To compete in the overly competitive digital landscape of 2026, you’ll need to focus on twelve specific areas.

While you’ve probably heard about these, how many details do you really know to make each one effective? They’re all the standards for this year and into the coming decade.

Take a look at each one and see how much you really know. Then assess what elements of them you need to hone in on. These all range from SEO to landing pages. In-between, you may learn some new things about local search marketing and the ever-popular format of video.

1. SEO

There isn’t anything more important to digital marketing than SEO, something that might still mystify you in its ongoing complexity. While it’s true Google’s algorithms can still become confusing, you can better grasp how it works when you work more with the concept.

It’s always better to have an expert to manage SEO for you if you want to truly succeed. While you can learn some basics, you’ll want someone who’s worked in it a while to fully help you realize the best strategies.

One recent strategy involves new HTTPS requirements already impacting SEO results. If you’re used to using HTTP pages, Google now suggests you to switch to a HTTPS format. The reasoning behind this is many contact forms using HTTP pages aren’t deemed secure enough.

Now that Google is going to label these “non-secure”, it’s essential to update your website with the HTTPS designation. Otherwise, having a “non-secure” stamp on your site could become a new scarlet letter for your placement on search engines.

An expert B2B SEO services will help you make this change.

2. Search Engine Marketing

If you’re new to search engine marketing, you’ll usually see it abbreviated as SEM. It’s a form of Internet marketing where you increase your SERPs through paid advertising methods.

You’ll want an expert to help you in this field as well, especially one who’s worked with Google Ads and search/display ads. In the case of Google Ads, you’ll want to educate yourself first on how the process works.

What you’ll appreciate the most is Google makes its Google Ads easy to use through their attention to customization. They let you choose whether you want graphic display ads, YouTube video ads, text-based search ads, or in-app mobile ads. All of these are going to depend on your business style and the targeted customers you need to reach.

Google makes it even easier with localized ad capability, plus superior metrics to track how well your ads work.

Don’t forget about other paid ad opportunities, especially Facebook Ads. The latter gives you ample opportunity to customize to multiple ad formats.

3. Local Search Marketing

You’re seeing a lot more attention on local search marketing in the last few years. It’ll continue being important far into the coming decade as local businesses realize the value of being found by local consumers.

To get started with local search marketing, you can again utilize more gifts from Google. Through Google My Business, you’ll be able to have your listing turn up the second someone does a Google search based on the user’s keywords. This includes your business appearing on Google Maps.

Google makes it easy to update your listing as well so nothing becomes out of date.

Don’t forget about how important online reviews are, as well as your social reputation. You’ll want to inspire customers to write positive reviews on places like Yelp. On social media, starting conversations and posting targeted content helps you utilize inbound marketing. Inbound techniques attract customers to you rather than you seeking them.

4. Content Marketing

As a connective string to inbound marketing above, content marketing is a big part of attracting a targeted audience. What’s essential about content marketing is that you need to make your content valuable, relevant, and consistent to make it worth the time of those consuming it.

In today’s time, you need to focus on creating content that can solve pain points and stay evergreen. Using shortcuts or black hat SEO tactics just to move to the top of search engines won’t work thanks to Google’s all-seeing eye.

So always keep “content is king”, as many like to put it. To make content marketing work well, you need to focus on mobile content, native advertising, influencer marketing, and marketing automation.

Think seriously about mobile content because smartphones are already making up 50% of all global devices. This is going to affect digital advertising, and how influencers promote your brand.

Automation tools send content to prospects on their mobile devices at just the right times.

5. Remarketing

Another critical aspect of digital marketing is going after prospects again with marketing content if they didn’t respond to your site’s banner ads the first time. This works by tracking these visitors through cookies and creating new ads on related sites.

You can also create new ads on your site to better target your prospects. The information you get from your site visitors gives you valuable data to tweak your ads to their pain points.

Ultimately, remarketing helps you stay more engaged with prospects, aids in brand awareness, and increases conversions. You can also gain the customers of your competitors, helping pay back any investment you place in creating new ads.

6. Responsive Web Design

Reaching customers by mobile is more or less the standard now, and that’s going to go on into the coming decade. Making your website conform to mobile screens is one of the most essential parts of digital marketing. The only way you can make this work successfully is through responsive web design.

With responsive programming, you can make your website automatically conform to all mobile screens. This is going to mean more than one format, including tablets and increasing use of smartwatches.

While you’ll have to work with a web designer to make this work, you’ll want an SEO expert for another aspect of RWD. AMP (or Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a new open-source code helping to make mobile web pages load faster.

Google gives precedence to websites using this, so take it seriously. It’s especially useful if you have a publishing site or post content to your website on a regular basis.

7. Email Marketing

No doubt you’ve done some email marketing, but how effective is it in reaching your intended targets at the right times? Email marketing is already a great tool for generating more leads than possible through any other marketing method. You can also increase your sales and conversion rates.

If you’re already suffering from overspending on other digital marketing, email marketing is one of the most affordable methods out there. In some cases, it’s free, unless using outsourced services.

