You have reached the point where
another cup of coffee won’t make a difference. In fact, a whole pot
wouldn’t give you the energy you need to complete all of your digital
marketing tasks.
You are mentally tired in ways
you have never experienced in your life and there is still so much to
do. Even after writing the blog, designing banner ads, writing
the weekly email update, responding to tweets, creating a YouTube video,
and joining LinkedIn groups – the list of digital marketing tasks for your
startup continues to grow rather than analyst.
Yet, the list of leads and customers does not keep
up with the frenetic pace of your digital marketing.
This is a problem for many startups.
To really take your digital marketing to a level that
produces results– for people not just to receive your digital marketing
messages but to get excited, qualified leads – you not only have to
execute your digital marketing tasks correctly you
have to avoid digital
marketing mistakes.
Here are
three of the most common mistakes in digital marketing by startups, all of them
are correctable and fixing any or all of them can have a huge impact on your
digital marketing return on investment.
Points to Keep in Mind
If your beginning is posting on Social
media site like Facebook, you need to secure why your startup chooses
to apply their time and energy on that digital marketing activity from a
business viewpoint. It may be great for your ego that you got 10 shares on a
post, but how do those shares actually lead to profit?
Don’t forget
that just because you are an amazing tech startup that you are also silent
a business.
Just like any other business, your startup
needs to realize income. The way to make realize this income with digital
marketing is to have all of your actions either completes or move users towards
completing real business objectives.
The best way to correct the Points of
digital marketing without business objectives is to create a marketing pipe.
Since not all of your digital marketing results in an immediate sale,
this marketing pipe will have a series of steps, each one of which is a
small business objective (getting an email address, users filling out forms,
etc.) which lead to your ultimate business objective which is usually a sale.
Once you have mapped out your
marketing pipe, you have shifted your mindset towards viewing your digital marketing
through a business lens. Use this lens to see what digital marketing
activities actually move the needle. If the digital marketing
activity does not move users towards your business objective, you can
either stop spending your time and money on that particular activity or
reconfigure your plan and test to see if it is possible to succeed business
objectives with it.
Resources:
- A good example of how to create your marketing pipe via Hubs pot.
- Defining quality versus quantity for business objectives via Nerds
Do It Better (my company)
Point 2 :- Trying
To Market on Too Many Channels
Instead of trying to use a selection of
digital marketing channels successfully, startups often attempt to have a existence
on every channel and end up executing them all poorly.
This is how it happens:
You sign up your startup for accounts in
all of the social networks and wildly drop in, make a lot of noise, and do not
interact according to the norms and the standards of that particular channel.
Instead of adding value to the exchange, your startup looks like a twitch and
turns possible customers off.
The Points is that your presence on these
networks is sporadic and doesn’t allow you to understand the community and
authentically connect with the users. You shouldn’t essentially be
sending the same message on Twitter as you would on email or Facebook
or Instagram. However, you do not have the time or the staff to network on all of
the systems in a way that engages visitors and moves your startup towards
business objectives.
The best way to correct this Point is
to begin your digital marketing with one or two channels and spend your time
and effort becoming industry leaders on that channel. Once you have mastered a
select group of channels, you may want to expand, or you may find that you
can stand your startup’s growth on those one or two channels.
To choose the best channel for your
startup, find out which channels your customers already every day. Research and
spend time on those channels to become a valuable member of the community
that adds value with your digital marketing messages.
Points
3:- Trying To Market to Everyone
If
you effort to objective everyone, you target no one. This is a Point that
I learned early on (the hard way!).
The average consumer is exposed to 5,000 marketing messages per day, which
means your digital marketing messages need to stand out by being the most designer
to your viewers. If your startup attempts to market to an audience that is too different
with a wide range of wants, needs, and wants you will be unable to craft
digital marketing messages that resound with anyone. Additionally, with this
large audience your marketing message is competing against a much
larger pool of players. You want to target a narrow audience (sometimes called
a niche) and create messages tailored to them.
You
can narrow your target audience by various demographics and psychographics.
Demographics are quantitative variables such as age, gender, income, location,
and income. Psychographics are qualitative measurements and are often
self-defined such as fans of the Patriots, shareholders, or environmentalists.
Reduction your message down creates a feeling for that
audience member that it is just for them. For example, if you are a
startup that provides social media marketing to Cross fit gyms you could
narrow your targeting by simply changing the title of your blog, if it was
originally titled 7 Things Your Business Needs To Know About
Marketing, it would be more personalized
by changing the title to 7 Things Your Gym Needs To Know About Facebook
Marketing and
would be best tailored by titling it 7 Things Your Gym Needs To Know
About Facebook Marketing. Even
though Cross Fit gym owners are business owners, thinning and fitting the
message makes it resound more with them.
From
experience I have found that fitting marketing messages to a narrow
audience:
- Increases
the click-through rates of PPC ads (which increases their quality score
and lowers the cost per click)
- Increases
the return on ad spend
- Increases
email open rates
- Increase
the amount of feedback on the social networks
It is important to think about who your target
market actually is. For example, if your startup is a site that connects tutors
with underachieving school children, initially you may create digital marketing
messages tailored to the kids who are underperforming. However, the kids aren’t
the ones with the buying power: your actual audience is the parents.
You would want to target parents of underperforming kids for your marketing
with messages that resonate with them.
Resources:
- Defining your target watchers via Quick Sprout
- How to define your target watchers via Raven
Tools
As
a startup, you have a limited cheap and limited time to perform your
digital marketing. You do not have the financial and staff pillow of larger
companies and must be especially careful to avoid mistakes. By tying your
digital marketing activities to business objectives, choosing your digital
marketing channels specifically, and targeting a specific audience, you avoid
three of the most common mistakes startups make with digital marketing and will
begin to see profits increase.
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