digital marketing strategies for startups must clearly define the metrics for measuring the performance of individual marketing campaigns. The monitoring will help you to make the digital marketing strategies more impactful in 2024 by adopting emerging trends and implementing necessary changes proactively.
This blog was republished in May 2024.
Unlike large enterprises, small businesses and startups lack the resources required to generate leads and drive sales using traditional media like television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Digital marketing enables small businesses to compete with larger enterprises without increasing costs. A small business can launch personalized and targeted digital marketing campaigns to generate leads and increase sales conversion rates consistently.
But no small business can boost lead generation and lead conversion simply by launching multiple and different digital marketing campaigns. It has to monitor and fine-tune the performance of individual digital marketing campaigns to achieve preset marketing goals. The small business marketing automation tools help small businesses and startups manage multiple digital marketing campaigns efficiently through the automation of various marketing activities.
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The technology changes have become really frequent and disruptive nowadays. Small business owners cannot engage and retain customers without integrating conventional and next-generation marketing channels. They need to look for innovative digital marketing strategies to increase online sales and remain profitable in the longer run. They need to prepare and implement a robust digital marketing strategy according to both existing and emerging trends in digital marketing. Also, they have to implement various digital marketing best practices efficiently to reach out to more customers and achieve higher conversion rate. Here are 7 digital marketing strategies for small businesses and startups in 2018.
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