There are a lot of companies out there, especially small businesses that are looking for alternative digital marketing methods in order to get the best out of their budget. For larger businesses, the strategy is obviously much more flexible because they have the budget to compete with larger competitors. However, is the world of digital marketing becoming too competitive for new start-ups?
Imagine trying to start a travel business these days and getting your brand on the map. When you look at the companies in this sector even when making local searches for accommodation or flights, the same large corporation names appear on social media, Google, Yahoo, Instagram and so on. Try creating a website like Airbnb in this day and age. Or try to create a brand-new hotel brand and compete with some of the top hotel brands using search engine optimisation or Google Ads.
Digital marketing in some industry sectors requires a large online marketing budget. That said, online marketing is still much more affordable than many of the offline marketing techniques available out there, and often the only way to at least begin building a brand name for a new start-up.
Social Media Paid Ads
The nice thing about social media ads is that the way in which marketers can fine tune the audiences they want to reach. It takes time, but the long-term effort and results put into social media marketing can really help a business establish itself.
Google/Bing Pay Per Click
For local businesses, Google and Bing ads are still very effective. However, targeting an international market in most industries requires a huge marketing budget, and often a large team of online marketers that have extremely fine-tuned web analytic skills.
PR Strategy
Depending on the competitor, content, and PR can be quite affordable and very much worth the effort put in. Companies such as Outbrain in the UK are an amazing way to amplify public relations, corporate social responsibility, and press release content.
Content Strategy
Website content is also extremely important. Boring content that is confusing will see the website lose visitors quickly. The essential strategy any website needs to get right is its sales funnels. Sales funnels come from social media, PR activities, organic search, paid ads, and other places in which the digital marketing team has created campaigns that will bring traffic to the website.
The sales funnel from outside to inside the website should always concentrate on meeting the needs and wants at every level of the buyer behaviour model.
Hiring Digital Marketing Companies
Arguably the most difficult aspects to digital marketing are time and money. A start-up manager for a small business generally will not have time to run an online marketing campaign – especially if he/she is also working on physical sales channels such as cold calling and agency leads. Freelancers or a marketing agency that cover all the campaigns needed would usually be the best option to kick start an online marketing project.
For larger businesses, despite having a large marketing team, it is often hard to cover every angle of a complete 360 online marketing campaign and so hiring a digital marketing company like Emedia Creative Branding Agency, rather than an individual freelancer is often the best option. The reason a freelancer is not recommended for larger companies is that having a digital marketing agency with a broad range of skills is always useful if a staff member within the marketing team suddenly leaves. The agency can take over for a while.
The only reason a large company would hire a freelancer would be for specific skill sets such SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), which generally a specialist is needed in this area of online marketing.
By using third-party options, usually having an outside-in look at the company from a third party point of view can help reduce the competitive edge other companies have. Despite the fact, online marketing is more competitive than ever, as long as a company follows the steps outlined here, over time the company will make sales and build a brand name for itself.