Since you can combine it with other media, it’s also one of the most integrated marketing methods. You can add social share icons, plus referral reward systems. Email marketing ultimately helps you shorten your sales cycles when using compelling content.

8. Social Media Marketing

No doubt you’ve posted content to social media already. Yet, what can you do to make it more effective this year and the next?

To capture today’s audiences, Forbes notes various things, including automation to post your content when you know your audience is reading. Using tools like Hootsuite for post scheduling helps immensely when reaching users in other time zones.

You’ll also want to curate some content if possible to prove your clout. Don’t be too proud to do this since it adds luster to your expertise and brand. When you curate content from others, they’ll likely reciprocate.

Plus, don’t forget about hiring influencers to post content for you on popular social media channels.

9. Marketing Automation

As you can see, marketing automation is an important element in a lot of digital marketing techniques. Knowing more about it, in general, should become a top priority as it becomes a standard for businesses around the globe.

With 91% of successful businesses now saying automation is very important to their success, you can get a vision of what the present and future of marketing is.

To become successful with this, try looking for a CRM platform with marketing automation built-in. These can work together well because your CRM already has contact information. Automating marketing content directly to your contact list helps you integrate your marketing all in one place rather than using disparate sources.

What’s most important with automation is to keep your content consistent across all channels to avoid brand confusion.

10. Influencer Marketing

Have you thought about how you can take on a digital marketing campaign without having to spend a fortune? While you can save money doing email marketing and inbound techniques, hiring influencers does the same.

If you think hiring influencers to promote your brand online is all about hiring celebrities, think again. An influential person on social media doesn’t always have to mean being a celebrity. It can simply be someone with a lot of followers and a good track record of promoting products.

Forbes notes you need to identify top influencers first, which is going to involve a little research. You can do this by doing hashtag searches on places like Twitter to see what people are saying about topics related to your industry.

Reach out to these influencers on social media and ask them if they’d be willing to promote your brand. Some may offer to do it in exchange for free products. However, most are going to demand a fee.

Be sure to track your results to assure your ROI. Keep in mind those with fewer followers can have just as much influence as those with ten times the amount of followers.

11. Video

Over the last decade, we became a more visual culture attracted to imagery in the digital realms. A lot of this comes in various forms, but there isn’t any question video rose to the top.

We’re at the point now where more consumers of content prefer video above any other visual medium. Recent statistics show 87% of all online marketers now use video content of some sort.

A lot of this comes from massive viewership on places like YouTube. Regardless, where you post videos isn’t going to matter without compelling content.

The personalized video has become a norm lately, or at least ones directly addressing pain points of targeted viewers. The same goes with making your business look more human.

Successful video marketing can mean behind-the-scenes tours of your business, or testimonials to show the human side of your brand.  This means paying attention to one major trend in video marketing: Storytelling.

When you can tell a compelling story about your business and prove you can solve the pain points of customers, you have a can’t-miss formula.

It’s also smart to keep your videos as short as possible, if not in a series. Attention spans are as short as ever, and you’ll need to tell your story in a compact way with a compelling hook.

12. Revisiting Your Landing Pages

If you’ve already created a landing page as part of your digital marketing campaign, are you sure prospects who visited before are going to come back?

This is a question that should become the central core of your digital marketing efforts. All marketing experts reiterate how landing page traffic is the nucleus of successful inbound marketing.

The problem is your landing page perhaps isn’t very enticing at the moment. Solving this (in part) comes down to web design, including where you place your Call to Action and advertising.

It goes beyond what you place on your website, though. You’ll want to invest in PPC advertising (pay-per-click) consulting services to place ads for your site on related digital channels.

Other options include buying sponsorships with other companies, or just simple email marketing. In the latter case, placing a link that takes the reader to your landing page for further content is a common strategy.

For CTA’s, be sure to include one on your homepage to avoid complications. Even a CTA at the end of your blog gives a connective string to your content to entice another visitation.

Plus, pay attention to the “above vs. below the fold” debates. Kissmetrics once noted that CTA placement depends on the length of your landing page. A shorter page means you should place the CTA above the folder.

Final Thoughts

Follow these twelve steps, and you’ll be off to a good start in digital marketing strategies for the rest of the year. Expect these to stay relatively the same well into 2026 as well.

Don’t be afraid to work with inbound marketing consultants (especially in SEO) so you don’t make mistakes after weeks or months of hard work.

The post 12 Effective Digital Marketing Tactics and Strategies appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

Building 7-Figure Companies With SEO

Learn how founders, CEOs, execs and thought leaders use SEO and Content Marketing to grow B2B, SaaS, technology and startup companies from zero to 7 and 8-figure revenue.

