Why should you learn inbound marketing tips for growing startups? Well, because inbound marketing is a more affordable and sustainable model than other marketing approaches. And building awareness around your startup can be a tough task.
Starting a business today is easier thanks to the internet. However, there’s a challenge: The competition for customers is high given the low entry barrier. In fact, more than 20% of startups don’t survive past the first year. Of the startups that fail, 38% state lack of cash as the top reason whereas 20% got outcompeted.
What does this mean?
If you want to start and grow your business, you need to leverage marketing strategies that aren’t costly and can help you stand out of the crowd.
So, understanding the inbound marketing tips for growing startups can be a great idea.
Unlike traditional marketing which focuses on pushing out marketing messages to customers, inbound marketing focuses on creating valuable content that attracts your target audience to your business.
So if you’re looking to attract potential customers and convert them into leads and paying customers to drive more revenue and grow your business then keep reading.
The Importance Of SEO In Digital Marketing
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategic digital marketing approach that helps you connect with and influence prospective customers to build trust and foster long-term relationships.
The strategy involves the use of content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, video marketing, and more to attract prospects and convert them into paying customers.
Whether you’re selling online courses or other digital products, it’s a great strategy as it involves the customers finding you, and not the other way around.
Here are the four stages of inbound marketing methodology.
There are many benefits of using inbound marketing for startups including:
- Helps to drive quality traffic and prospects.
- More efficient at controlling business expenses than traditional/outbound marketing.
- Enables two-way communications.
- Enables startups to generate more leads.
- Generates leads that have a higher chance of converting.
- Helps build credibility and trust for your startup.
Free Skills Training: From Determining Prices to Government Contracting
7 Inbound Marketing Tips for Growing Startups
Now that you understand what inbound marketing is, let’s discuss practical inbound marketing tips you can leverage to help grow your startup.
1. Leverage Video Content
Video content is more entertaining and engaging than text or images.
When done right, it can be a powerful tool for:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Driving more traffic to your website
- Generating good ROI
- Increasing user understanding of your product or service
According to the latest Wyzowl Video Survey report, 91% of businesses say video has helped them increase traffic, and 87% say it helped increase sales:
According to the same survey, 91% of consumers say they want to see more online videos from brands.
That’s why 73% of marketers say video has become more important to their businesses than ever.
The good news?
You can easily get started with video marketing. Plus it’s not as expensive as many people think.
Today, you can easily create interesting videos online to promote your products using a video making tool. This curated list of best video makers by Attrock can be really useful.
All you need to know is to learn to tell stories, share valuable information, and keep your message authentic.
Here are practical video marketing tips to grow your startup:
- Establish your goal
- Create a how-to series on YouTube
- Share explainer and brand story videos
- Promote your content on social media with videos
- Share user-generated and social-proof videos
- Leverage livestream videos
- Incorporate video into your email marketing campaigns
2. Create Beautiful Downloadable Offers
Who doesn’t love free things?
If you want to generate leads that convert into sales, creating downloadable offers is one of the most powerful inbound marketing tips.
Granted, having a lead-generation form on your landing page can help you capture email addresses.
Nevertheless, content in the form of downloadable offers enable you to attract more leads who want to gain access to those assets.
Besides, although lead generation is the most important goal for creating downloadable content offers, you can also achieve the following:
- Establish thought leadership
- Grow your verified email marketing list
- Drive sales
You can create downloadable offers in the following formats:
- PDF blog post
- Cheat sheet
- Checklist
- Quick start guide
- Report
- Exclusive interviews
Here’s an awesome cheat sheet created by OptinMonster that covers over 700 power words that can help you boost your conversions.
HubSpot also offers a free downloadable State of Marketing Trends report with a massive amount of research-backed data.
But here’s the catch:
To gain free access to the entire report, you need to provide enough information about your business to help HubSpot understand if you’re a potential lead for them or not.
This is a fantastic way of collecting your visitors’ email addresses so that you can follow up with marketing emails and other content upgrades.
Here’s how you can create attractive downloadable pieces of content:
- Ensure it’s something your audience really wants.
- Provide a preview of the content using stunning visuals and a straightforward title and include a clear CTA.
- Don’t ask for too much information from people wanting to download the content upgrade—the name and email address is enough.
3. Leverage Social Media Marketing
Social media is probably one of the easiest and more accessible inbound marketing strategies for growing your startup efficiently.
But why?
Sprout Social’s The State of Social-Media Investment survey report reveals that at least one in four users are on social media to discover, learn, purchase, or recommend products, services, or brands:
However, to generate results from social media marketing, you must have a practical strategy focused on converting followers into leads and ultimately customers.
Here are the benefits of using social media for your startup:
- Enables you to reach your customers
- Helps you generate brand awareness for your brand
- Provides you with a direct communication channel with your audience
- Enables you to drive traffic cost-efficiently
- Offers a simple content production approach
- Helps you build solid relationships with customers
- Enables you to reach new customers
Here are useful social media marketing tips for startups:
- Identify suitable social media marketing channels
- Focus on your ideal customers
- Create visually attractive content
- Stay on top of emerging trends
- Create a content publishing calendar
- Focus on the organic growth of your brand
- Use the right social media marketing tools
- Engage with your audience efficiently
- Do live video streams
4. Host a Free Webinar
Even though webinars require some investment of time and resources, they can help you drive huge returns and conversions for your startup when done right.
