Digital Marketing Strategy For New Businesses In 10 Easy Steps
by Andrew Gibbins on 08-Jul-2020 13:12:00
For a business starting out, the prospect of attracting the right type of customers, with the value you need to grow your enterprise, can be daunting. Fortunately, digital technology allows you to target very specific markets with valuable content and highly tailored marketing messages. You no longer have to rely on word of mouth referrals, cold calling or scattergun advertising.
Yet, simply reaching a market is not enough to turn leads into customers.
The appropriate digital marketing strategies need to be implemented in order to nurture your leads and grow your customer base.
If you’re new to digital marketing, here’s a 10-point guide to start you off:
Step 1 – Create A Brand/Logo
First impressions are very important, especially online, where you can’t rely on body language and physical contact to convey your meaning. If you want to stand out from the crowd, having a distinctive and engaging brand and logo conveying exactly what your business is offering is essential to be competitive.
Step 2 – Create A Mobile Responsive Website
As browsing habits evolve, so do the ways of accessing online content. Ensuring your website is easily accessible from different devices and different screen sizes is necessary to reach the widest audience possible. People aren’t going to waste much time messing around with a website that isn’t designed for mobile accessibility. A mobile responsive website will automatically modify the website’s content for smaller mobile devices, eliminating the need to manually create a separate mobile website.
Step 3 – Create Accounts On Google’s Suite Of Platforms
Google has a range of marketing platforms such as My Business, Ads (their pay per click advertising service, formerly AdWords) and Places, designed to enable businesses to reach the top of online searches. Employing these services will help your business keep track of how well your online presence is performing in the online market, use paid advertising methods to promote your business online, and control the information you want displayed in search results. Using these platforms in unison will best inform you how to market your new business and give it a competitive edge.
Step 4 – Set Up Social Media Accounts
A large amount of website traffic for businesses comes from social media, so having a presence there is obvious. Maximising your business’s presence on social media platforms will allow more direct customer communication, fostering better trust and loyalty. Authoritative social media content can lead to better brand recognition and useful insights gained about your customers, in addition to reaching a wider audience. Also, some leads may come directly through social media – especially Facebook and LinkedIn – rather than via your website. A social media account can be set up and customised in a matter of minutes, so you can get started even before your company website goes live.
Step 5 – Start Building An Email/Contact List
As your business starts accumulating clients and customers, it is important to build a list to stay in contact. Keeping your base informed is important both for growing your business and retaining the loyalty of your clients. Using customer feedback forms, social media posts and incentives to boost your subscriber count are all valid ways to build a list of potential customers.
Step 6 – Set Up An Account On An Email Marketing Platform
With a contact list set up, signing up for an email marketing platform or marketing automation suite should be next. Comprehensive marketing platforms like Hubspot have email marketing tools built in that will allow you to create a multi-tiered marketing campaign that can achieve excellent results for your business. From creating triggers that will automatically send out emails based on a customer’s actions on your website, to personalising content specific to each customer based on their profile, email marketing builds your customer base at a relatively low cost, creating a better return on investment (ROI) from your marketing spend. Hubspot offer a really good Free CRM with email capabilities.
Step 7 – Ask For Reviews
Customers will always be willing to share their experiences online. Encouraging and listening to feedback will help your business understand the needs of customers and allow you to respond quickly and constructively. Feedback can come from online reviews, social media posts and direct communication, so having strategies in place for each is important. As a new business, you may wish to build up a portfolio of reviews by offering customers an incentive in return for a written testimonial, such as a small discount or access to exclusive gated content.
Step 8 – Set Up A Blog
Having a blog directly tied to your website is a great way to attract a larger audience. By regularly updating a blog with engaging and informative posts about your business and the wider industry, you can promote your business as an expert in the field, draw more traffic through search results and social media shares – as each blog post is treated as an independent page of your website by Google – ultimately increasing your knowledge base through research which can then be passed on to your customers.
Step 9 – Add Your Site To Business Directories