How Incapsula Doubles Their Business Year Over Year With SEO, Content Marketing and CRO

Content Marketing and SEO are the main customer acquisition channels that helped Incapsula achieve:

• Market Capitalization: $1.5 billion
• Protects: 5,000,000+ websites
• #1 customer acquisition channel: Content Marketing and SEO
• Year over year growth: 100%

Learn more

How Content Marketing and SEO Helped BuildFire Become a 7-Figure ARR SaaS Company

Content marketing, the first page rankings on Google and SEO helped BuildFire to grow to where they are at right now:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customers: 1000, Powering over 10,000+ apps in the App Store
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Organic Traffic: 140,000 visitors/month

Learn more

How SEO Helped Time Doctor Become a 7 Figure SaaS Company and Generate 20,000 Trials Per Month

SEO and content marketing are the only lead generation channels for Time Doctor and helped them to generate:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customer Acquisition: 20,000 trials/month, 7000 customers/month
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Revenue growth: 10% MoM

Learn more

A recent Fronetics survey in 2017 found that 62% of B2B buyers relied on the internet as a core resource when searching for new business solutions. A good digital marketing plan links your clients to your offering through social media, blogs, your websites, forums, and mobile communications. Are you doing enough to get your products and brand out there? If not, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’re competitors are.

In this article, we’re highlighting 7 of the most effective digital marketing strategies that software companies need to adapt to maximize their online presence. Let’s start with the most effective one:

1. Invest in SEO

Most tech experts understand the technicalities of putting a usable website together but creating pages that attract good traffic and perform as a refined sales process is a completely different ball game. And it’s a game where the rules are constantly changing. Google releases updates to its search algorithm every day. The best SEO experts will be those with years of experience but are also constantly up to date with the latest changes to Google’s search brain.

The trick with SEO is to focus your efforts on pursuits that’ll yield the greatest gains. The best places to pour most of your long-term attention are:

• Technical and on-page SEO to enhance your website relevance to target keywords
• Creating 4-10 quality backlinks per month
• Content marketing to spread awareness (we’ll get into this more below).
• On-site blog posting at least once a week.

One of the most crucial steps in SEO is getting a first page ranking on search engine results for terms (keywords) that your customers are using to find solutions like yours. Here’s a good list of the best keyword research tools available right now. Once you’ve identified the keywords that are gaining traffic, you can create optimized landing pages, 5-10 quality blogs related to these search phrases, and add links with keywords reach anchor text in your content that point traffic toward your main landing/product pages. This is the main strategy to achieving higher ranks in Google.

2. Paid advertising

In 2016, Google released a report showing us that 28% of online searches convert into a sale. People use Google to search for things they’re ready to buy and paid ads to put your pages at the top of search results. Paid advertising has become the second-best performing lead generation channel for most software and SaaS businesses after organic search and SEO.

Why is it so popular? Paid advertising is scalable, very measurable which makes it predictable, and provides a proven ROI if handled correctly. Google Ads are a great place to start your first campaigns. Besides the standard text ads you’ve no doubt seen at the top of nearly every search you’ve ever conducted, you can also access more advanced retargeting strategies. These features allow you to advertise to users who’ve already visited sites relative to your market or have searched for your specific keywords in the past.

Exploit multiple social channels

Choosing the right social platforms is vital. Here are the world’s largest social networks and what each is good for:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is highly relevant if your software is primed for the B2B space. Users on LinkedIn are looking for business solutions. A 2017 report by LinkedIn suggested that 80% of B2B marketing leads from social media come through the LinkedIn network.

Facebook and Twitter

These platforms are great for engaging with your target audience and promoting your content. They both offer powerful paid remarketing systems that allow you to grow a following quickly.

YouTube

Youtube has become the second largest search engine after Google so it’s the best place to post video tutorials for your software, webinars, and entertainment content. Video demos and pre roll ad campaign will give people insight into your solution while also actively driving traffic to your website.

4. Outreach and quality link building

Guest blogging is about creating content for other websites that are already receiving large volumes of traffic. You can provide help and guidance on topics within your expertise or offer a new angle on topics that are related to your product. Do it often enough and your posts will expose your brand to large audiences within the software development space. You’ll also have the chance to place a link to your pages from an authority website which is great for SEO.

Landing a guest post on one of the biggest tech blogs out there is a tall order, but there are multiple levels of influential sites you can work with. You can also contribute to different groups on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. Aim for groups related to the software industry and you could be reaching thousands of potential users that you know are likely to have an interest in your product. This tactic can also be executed by SaaS, software, IT and tech digital marketing consultants who have more experience of doing it the right way. Marketers are facing rising expectations for personalisation and are expected to use at least 18 data sources when building their brand. It can help your audience gain additional context to your work if you include a diverse range of sources when building links. This increases your brand’s credibility and makes your data more authoritative.

5. Create tutorials and guides

Creating content that aims to help people solve problems is a powerful weapon that software development experts can certainly jump on. “How to” tutorials and best practice guides are a must if your solution is complex or tackles a unique problem. Companies look to invest in new software products because they want a means to step ahead of the competition. For companies without in-house development capacity, software development outsourcing offers a way to access specialized expertise while maintaining focus on core business objectives. Whether building from scratch or scaling existing products, partnering with external development teams like Netguru can accelerate time to market. The more you try to position your brand as the answer to their concerns, the more signups you’ll see.