According to the State of Content Marketing report by Semrush, 20% of content marketers say webinars are the video format that performs the best for them:
Understandably, hosting free webinars can help your startup in many ways.
Apart from being helpful for people looking for solutions to their challenges, webinars can turn your leads into customers.
Here are more benefits of free webinars for your startup:
- Deliver lots of information efficiently.
- Provide immediate lead capture.
- Allow you to engage with prospects directly.
- Enable you to build relationships with your audience.
- They are an effective medium for educating your audience about your product or service.
- Help you generate leads.
- Webinars are a cost-efficient marketing tool.
- Grow your email registration lists.
You can create the following types of free webinars:
- Product webinars
- Educational webinars
- Social media webinars
- Q&A webinars
- Panel webinars
Here are some actionable tips to get more results for your startup with free webinars:
-
- Find a topic that resonates with your audience.
- Decide the best time and day to host your free webinar.
- Send personalized webinar invites.
- Create and optimize your webinar landing page.
- Use exit-intent pop-ups.
- Partner with an influencer.
- Publicize your webinar via social media.
- Give incentives for referrals.
#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; false;clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width: px;}
/* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
Sign Up for The Start Newsletter
(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;fnames[3]=’ADDRESS’;ftypes[3]=’address’;fnames[4]=’PHONE’;ftypes[4]=’phone’;fnames[5]=’MMERGE5′;ftypes[5]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);
5. Create and Share Compelling Content
Content is a powerful tool for launching an actionable inbound marketing strategy.
Here’s why.
Creating compelling content establishes your brand as an authority in your industry, helps you build trust and loyalty, and ultimately improves customer retention.
No wonder, 82% of companies use content marketing.
Besides, according to the Semrush report mentioned above, 47% of respondents say content has helped them increase social media engagement, 33% of them also say it boosts their leads and conversions.
Remember, creating generic articles, blog posts, and other content won’t help you succeed.
Here are useful inbound content marketing strategies for startups:
- Establish your goals for creating content
- Define your audience
- Develop a solid content strategy
- Optimize your content for search intent
- Create attractive lead magnets
- Optimize your landing pages
- Leverage different content formats
- Include compelling CTAs
- Measure results
6. Launch an Influencer Marketing Campaign
Getting noticed as a startup in today’s noisy social media and internet marketing world is not an easy task.
This is where influencer marketing partnerships become helpful.
Statistics are clear.
According to the latest influencer marketing benchmark report by Influencer Marketing Hub, the industry size is estimated to be worth $21.1 billion.
According to the same survey report, 67% of respondents plan to increase their influencer marketing budget over the next 12 months:
The rapid growth and adoption of influencer marketing is due to the host of benefits it offers.
By collaborating with an influencer, you can achieve the following for your startup:
- Expand your reach
- Generate high-quality leads
- Drive sales and conversions
- Build brand awareness and credibility
- Improve SEO rankings
- Boost engagement
- Grow your email marketing list
- Drive more traffic to your website
But before you get started with influencer marketing, you need to understand the different types of influencers you can partner with. Depending on your budget, you can choose nano, micro, or mega-influencers. You could even partner with celebrities.
Here are actionable tips to launch goal-crushing influencer marketing campaigns for your startup:
- Create an influencer marketing plan
- Identify the right influencers for your startup
- Create compelling content with them
- Encourage creativity
- Launch social media takeovers
- Hold contests and giveaways
- Engage with your audience
- Reward influencers
- Add a Google review widget and showcase influencer’s reviews on your website
Verizon Small Business Digital Ready
Find free courses, mentorship, networking and grants created just for small businesses.
7. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
The ultimate goal of implementing all these inbound marketing tips for growing your startup is to drive traffic to your website. It’s this kind of forward-thinking strategy that really exemplifies a growth mindset, because you’re not just reacting to the market, but proactively seeking ways to improve and expand your business.
You need to ensure you’re converting as many visitors into customers as possible.
But here’s what you need to know.
To make your website convert like crazy, you need to optimize it to cater to mobile visitors and shoppers. Also, be sure to conduct a CRO audit to improve traffic and conversions.
Here are useful tips to make your startup’s website mobile-friendly:
- Optimize your website loading times for mobile users
- Instead of Adobe Flash, use HTML5
- Use only important plugins
- Compress images
- Avoid pop-ups
- Use a mobile-responsive theme or template
- Declutter web design
- Use fonts that are readable on mobile devices
Conclusion
The majority of startups fail within their first year due to a myriad of reasons. Creating a goal-crushing marketing strategy can help you stay ahead of the competition, meet your customers’ expectations, and achieve great results.
Create videos, host webinars, work with influencers, and create a mobile-friendly website to improve your chances of success.
So, start using these inbound marketing tips to grow your startup and generate short-term and long-term results while keeping your customers happy and satisfied.
Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
The post 7 Proven Inbound Marketing Tips to Grow Your Startup appeared first on StartupNation.
