There’s no shortage of startup marketing strategy ideas to pick from when you’re launching a new business. However, finding what works for your new venture can be a bewildering task.
The reason that Google Ads is so successful is that it is a cost-effective channel for companies of all sizes, from large Fortune 500 corporations to small one-person operations. Google Ads requires time and patience, and smart decision-making — throwing money at your account doesn’t guarantee results.
That being the case, a bootstrapping startup can generate a high return on investment (ROI) with a small budget, if they know what they’re doing. When you’re launching a new marketing campaign for your online business, the last thing you want to do is blow the budget with a poorly thought-out strategy.
So, in this article, we’ll give you all the guidelines you need to avoid disaster. Read on to discover the tips and techniques that will ensure your startup marketing strategy ideas yield dividends.
Here’s the big secret about Google Ads success:
It’s all about relevance.
Take a close look at the structure of your Google Ads account. Your keywords, ads, and ad groups should all be closely related. When you have everything aligned, Google will reduce your advertising costs.
Remember that Google Ads campaigns cost you money every single time somebody clicks on your ads. Therefore, you must do everything you can to turn those clicks into something of value for your business.
To achieve this, keep your ideal customer in mind when you are writing your ads so that you can hone in on a defined niche audience.
Try using the AIDAS principle to stay on track with ad creation, so your ads will:
This guides your startup marketing strategy ideas, giving them focus to deliver precisely what your niche wants.
Once you define your niche, you can compile a list of valuable “buying intent” keywords. Before spending heavily on these, it’s a wise move to conduct some competitor analysis.
By leveraging competitor intelligence to discover more about works in your market, you can get valuable insights that will help you maximize your pay-per-click (PPC) budget. This is a crucial step that ensures your startup marketing strategy ideas bear fruit.
There are tools available to collects and organizes historical advertising data from thousands of online advertisers and companies. You can create a profile and quickly search for any of your competitors to examine the keywords they are using for their PPC advertising campaigns.
By doing this type of research, you can identify specific keywords that are likely to earn a positive PPC ROI. Also, you can identify low-value keywords that should be paused or cut from a campaign.
With some careful consideration, you can manually search lists from your competitors to select specific keywords, adding them to your list.
Bonus tip: After reviewing the keywords, click the Ads tab to check out your competitor’s ad copy. See how they use the keywords in their copy, and get some ideas for your ads!
You may think that defining your niche is the last step before getting started with Google Ads. Many people dive in at this point, but it’s better if you invest some more time and resources to understand your audience at a deeper level.
Ask yourself the following questions:
You can research your audience for free on Google Ads, which makes it easier to understand the people you are targeting. With more information, you can segment your audience by interests, ages, and spending habits.
For example, consider the following examples of audience segmentation:
Segment 1
Teachers and educational professionals in the USA. If your company has products for this audience, you could tailor your ads to attract attention from teachers in elementary or high school.
Segment 2
People who are based in Europe that travel multiple times a year. Ideally, you’ll be targeting non-professionals who like an adventure.
These examples are very basic, but they give you a starting point. By building on this, you will have a more definite sense of direction for your startup marketing strategy ideas.
When it comes to showing ads to your audience, how you segment users will determine what ads they see. For instance, you could serve ads to various subsects of your audience based on:
It’s easy to do this in Google Ads by adding audiences to your ad groups. However, keep in mind that audience targeting is not available for every campaign type.
This feature helps you find audiences without the need to enter specific categories. You can use the audience search feature in all campaigns that support audience targeting or observation.
Try using this technique to identify new audiences that are related to your chosen keywords in your campaign. You can see the audiences you have recently selected in the space below the Audience search in the Google Ads dashboard.
The audience ideas option is found in the Ideas tab in Google Ads. This feature guides audience targeting, so you can increase your reach to find more prospective customers.
These suggestions will be based on your audience selection, your website, search campaigns, and other advertisers like you. Google Ads relies on aggregated advertising data to offer you accurate suggestions that should be closely aligned with user intent.
The Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80/20 Rule asserts that, in any given activity, roughly 80% of the impact or effects come from approximately 20% of the causes.
PPC managers can use this principle to focus on 20% of channels that matter most. By prioritizing these important few, you can generate great results, even when the other 80% of your channels aren’t being fully utilized or maintained.
Just remember that your business and the market will evolve, so you should keep a close eye to watch out for new partners or channels that may deserve a spot in your top 20%. Similarly, you may want to drop specific channels out if they start underperforming.
Follow the steps below to use the Pareto Principle in PPC advertising:
By focusing on what is already working, you can maximize the ROI from these components in your campaign. You can also apply the 80/20 rule to determine the best social media channels for your business, and even to identify the vital few in your workforce.
Creating great content is just the start. After that, you must figure out how you will distribute it. Think about how your audience will view your content, and then tailor distribution accordingly.
Ideally, your content marketing channel plan should comprise seven factors:
With a solid content marketing plan, the best startup marketing strategy ideas have a real chance to go places.
Measuring performance is massively important in online advertising. Google Analytics gives the data you need to gauge the impact of your efforts, and visual reports make it easy to evaluate everything.
The big problem for many marketers is knowing which metrics to consider.
Here are eight metrics you should keep your eye on:
Remember that great customer who was regularly buying until six months ago? And what about that customer who wrote a fantastic review that helped earn you hundreds of referrals last year?
As your business grows, it gets harder to offer the same level of personalization in your customer service. Sometimes, you can lose touch.
Here’s the truth:
Your existing customers are your most valuable asset. It’s easier and cheaper to keep them than it is to get new customers. By nurturing existing customer relationships, you can build stronger bonds, and earn repeat business.
If you’re feeling awkward about reaching out after a long time, here are nine tips for re-engaging your existing customers for more business:
Bottom-of-the-funnel content is created for prospects who have moved beyond awareness, and are now interested in products and services, ready to take action. It is optimized for buyers — not social, email, or search.
Marketers can optimize their bottom-of-the-funnel content in many different ways, such as:
It can be tough to get into the mind of your ideal customer. You may wonder why a customer spends a long time flipping through the pages, adding products, only to then abandon the cart.
Understanding the customer journey is crucial. If you don’t know how or why customer interacts with your business, your startup marketing strategy ideas will struggle to gain traction.
This is where a customer journey map comes in, as it offers multiple benefits, including:
Ultimately, by breaking down the customer journey into separate phases, and aligned each step with a goal, you can restructure your digital touchpoints to make the right offer to the right person, at the right time.
We will help your ad reach the right person, at the right time
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