Not only is helpful content great for exposure and awareness, it’s a great way to collect the email addresses of leads. Email marketing is the perfect way to develop deeper connections with your customers. Mailchimp is the largest email marketing platform in the world so it’s a great place to launch your first nurture campaign. You can also check Mailchimp alternatives if you are looking for other features or more affordable pricing.

6. Differentiate your software to others using comparison guides

Developed a product that has a leg up on an existing market leader? Create a webpage comparing your solution to your competitors and optimize that page to rank on the first page of Google and attract search traffic for your competitors brand searches. You’ll feed off the mass of users searching for their brand while exposing the advantages of your new solution as an alternative.

Avoid being too pushy and aim to provide a balanced review to help the reader evaluate the comparison with clarity. Make it obvious that you’re overly biased and you’ll turn people away quickly.

7. Build impactful reviews

You can solicit independent third-party review sites as well as work to increase the level of reviews you gain from users. Search for “software directories” or review sites and add and verify your profile there. Websites with a good number of user reviews will usually rank on the first page of Google because of their affiliation with these giant software companies and their domain authority.. These sites will provide good exposure and increase the credibility of your offering.

Use your content marketing channels to build reviews from real customers. Leverage your social media accounts to actively t ask happy users to review you on certain platforms. You should also be doing this with outbound methods. For example, using your CRM database to build a targeted list of customers, then sending a tailored batch of emails asking your users to leave you a review. Offer incentives like prize draws to increase the number of recipients that bite while ensuring the reviews remain unbiased.

That’s our 7! We hope this list of effective digital marketing strategies for software companies has helped spark a few light bulbs for you. It’s now more important than ever for software companies of all sizes to stand out by upping their digital efforts or working with growth marketing agencies like Northpeak. Knowing your options is half the battle, the other half is actively chasing the ideas on this list!

The post 7 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Software Companies appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

The exciting news is now that lots of software and startup companies have made initial efforts to modernize their infrastructures, they’re poised for real growth. If that’s you — if you’ve recently adopted cloud-based CMS and CRM solutions, it’s time to put them to work and start growing your business.

Building 7-Figure Companies With SEO

Learn how founders, CEOs, execs and thought leaders use SEO and Content Marketing to grow B2B, SaaS, technology and startup companies from zero to 7 and 8-figure revenue.

How Incapsula Doubles Their Business Year Over Year With SEO, Content Marketing and CRO

Content Marketing and SEO are the main customer acquisition channels that helped Incapsula achieve:

• Market Capitalization: $1.5 billion
• Protects: 5,000,000+ websites
• #1 customer acquisition channel: Content Marketing and SEO
• Year over year growth: 100%

Learn more

How Content Marketing and SEO Helped BuildFire Become a 7-Figure ARR SaaS Company

Content marketing, the first page rankings on Google and SEO helped BuildFire to grow to where they are at right now:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customers: 1000, Powering over 10,000+ apps in the App Store
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Organic Traffic: 140,000 visitors/month

Learn more

How SEO Helped Time Doctor Become a 7 Figure SaaS Company and Generate 20,000 Trials Per Month

SEO and content marketing are the only lead generation channels for Time Doctor and helped them to generate:

• Revenue: 7 Figure Company
• Customer Acquisition: 20,000 trials/month, 7000 customers/month
• Main customer acquisition channel: organic SEO
• Revenue growth: 10% MoM

Learn more

Here are six digital marketing strategies and ideas for startups to help you graduate to that next level of digitization in the year ahead.

1. Content Marketing

To make growth happen, startup companies need to build on their initial efforts and begin focusing their digital marketing strategies on broader horizons.

And right now, there’s no horizon more promising and full of potential than the customer experience (CX).

Companies who embrace the CX credo — buyers are customers who expect to be delighted — will win. And what better way to ingratiate your company with purchasing managers than to offer helpful resources that make their job easier. Do this through content marketing.

More than three-quarters of startup companies already have a blog. However, there’s a big difference between simply having a blog and putting it to work as part of a content marketing strategy for your startup company. What you need is a data-driven blog.

Begin by finding out what your buyers need. There are several tools at your disposal for this. First, you can use keyword tools to find what’s trending in your industry. If you’re in the rental industry, for instance, you could then offer unique and creative ideas they might want to implement. These same tools will let you know which topics actually have search traffic and which are in demand so you’re not wasting time producing and promoting content that nobody wants to read.

Secondly, need is driven by pain, so think deeply about your B2B and B2C customers and what they lack, what causes them to ‘suffer’. Then, supply the kind of content that relieves those pain points. Almost half of the buyers consume online content (3-5 pieces) before reaching out to a sales rep. It should be your content they’re consuming. It should also be well-informed since almost all B2B buyers want the content they consume to include input from industry leaders.

