Marketing a startup isn’t easy. You have to start from the very beginning, while your competitors likely have a head start. There are also so many different ways to market your startup, that it’s often hard to know which ones will work best for your business. The result is that some digital marketing strategies end up getting ignored while you focus on other ones.

To market your new business, you’re going to need a comprehensive digital marketing strategy – one that covers many different aspects. Here are some essential components you’ll want to have in your strategy, so make sure you don’t ignore them:

Search Engine Optimization

To start with, you’ll want to be sure your website is optimized for search engines. Search engines, and specifically Google, are one of the most common ways that people find information online. When someone searches for terms related to your startup, you’ll want your website to appear as high in those results as possible.

To do this, you need to optimize your site based on what search engines like Google are looking for. Specifically, you need to conduct keyword research and include those keywords on your website. Then, you need to work on your site structure, your page load speed, and your linking strategy. There’s a lot that goes into a strong SEO strategy – more than we can cover in this article. To learn more about how to get started with SEO, you can check out this guide.

Social Media Marketing

The next essential part of your digital marketing strategy should be social media. With social media, you can reach potentially millions of people, all for free. This makes it one of the best returns on investment you can make. 

To get started with social media marketing, you’ll first need to create accounts on the major social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – if you haven’t already. Once you’ve done that, you should start following other accounts that are in your niche. You should also link to your social media accounts on your website so that customers can easily find them.

It’s also important to give your audience a reason to follow you. Through your social media channels, you should provide useful information, offer discounts, and respond to customer feedback and questions. 

Remember when using social media that these accounts are a part of your public persona. Keep your brand’s voice in mind whenever you post or interact on social media, to keep things consistent across all platforms. You also don’t want to go too long without posting anything on any of your accounts, so make it a habit to share things regularly.

Email Marketing

No matter what kind of startup you are running, you can likely benefit from including email marketing in your digital strategy. People still check their emails on a daily basis, making it the ideal place to reach them. 

For example, if you’re running an eCommerce store, you could send out emails promoting deals on products similar to the ones the customer has previously purchased. Or if you’re running a consulting business, you could send out cold emails to describe your services and offer to talk further.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 87 percent of B2B marketers say that email marketing is one of their top free distribution channels. This is because it is a simple and cost-effective way to reach an audience with whatever message you would like to promote.

To get started with email marketing, you’ll need some emails. You can gather these in a number of ways, including having an opt-in form on your website, buying an existing list, or researching leads online. Once you have a list of people you want to contact, the next step is to put together the emails you want to send them and start your campaign. This guide on email can help walk you through the process.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has been around forever, but it has taken on a new form with the rise of social media. Typical influencer marketing campaigns included getting a person of status to promote your product for you. A classic example of this would be a celebrity appearing on a television commercial.

While this strategy is still available to you, startups should look at micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are people who have relatively small followings on social media – typically no more than 10,000. Because these followings are smaller, this makes it easier to target the exact audience you want.

For instance, let’s say your startup is for beauty products. To promote your brand, you could partner with people who provide makeup tutorials on YouTube. Everyone watching those videos would have an interest in makeup and beauty products, making them the exact audience you want to reach. Micro-influencers are a great way to get a good return on your investment, so look to add this component to your digital marketing strategy. 

Content Marketing

Finally, there is content marketing. The idea of content marketing is to help your customers find you, rather than going out and finding them through things like advertisements. With content marketing, your startup will produce helpful and valuable content that your audience is looking for and use this to draw them into your sales funnel.

Let’s go back to the beauty products startup. As a part of their content marketing strategy, they could produce their own video tutorials on how to best use their products. They could also write blog posts, providing even more beauty tips. Then, when someone searches for these things either through a site like YouTube or Google, they would come across this content and learn more about the brand.

The great thing about content marketing is that it can help boost all your other digital marketing strategies. After creating a valuable blog post, for example, you could then share it with your email subscribers and on your social media channels. It would also give you another chance to rank on search engines, improving your SEO efforts. 

To learn more about how you can get started with content marketing, try this guide.

Creating a Comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy

The best digital marketing strategies are the ones that diversify. The more elements you have going at once, the more opportunities you have to reach your audience. Examine your current digital marketing strategy and see if any of the above elements can help you. While they may not become your primary marketing target, that doesn’t mean they should be ignored either.