Four Digital Marketing Trends that Startups Can’t Afford to Miss

In their infancy stages, small businesses are focused primarily with keeping the lights on, keeping track of inventory, attracting new clients, and perfecting their product lines. Thus, allotting a major investment toward a robust marketing campaign might seem like putting the cart before the horse. Yet, these beginning years of a business are notably the most crucial. This is the period in which the brand community can balloon from a few trusted followers that have been there since Day 1 into an impressive group of advocates excited about getting the word out.

The key to making that transformation lies in employing digital marketing strategies as strategically and intentionally as possible. While there are a ton of options available at their fingertip, small business leaders don’t necessarily need to utilize every single on. Rather, successful ones are those who take a look at their target audience, analyze their preferences, goals and ambitions and then select the outreach avenues most directly tailored to them. If you’re a startup professional looking to differentiate yourself from the competition, grow your following and build your bottom line, here are four digital marketing trends you can’t afford to skip.

1. An emphasis on Search Engine Optimization. Until they’ve built a big enough following to have brand name recognition, most small businesses are found via online searches for generic terms relating to their industry. For instance, someone might search “dog groomers near me” and see Google results for local pet professionals in the area. As such, it’s important that you show up as close to the top as possible in these results. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. This is the practice of optimizing your web-based content to ping for certain keywords or phrases associated with your niche. You can achieve it via link building, keyword optimization, and more.

Studies show that 93% of all online experiences start out with a search engine inquiry. You want your name to be the first that a web visitor sees, so don’t lose that business to a competitor simply because you didn’t consider SEO in your overall digital marketing strategy. One way to take advantage of this opportunity is to leverage the Google My Business online directory. Make sure your business information is accurate, up-to-date and routinely reviewed to up your chances of showing up near the top.

2. Highlighted user reviews. Yes, anyone can hop online and read all the details they want about any product that a small business provides. Yet, research reveals that 84% of people trust online recommendations as much as they trust their friend’s advice. As such, you can’t highlight your positive online reviews enough. One great way to achieve this digital marketing goal is to showcase a few recent reports of positive feedback on your social media channels, such as Facebook or Twitter. Moreover, don’t think of a negative review as totally negative PR, either. If you can, use it as an opportunity to make things right with the customer and boost your brand image and transparency in the process.

To make sure your reviews are genuine and authentic, be sure to never ask someone explicitly to leave a positive review. Simply ask for honesty and conduct your business with integrity. If someone leaves you glowing feedback, ask him or her to elaborate with specific details.

3. Optimizing website content. Anyone can go online and churn out blog post after blog post just for the sake of posting a certain number of times per week. Yet, what’s most important moving into 2018 is that your website content be of the highest quality possible. You don’t have to write a new blog post every day, but you should be posting enough times per week to keep your readers interested and checking back in for more.

When you do create content, be it a blog post, a subpage or a guest article for a peer-related site, make sure that it meets these three criteria: It should be helpful, relevant, and informative. If you’re simply waxing poetic about a personal anecdote, you might keep a few readers interested, but chances are a majority will close out the window. Keeping this in mind, remember that web-based content doesn’t have to be strictly text, either. For some startups, it might be an informative infographic, an online tool that makes a process easier for your audience, or even a podcast wherein you discuss a pertinent issue relating to your industry.

To boost your search engine rankings, focus on longer, more high-quality content, even if that means posting fewer times per week. Though our attention spans as readers are notoriously getting shorter by the year, the average blog reader still interacts with longer-form content at a higher rate than quick snippets.

4. Leveraging new innovations in video marketing. Studies show that 55% of the world’s population watches an online video at least once per day. That’s a ton of people logging into their smart devices, focusing on one bit of content for any length of time. While that number may be surprising to some small business owners, it shouldn’t be. As humans, we’re innately more prone to remember and retain content absorbed via imagery than text only. It’s why an event display is so effective at at trade show, or why print-based graphic design is still hot.

The good news? You don’t have to create a feature-length documentary of your product or service to stand out. Don’t be afraid to start small, and focus on creating a video that informs. From there, you can expand into more territories and leverage some of the incredible capabilities that video can now bring to the table. Before you post it on every social sharing platform available, analyze which ones your target audience is most often frequenting. Not every video will make sense or find success on YouTube or Vimeo. Others might be better off integrated into your e-newsletters or similar collateral.

As we continue to progress into 2018, small businesses have an even greater opportunity to grow their brand community and improve their foothold in this competitive and changing landscape. The key to success lies in knowing which digital marketing trends to embrace and which to leave by the wayside. These four movements, however, are universally acceptable and lend themselves to bettering almost every niche. So start researching, planning and growing today.