Importance of Digital Advertising for Startups

India has the largest startup ecosystem in the world. Every Month, new startups are launched in the marketplace and these startups have to compete with big companies. For startups, the only way of being successful is in marketing better, to the target audience. Startups have a limited budget, which means with a limited budget they have to reach the maximum audience to increase revenue.

As COVID-19 continues, industries across the world are having to reinvent themselves to cope with the changing consumer landscape. All the industries can benefit from taking this time to strategize and plan for the future, rather than putting the brakes on.

In the coming months, businesses are going to become more reliant than ever on their digital strategy. The total disappearance of all channels related to live events and conferences, and the increasing barriers to face-to-face business, pose an enormous challenge.

Digital is likely to be the clear winner here, and companies – including ones that may not so much as had a Facebook page before – will need to move into social marketing, content marketing, SEO, and influencer-led campaigns. Larger companies are also now finding themselves in the position of having potentially lost millions through canceled events. They won’t go back, the hours of time and expense spent on preparations for this year will be spent on Digital Marketing.

Digital marketing can be done at a much lower cost compared to print, OOH, and television advertisements. In addition, TV GRPs are increasingly becoming unreliable. Also, a website can reach millions of readers in a single day. Digital marketing allows startups to reach new clients to develop their businesses.

Some Basic Ideas for startups are:

Google Ads [Marketing]: Make sure you create your own Google Ads MCC Account and then share the logins with any agency or freelancer to work on the campaigns. The reason for doing this is to ensure that your Data is owned and operated by you which will reduce the chances of fraud and data leak. Also you can track how much your agency is spending. Search campaigns can exhaust the budget very quickly. So it requires a certain kind of expertise to engineer a successful campaign that generates more conversions than clicks.

Social Media [Marketing]: Social media is a very powerful marketing tool these days. It is the second most important marketing strategy for startups. Here make sure that you create your own business page and Ads Manager Account and then share the logins with any agency or freelancer for running the campaigns.

SEO: Search engine optimization is a must for every startup. Ensure to follow the best SEO practices for your website with an expert. A good SEO strategy will ensure that your Session durations increase and your cost per session is optimal.

Google Analytics: Create a Google Analytics Account to track the users and performance of the campaigns. Also, you can link Google Ads and Google Analytics for better optimization of the campaign. Create Goals and Funnel Visualisation which allows us to visually analyse the journey towards a conversion or goal.

Programmatic Advertising: The promise of programmatic advertising is that it makes advertising more targeted and therefore relevant and it makes buying more efficient. Using technology and data to automate media buying, makes it easier and cheaper for a brand to reach its target audience. Startups can’t afford to get their own DSP logins like search and social media because top DSP’s will have a monthly minimum spend criteria and they ask for heavy security deposit as well. For startups, I recommend going for good agencies who have these logins.

Finally, understanding your customer is the first step in optimizing your Digital Marketing funnel. In order to generate useful leads and push purchases, you need to understand when your customer is in the market, looking for something that you can provide. My recommendation to startups is to put in place strategies and tools that maximize the value of your 1st party data. This will allow them to create versatile solutions that are agnostic of Advertising platforms.

About the author:

Uday Kumar Haliga, Programmatic Senior Trader, INDIA & SAARC – MiQ Digital India