A recent survey by Profoundry, reported that only 8% of startups outsource their marketing to a consultant or an agency and 65% of startups have never received nor considered any formal digital marketing training. With the added pressure of being funded, startups have to find the right balance between what makes sense from a digital marketing point of view and what will please investors and venture capitalists.
Here are five of the biggest digital marketing mistakes made by startups and how to fix them.
#1 Pilots and Year-Long Marketing PlansInvestors like to see progress and a strategic approach to growing businesses. Frequently, startups that are funded or are looking to get a VC on board create a 9-12 month marketing plan. That plan usually consists of a three-month pilot phase and two or three expansion phases.
Online advertising changes fast and new ad formats come out every 8-12 weeks, meaning you are planning ahead without considering any new ad formats. Additionally, one of the biggest characteristics of online marketing versus offline marketing is that the all important split tests show nearly instantaneous results. Planning a year ahead without ever having tested anything means basing everything on assumptions about what works best. While you can estimate conversion rates and costs based on experience, to estimate a year ahead and have that plan go through exactly as expected without discovering a better way of doing things is unlikely.
Examples of a recent ad format that throw many businesses off recently is the call-only ad format on Google AdWords. Many businesses were caught by surprise when Google pulled the option to target mobile devices exclusively and introduced the bid modifier. Some businesses started click-to-call ads and exactly those businesses recently had to make the choice whether they wanted to call-only ads a shot. If any of those businesses has made a 12 months plan, none of those changes would have been in it.
A reactive, flexible, and adjustable digital marketing strategy works far more effectively for a fast growing startup. Decide what platform you want to try first and how much money you are willing to spend even if you don't get a single lead or sale. Start advertising the top three product or service, meaning the ones where you expect the highest demand and/or highest margins. Once that works out, add a complementary platform with for cross-channel remarketing purposes and if that works, add a campaign on that second platform.
#2 Budgets Verus CostsInvestors (or some clients that are new to online marketing if you are an agency) want to see the exact budget for the next 3 months, the following 4 months, and so on. Most of the time, that budget is nowhere near accurate. Additionally, while there is always the expectation of the magical boost to the bottom line, when the first online marketing proposal is looked at, the budget is often considered as cost. But you need to separate budget, actual campaign spend (which is indicated in 99% of platforms as "cost"), and actual cost, meaning the cost of people working on the campaign.
Additionally, it is a great time to point out that online marketing budgets are meant to be an investment. They are meant to generate profit, directly with sales or indirectly with branding. The difference in wording here makes a big difference because everyone knows that investments have a certain level of risk to them. So if need to evaluate or present your marketing plan, keep in mind what the different numbers stand for.
Depending on what kind of business you are in, also consider the expected lifetime value of a customer. Especially if you are funded and have about a year to make an epic fail or make this the best decision you've ever made.
Again, this depends on how often customers buy. This strategy is great if you have more than one purchase per customer within a year and terrible if you are planning on selling something like high-end laundry machines or kitchens that people buy every 10 years.
#3 Using More Than One Platform Straight AwayStarting with multiple platforms at once is a typical digital marketing mistake of startups and is also one of the topics that marketers fight about the most. While some wholeheartedly support starting with as many platforms and campaigns as your budget allows for to get to success faster, others prefer to start small and scale it up. From my experience, there are advantages and disadvantages for both strategies but my recommendation would be to start small and scale it up – always.
If you start Facebook, AdWords, Bing, Twitter, Pinterest, and so on all at once, you will know a lot faster what doesn't work and can focus on what works better or keep testing until you make it work for all platforms. While I am all for black and white decision-making and having clear stats that point me in the right and obvious direction, it's a lot of work to set up and there is a more efficient way to do this.
Businesses can be sorted in two types of digital marketing categories:
Advertising platforms typically fit either or. There are a few platforms that are great for both strategies but the main traffic a platform can generate typically comes from just one of those strategies. Let's have a look at a couple of examples.
For 99% of pull strategies, keyword driven platforms like, AdWords and Bing, for example are your best bets.
For push, it is a little more than that. Interests, behaviors, demographics fit most customer profiles for push marketing strategies, so Facebook and the Google Display network are great options here. Additionally though, there are other categories like social proof for instance. People buy from you mainly because of who else bought from you and what reviews are saying.
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