Some examples of buyer pain points that you can help alleviate with helpful content:

• they lack information about products
• they struggle to compare products (46 percent of B2B buyers report that it’s difficult to compare products online)
• they struggle to understand new technologies
• they find it hard to stay current with industry developments

2. Inbound Marketing/SEO

A solid base of helpful content can also be the cornerstone of a successful inbound digital marketing for startups. You’ve done the research and produced great content for your buyers for your content marketing campaign. Now make it do double duty by earning some SEO credit.

You’ll need to do some deeper research, however: keyword research that goes deeper and shows you where you could focus your efforts and try to rank. Consider long-tail keywords if your industry is competitive, and write data-driven content that helps your SEO efforts.

Check all SEO statistics.

The trick is to balance SEO content techniques with user experience. SEO content, which employs strategic placement of keywords throughout the content, can come off as awkward. You want good, relevant, resourceful and helpful content that reads well, so keep that balance in mind with all your content. The idea, after all, is to try and get people to create backlinks to your startup website. This can happen in any number of ways, including organically, through guest posting, and via social media promotion. You can check the startup SEO services page to download my SEO growth program that outlines the most common link building and SEO strategies.

3. Social Media Marketing

Because of its rich targeting potential and wide reach, Facebook marketing funnels remains one of the most effective ways to generate leads in B2B and B2C world and should be a part of your startup digital marketing strategy. It’s also It is affordable compared to YouTube influencer costs. Over 60 percent of startup marketers plan to increase their Facebook Advertising efforts, according to a 2025 report.

You’ll need to identify your target persona and the companies you are going after and then create that profile on Facebook Ad Manager.  You can also set up a remarketing pixel and target your website visitors and lookalike audiences to make the profile targeted and relevant. That way, you’ll maximize ROI and, depending on your marketing objectives, you can create campaigns that:

1. generate leads
2. drive traffic
3. increase engagement
4. develop brand awareness
5. install apps
6. increase sales
7. get video views

Other options that are available on Ad Manager dashboard include:

• type of ad (photo ads, video ads, slideshow ads, collection ads, etc)
• campaign objective
• type of audience targeting (Facebook connections, Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences)
• budget
• scheduling

4. Responsive Web Design, HTTPS, AMP

Faced with more buyers who expect a better customer experience, B2B players now need to take their cues from B2C and look for ways to delight their buyers wherever they are in the buyer’s journey.

The best place to start is with the company website.

Even a quick spin through the startup galaxy of websites, and you’ll immediately know there’s a lot of room for improvement in the Customer Experience (CX). Here are three ways you can consider adding to your startup digital marketing strategy planning:

1. Responsive Web Design. More and more, buyers are using mobile devices on the job. If your site wasn’t designed to be usable on multiple devices (PC, tablet, phone) then you’re making a bad impression on potential customers (especially Millennials). Don’t be like 94% of startup companies, who have no mobile strategy in place.
2. HTTPS. If you’re not sure why you should have an ‘S’ on your ‘HTTP’, then you should know that HTTPS is a search engine ranking signal now.  Not only will it help your website appear higher in search results and drive more organic traffic, it will also add the green secure lock icon to the browser. Major browsers will start showing a “not secure” warning to all website visitors in the near future if you don’t have SSL installed, so make sure you configure it soon to avoid a higher bounce rate and lower rankings.
3. AMP. Buyers are busy and as a result, necessarily impatient. If your website isn’t loading fast enough, they’re likely to strike your company off their vendor shortlist. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Presence and if your site doesn’t adhere to AMP best practices, you’re not exactly making the customer journey delightful or easy. Aim for more engagement and a smoother experience with a sound AMP strategy. That means fast-loading pages, quick performing scripts, and form submissions that go through faster than you can say ‘jack rabbit’.

5. Marketing Automation

B2B customers typically use six different channels in their buying journey. Almost two-thirds of them will be frustrated by their experiences.

Since you’re now in the business of ‘delighting’ your customers, you’ll want to upgrade your methods wherever you have a point of contact with your customers and leads. Marketing automation should be a part of your digital making strategy for your startup.

Wherever someone may be along the buyer’s journey, you’ll want to help, coax, encourage, and respond to any actions they’re taking in relation to your business. In fact, a major pain point for 40 percent of surveyed buyers is a slow response time from sales reps. Other frustrations included a sluggish reordering process, which troubled almost a third of survey respondents. Automation can help solve those problems and more by spurring communications, offering helpful links, and tying in customized past ordering data for individual customers.

In essence, what you’re doing is transforming your business into one that’s customer-focused. B2B buyers want the following:

• easier communications
• hassle-free reordering process
• help with product comparison

The added benefit of automating your marketing processes is that it helps with consistent messaging across all your platforms: email, digital ads, and other channels where you interact with your leads and customers.

6. Email Marketing

Another natural outgrowth of a strong startup digital marketing strategy is email marketing: exciting and useful new content is a great excuse for an email newsletter. Email marketing magnifies the power of your content marketing efforts when you use carefully selected content aimed at segmented buyers at specific points along the buying decision timeline.