Another way to feature your business in search results is to list it with a reputable and relevant business directory. This will ensure that your essential contact details like addresses, business hours, etc will appear whenever your business is searched for directly, or when prospects are searching online for businesses like yours. There are many different directories available, so sign up for any applicable to your business.
Step 10 – Promote Initial Offers
Offering incentives to draw in customers will help promote awareness and interest in your new business and create a strong, early customer base. Offers can include discounts, free offers on selected items or services, competitions, and the like. Promotions can be repeated as your business grows to attract even more customers down the line. Tie in your promotions with paid advertising campaigns on Google and social media to draw in a larger customer base.
Setting Up Your Business On Solid Foundations
You’ve got the skills, ideas and experience to make a start up work. Inbound marketing will help get your services in front of the people and businesses who need them, and get new customers coming to you.
While building a business profile that stands out from the crowd can seem overwhelming, following these marketing tips will set up your new business on a good footing with everything you need to succeed in the industry.
To find out more about how we can help, please call 01332 343281.
Image source: Unsplash
- Inbound Marketing (SEO, PPC, Social Media, Video) (807)
- Strategy (350)
- Marketing Automation & Email Marketing (180)
- Sales & CRM (176)
- Website Design (157)
- Business Growth (145)
- Hubspot (123)
- Lead Generation (109)
- Google Adwords (97)
- Content Marketing (91)
- News (46)
- Case Studies (43)
- Conversion (43)
- Ecommerce (36)
- Webinars (30)
- SEO (22)
- Events (19)
- Video (17)
- LinkedIn Advertising (15)
- Video Selling (15)
- AI (13)
- Software training (13)
- Niche business marketing (11)
- The Digital Prosperity Podcast (10)
- Facebook Advertising (6)
- September 2025 (1)
- August 2025 (14)
- July 2025 (14)
- June 2025 (5)
- May 2025 (19)
- April 2025 (15)
- March 2025 (13)
- February 2025 (13)
- January 2025 (8)
- December 2024 (2)
- November 2024 (4)
- October 2024 (21)
- September 2024 (4)
- August 2024 (8)
- July 2024 (14)
- June 2024 (16)
- May 2024 (25)
- April 2024 (15)
- March 2024 (18)
- February 2024 (5)
- January 2024 (10)
- December 2023 (6)
- November 2023 (10)
- October 2023 (13)
- September 2023 (12)
- August 2023 (14)
- July 2023 (13)
- June 2023 (14)
- May 2023 (15)
- April 2023 (13)
- March 2023 (14)
- February 2023 (13)
- January 2023 (15)
- December 2022 (13)
- November 2022 (6)
- October 2022 (8)
- September 2022 (22)
- August 2022 (15)
- July 2022 (13)
- June 2022 (16)
- May 2022 (14)
- April 2022 (16)
- March 2022 (17)
- February 2022 (11)
- January 2022 (8)
- December 2021 (6)
- November 2021 (7)
- October 2021 (11)
- September 2021 (10)
- August 2021 (7)
- July 2021 (7)
- June 2021 (4)
- May 2021 (4)
- April 2021 (1)
- March 2021 (3)
- February 2021 (5)
- January 2021 (4)
- December 2020 (7)
- November 2020 (6)
- October 2020 (5)
- September 2020 (9)
- August 2020 (18)
- July 2020 (17)
- June 2020 (17)
- May 2020 (10)
- April 2020 (21)
- March 2020 (24)
- February 2020 (21)
- January 2020 (12)
- December 2019 (23)
- November 2019 (12)
- October 2019 (14)
- September 2019 (16)
- August 2019 (15)
- July 2019 (13)
- June 2019 (6)
- May 2019 (8)
- April 2019 (4)
- March 2019 (2)
- February 2019 (2)
- January 2019 (2)
- December 2018 (3)
- November 2018 (24)
- September 2018 (11)
- August 2018 (9)
- June 2018 (3)
- May 2018 (6)
- April 2018 (14)
- March 2018 (12)
- February 2018 (16)
- January 2018 (15)
- December 2017 (15)
- November 2017 (18)
- October 2017 (23)
- September 2017 (19)
- August 2017 (28)
- July 2017 (27)
- June 2017 (25)
- May 2017 (18)
- April 2017 (17)
- March 2017 (16)
- February 2017 (17)
- January 2017 (14)
- December 2016 (21)
- November 2016 (27)
- October 2016 (25)
- September 2016 (16)
- August 2016 (20)
- July 2016 (19)
- June 2016 (14)
- May 2016 (20)
- April 2016 (24)
- March 2016 (22)
- February 2016 (28)
- January 2016 (27)
- December 2015 (28)
- November 2015 (19)
- October 2015 (9)
- September 2015 (12)
- August 2015 (5)
- July 2015 (1)
- June 2015 (10)
- May 2015 (3)
- April 2015 (11)
- March 2015 (14)
- February 2015 (15)
- January 2015 (12)
- December 2014 (2)
- November 2014 (23)
- October 2014 (2)
- September 2014 (2)
- August 2014 (2)
- July 2014 (2)
- June 2014 (7)
- May 2014 (14)
- April 2014 (14)
- March 2014 (7)
- February 2014 (2)
- January 2014 (7)
- December 2013 (9)
- November 2013 (14)
- October 2013 (17)
- September 2013 (3)
- August 2013 (6)
- July 2013 (8)
- June 2013 (4)
- May 2013 (3)
- April 2013 (6)
- March 2013 (6)
- February 2013 (7)
- January 2013 (5)
- December 2012 (3)
- November 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (1)
Subscribe by email
You May Also Like
These Related Blogs

How To Identify And Prioritise The Most Profitable Digital Sales And Marketing Channels For Your Business
The Internet is a wide-open landscape when it comes to making sales for your business.

How To Use Video Content To Boost Your Social Media Presence
The popularity of video content has been driven by mobile devices and social media, and today, thousands of UK businesses use video content to connect …

How To Get More B2B Sales Leads From Your Website
Today's corporate decision-makers tend to turn to the Internet when they're looking for new suppliers. That means that you'll need to develop a succes …