You have a great product at hand, you have your business plan and if you are lucky you may already have some investors backing you up. This is the start of every startup. But fast forward 3 months or 6 months down the line, the revenues are not coming, competitors have come up with similar products, and investors are getting impatient to see results. Sounds familiar?
So where did it go wrong? Was your product not enough?
Maybe a good product is really not enough in today’s world. Even if you are technology-savvy entrepreneur, who created a website and got Google ads to drive traffic. There are so many things to take care of:
- Is your website updated regularly?
- Are your Google ads targeting the right customer?
- Are you really engaging your audience?
Digital marketing and social media is a very dynamic environment today and you need to be equally agile with it. Only then you can derive any useful results out of it.
Otherwise you may only end up spending more and more money without really getting any good returns, or hardly any returns at all. If you think it’s too overwhelming, get help. This is where Digital Marketing Agencies for startups come.
So how can a Digital marketing agency really help a Start Up?
Millions of users spending hours of daily screen time. Know the changing behaviour:
- In Dec, 2018 India had over 560 million active Internet users. This number is expected to reach 627 million by the end of 2019. 97% of Indians use their smartphone to access internet.
- Rural India has seen a growth of over 18% in internet users year on year. Over 200 million mobile internet users are expected by end of 2019.
- Facebook as 281 million active users from India, YouTube has 265 million.
- TikTok which had only 20 million users till last year, has 120 million users from India in 2019.
A Digital Marketing Agency keeps a constant tab on these changing scenarios, primarily because that’s inherent to their business. Through the use of various Analytics and Insights tools they are able to help you put money, only where it really brings results.
Instead of hiring a web developer, a designer, a content writer, a marketing specialist and a SEO resource, use the agency’s expertise so you get all of them at the cost of one resource. While you may hire the best web developers to create a website for you, they may not be able to give it the marketing edge that it needs. A digital media agency can help you create content with relevant keywords for each of the pages on your website. They will also help you with fresh content for regular updates.
An important feature here is the use of metadata tags and keywords. Metadata tags are not directly visible on your website but they are important for search engines to identify and index you in the correct category of searches. If you have the correct metadata tags built into your website, and your content has high ranking keywords (we will come to that next), your chances of featuring in browser searches and thus getting page hits is very high. A digital marketing agency will help you create correct metadata.
If you don’t keep your customer’s engaged, someone else will. Social media presence is not an option, it’s essential to connect with your audience.
Have you seen how celebrities are always in the news on social media. And it’s not always about their movies. Mostly, It’s about what’s going on in their world, or something they support, or something they totally dislike. But they DO MAKE SURE to stay in the news.
As a startup, it is also essential for you to be ‘in the news’, and stay connected with your audience through social media. There are over a dozen popular platforms like
- YouTube
- TikTok
But if you are going to spend time updating status every time, who will do the actual work. A Digital Marketing Agency helps you manage your messaging on these platforms. Many of these will actually help your business grow and generate leads and bring you new customers.
35% of product searches start with Google. And 95% users never go to the next page. Just paying for Google Ads is not enough, you should be visible to the right customer at the right time.
Digital advertising works very differently than traditional TV spots or print media. Google Ads works on a very complicated algorithms and dynamic pricing, and it can be overwhelming for anyone new to it. There are multiple pricing options like:
- per click
- per view
- per thousand impressions
And then this pricing changes dynamically based on the total searches that Google gets, target location, devices, time of day, seasonality and so on. To keep a track of all of this, and optimize your spend on digital advertising can be a huge task, unless you have an expert doing it for you.
A happy customer is your best brand ambassador. But the contrary is equally damaging for your business. Your online reputation is an important brand equity today.
97% of customers read online reviews for local businesses and 90% of them say a positive review increases the chances of them buying the product. On the other hand, a single negative review can cost a business 22% of its customers. It’s simple! Customers don’t have time, and don’t want to risk their money. And there are so many places for them to checkout reviews for your product before even contacting you.
- E-commerce listing reviews like on Amazon, Flipkart
- Review forums like Mouthshut.com, Yelp.com
- Category specific websites like GSMArena.com, ZigWheels.com, TripAdvisor.com
- Q&A forums like Quora.com
- And of course word of mouth through social media
And then there are INFLUENCERS on various platforms. They have hundreds and sometimes thousands of online followers, who depend on their views and reviews before even looking for a product. So managing your online reputation can be really handful and a single mistake can be very costly.
A Digital Marketing Agency will help you maximize your returns on each of these different aspects of digital presence, be it social media, SEO, Google Ads, online reputation, and so on.
They will guide you on how to plan your online marketing budget and spread it over different platforms. They will alert you on any significant developments in digital world before you miss the boat. So, just like, you go to a hospital for your medical needs, or call in an electrician to correct any electrical faults at home, it is always best to use the services of an expert when while driving online sales/leads for your business.