Plus, to get more out of your content budget, you can reuse content in lots of different ways. For example, you can redirect leads back to your website through your carefully planned email campaigns that include snippets from blog posts on your website that pertain to the moment.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that startup companies are still playing catch-up to B2B and B2C companies in the process of digital transformation and marketing strategy. Having embraced the notion that digitization can lead to growth, startup players who’ve transformed their back-end processes and IT infrastructures should now work with a startup marketing agency on implementing marketing strategies for startups outlined in this post. That’s how they’ll begin to capture and delight their prospects who expect a stellar customer experience, just like what they get in the B2C world. Good luck!

The post Digital Marketing Strategies and Ideas for Startups appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

However, in this competitive marketplace, B2B lead generation has never been this difficult. We face numerous challenges from the difficulty in qualifying leads to creating high-quality content consistently to monitoring the performance of your lead sources, among others. That is why we will need to update our lead generation skillset to ensure our success.

In this roundup, we will cover tips, actionable tactics, and strategic implementation shared by these digital marketing and lead generation experts below.

Let us begin with the first one.

The Right Customer: Build a relationship with everyone involved in the Buying decision: Extend your marketing to reach not just your primary buyer, but influencers and users. B2B buying is a business decision, but it is after all made by people: Get to know your buyers at a personal level with deep profile insights from social media and understand what matters to them most.

The Right Time: Gather customer intelligence from social media, websites and other big data sources to determine a customers stage in the buying journey.

The Right Message: Persona Based Campaigns: Creating tailored campaigns that have content within a context that resonates with your Buyer Persona.

The Right Place Omni Channel Campaigns: Email, Phone, Social, Events, Direct Mail all of them play a role. Choose the channels that are most likely to reach your buyer.

–Terry Suppers

What I did in 2018 and that worked really well for me is very easy to do. With all the attention for funnels and email marketing it is easily overlooked.

1. Create a list of all your contacts and add their email address and phone number (I had a list of 200 contacts)
2. Schedule 2 massive action days and call the people on the list. That’s all you do these 2 days. No computer, no social media, just keep on calling. Spend no more than 5 minutes per call. The objective of the call is to schedule an appointment to meet in person. Since these all are people that know me, 95% of the people that I reached said yes to the meeting.
3. During the meeting with your contact ask questions to learn what the developments are in their lives and business. Than give a short update on the developments in your live. Than I ask 2 questions: 1. “How can I help you?” before I end the meeting I ask my last question “Do you know an entrepreneur that needs my help?”

The calls were scheduled beginning July and the meetings were scheduled during the months July, August and September. For entrepreneurs in B2B it means it is less busy during these months. I had about 100 meetings during these months. The meetings last about one hour.

It was great to catch up with my contacts. They now understand what I do at this moment. I got some orders directly from the meetings and I got new referrals that became clients later. This was the springboard for a new direction in my business in 2018.

–Erno Hannink

Leads are not generated. Leads are real people working at real companies and their needs, goals and wishes are already there. Be there where your audience is and make a great impact. You don’t want a list of leads, you want to be on the shortlist of your leads. How? Serve the best content you are able to generate and be the lighthouse for your audience! And the best part is: b2b marketing is much more fun if you connect with your potential buyers with 10x-content!

– Marcel Nanning

Segment your prospects by target industries and other filtering criteria. Conduct your research to identify challenges and opportunities in those segments. Craft your sales and marketing messaging to align with each other and create a campaign that addresses the challenges you’ve identified in a personalized manner.

– Darren Howard

The most effective B2B lead generation tip out there is to work on extending your funnel. Too often I see marketers taking a B2C mindset when approaching B2B marketing. While the end goal is the same (a lead/sale) the way you go about marketing is much different. The B2B buying cycle is much longer and requires more research. Thus, invest in “top of funnel” tactics such as content marketing to get prospects in the door.

– Dan Scalco

1. Focus on the right target accounts and personas. By narrowing down to a small list you can spend much more time and budget on each account.
2. Experiment constantly. By trying out many different combinations of collateral, creative, channel, campaign type and persona, you can find your optimal marketing mix to generate the most leads and pipeline.
3. Start manual, automate at scale. I execute every campaign manually (simple emails from my inbox or a super small recipient list) until I get to nice vanity metrics (open rate, click rate) and only then do I “blast” it in production.

– Gil Allouche

Before we jump into the case studies and discuss specific strategies, it’s important that you get the foundations right and ensure that you’re able to capture and convert a large percentage of leads from your campaigns.

I’d like to focus on just one tip: Avoiding the leaky bucket effect Many B2B marketers spend a lot of time, metaphorically, pouring water into leaky buckets. Rather than fixing the bucket (the marketing funnel), they pour more water (traffic) into the bucket to keep it full.

This is a recipe for inflated acquisition costs and below-average results. The biggest culprit here are landing pages (appeal, content and structure) and, in particular, your forms. Forms separate your leads from non-leads, and have a huge impact on your conversion rates and overall lead generation results.

    – Primo Bonacina

1. When selling to businesses you are still dealing with real people and it’s important to remember that people prefer to deal with who they know and like. Because B2B deals often involve larger $ values, building personal relationships and trust is very important. That’s why regardless of the lead generation method, it’s always advantageous to have a human interaction at some stage. It could be as simple as a quick introductory phone call.
2. Achieve better results by targeting companies which are the best fit with your ideal client. Take time to define who your ideal client is and where to find them.
3. Stop wasting time on activities that seem to be important, but don’t bring result. That includes

 – Searching for a list – most lists already exist and you can save a lot of time and frustration by investing in a list

 – overthinking results of every conversation, especially unsuccessful ones – sales is known to be a numbers game, so success is about going through numbers

 – choosing a CRM – there are many great options, start from one and if needed you can always change later on

4. Above all – take massive action.  If you start from aiming for 10% success rate that means you have to approach / speak to 10 people to get one successful conversation or it could mean speaking to 18 with no results and then having 2 really good conversations. So when you approach 3-5 people and have no result that means absolutely nothing except that you are not taking enough action.

– Assia Salikhova

1. Utilizing LiveChat to capture leads immediately from the website.
2. Utilizing Lead Forensics to follow up on visitors who do not initially convert.
3. The use of ad retargeting tools to recapture visitors with thought leadership content–it typically takes 4-6 visits to a website before a B2B prospect initially converts.

– Jeremy Durant

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With that being said, here we will again compile our predictions for the marketing trends. As we have always said, knowing the latest trends and working marketing strategies are very important aspects of staying ahead of the competition.

Without further ado, let us begin with our first prediction.

1. Voice will be a more significant search medium

Voice search has risen in the past few years thanks to the popularity Siri and Google Assistant on our phones, as well as smart speakers and home assistant hubs like Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and so on.

Many studies have predicted that voice search will continue to rise, such as this study by Gartner, predicting that this will be done via voice, not only our search activities.

While voice recognition technology is now quite advanced and reliable, we can also expect it to get better in the years to come. We are expecting truly intelligent voice assistants in the really near future and its impact on both businesses and our personal lives.

The thing is, SEO for voice search is vastly different when compared to textual search. Specifically, we use different languages when speaking compared to typing. So, you might want to focus on more conversational keywords and develop content pieces with more conversational approaches.

Nowadays, we mainly use voice search when our hands are full or when we are simply too lazy to type. Yet, as voice recognition and word accuracy get even better in the years to come, voice search will become a necessity.

2. Video will be the king of traffic

It is obviously no secret that video is the primary content on the internet in the past half decade or so. Netflix alone accounts for 30% of the total internet traffic in recent years, and obviously we can’t neglect YouTube. Yet, what we have today will be insignificant in what’s coming the next few years.

According to Cisco, IP video traffic is predicted to reach 82 % of the global internet traffic. Even nowadays, most people prefer watching a video rather than reading a blog post, except for in-depth content, and this trend will continue, if not rise, in 2024 and onwards.

When done well, video can be a very effective marketing tool with a high conversion rate. According to Forbes, adding video to your email newsletter can boost CTR by up to 300%.

Video as a medium will continue to be more popular, as well as live streaming video content. Also, we can expect the shift into more interactive video content, which can be very effective in achieving more conversions.

3. Chatbots

During 2018 and even 2017, we have seen how A.I.-driven chatbots have taken over customer service for many big companies. It is predicted that by 2026, 85% of customer engagements will be dealt by chatbots.

There are obviously two main advantages of using chatbots over human customer support: first, one single chatbot can engage with a lot of customers at one time, saving your human resources costs. Second, it saves time, and you can have a 24/7 customer service without spending too much money.

Similar to voice search, the technology behind chatbots is continuously improving. But even today, the technology is pretty decent, where even the customer survey conducted by Digital Pulse in 2016 found that 85% of surveyed customers are satisfied with chatbot.

One common application for chatbots today is to let the chatbot engage with a new prospect, asking the preliminary questions like the prospect’s email address, their available budget, and so on.

When the prospect passed the preliminary questions, the chatbot can pass the conversation to a human salesperson. This way, we can automatically qualify prospects, and your salespeople’s valuable time and resources can be utilized on the prospects with the highest chance of conversion.

Also, consider the fact that implementing chatbots are now more affordable than ever. If you haven’t used a chatbot in 2018, you definitely should. Check out this guide by Sprout Social to help you further in implementing and utilizing a chatbot.

4. Content clustering for SEO

SEO has evolved just as search engines have changed their algorithms. Now, SEO is not solely about keywords, but will prefer clusters of content around a particular topic, this way, search engines can determine your credibility for that topic. Local SEO will also become vital to the success of small and medium-sized companies and business owners need to make sure their websites are optimized for local prospects.

So we should base our SEO approach on this concept: one ‘pillar’ content as a broad outline for this topic, and clusters of content to cover long-tail keywords related to this topic.

Let’s use an example to properly illustrate this: let’s say you are a SaaS business selling a cloud computing software. So, you want your site to rank for the ‘cloud computing’ topic. Besides running SEO for your SaaS business you need to work on pillar content.

Your pillar content, in this case, can be something like “The Definitive Guide To Cloud Computing”. Then, you can add cluster content pieces like “How To Choose A Cloud Computing Software”, “How To Maximize Productivity With Cloud Computing”, and so on.

The idea is, topic clusters establish your position as an expert of this niche, giving the search engines a strong ranking signal.

5. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is certainly not a new marketing trend, having been one of the most important marketing tactics in the past few years. Yet, influencer marketing will be even more important than before.

We can’t deny the digital marketing landscape is even more saturated than before, and it’s really hard to get our voice heard amidst all the noises. This is where having an influencer to promote your product and/or brand can be very beneficial.

Although influencer marketing has been there for quite some time, we can also expect some changes especially thanks to the rising demands for influencers: many influencers, especially major ones and celebrities are now very expensive, and they are now pickier when choosing the brands they would want to promote.

This is where we can utilize micro-influencers, those with followers between 10,000 and 500,000. Micro-influencers are not only more accessible (and affordable) compared to the celebrities, but they also offer the benefit of authenticity: customers are getting smarter, and they know when celebrities and mega-influencers are promoting or endorsing a product. With micro-influencers, you can provide a more authentic voice resulting in less resistance from your prospects.

6. Transparency

For a long time, marketers were often viewed negatively by customers, thanks to a long history of hard-selling, exaggerations, unethical advertising/sales practices, and even, blatant lies.

Because of this fact, many customers and prospects are now very resistant to promotional messages and marketing efforts, and in general are becoming harder to impress. Also, in this era of social media and maturity of the internet, it’s very easy to find any information about your product, service, or brand. In short: no matter what, you will need to be honest and transparent.

This need of transparency will be even more prevalent than before: we’ll need to address negative complaints quickly and honestly, we will need to admit our faults, and we should never exaggerate our value propositions. In essence, we should only offer promises we can deliver upon.

In the next years to come, two-way communication between brands and customers will also become more common, being an essential aspect of building relationships and trusts.

7. People trust peer reviews and content, not advertising

Above, we have mentioned several times how people are now very resistant to promotional messages, especially advertisements. This is even more true for millennials, as many studies have suggested in recent years. This is, however, not saying that advertising is no longer effective, as when done right especially through newer forms like remarketing, it can still be effective. It’s just that advertising is no longer as effective as back then in the 90s, and should be used in combination with other marketing tactics to stay relevant.

This phenomenon has been around for quite some time now. In fact, a Nielsen study back in 2015 has stated that the top for most-trusted sources driving purchase decisions are: recommendations from people we know and trust, branded sites, editorial sites, and reviews. In fact, in that study, advertisements are placed near the bottom.

In the years to come, we can expect this trend to continue growing, and so we should focus on building social proofs and consistently publishing valuable content pieces to establish credibility, a concept we know as inbound marketing. Also, due to this trend, influencer marketing, which we have discussed above, will also be even more important in 2025 and onwards.

End Words

These seven marketing trends we have discussed are the ones to look for (and focus on) as we are entering the last quarter of this year and prepare for the next.

Obviously, these won’t be the only changes we’ll see in the marketing landscape, and there is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach in developing a marketing strategy. Yet, these seven we have discussed above can definitely help you achieve your marketing goals. You can also work with a digital marketing expert and consultant to ensure you stay on top of the marketing game.

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Of course; theories are important. That’s the foundation of marketing education, and all practices are built upon that foundation. But when you have so many options to make digital marketing education more approachable and fun, why wouldn’t you make an attempt to do so?

University professors know that traditional teaching methods no longer work. When they teach marketing, they have to bring technology and practical work into the process. 

Let’s see how you can do that. 

Tips for Teaching Marketing to University Students

Experiential Learning Is the Key Approach

Today’s students expect highly engaging methods of education. The didactic approach, which was the golden standard in lecture halls around the world, is no longer applicable to marketing education. 

Christy Price, a psychology professor at Dalton State College, analyzed the learning behavior of Millennials and came down to a few important conclusions:

• They prefer active learning methods based on research. They learn more effectively when the professor stimulates them to conduct research and form conclusions, when compared to the old-school approach of processing information that they get during a lecture. 
• Millennials want to learn relevant things. If the professor doesn’t relate marketing theories to examples from current culture, they won’t be interested in the lecture. 
• They want a less formal educational environment. Today’s students want to interact with their professors. 

What does this teach us?

Instead of teaching lectures, the professor should only give hints and encourage the students to conduct research. They can give recommendations for exploring marketing examples from popular culture. When the students conduct research, they can discuss the results in a laid-back manner, through fun presentations and discussions. 

The teacher should also encourage the students to learn through practical projects. We’re not talking about essays and research papers. Let’s get to that point. 

Group Projects Are Better than Essays

Essays are not relatable to the future of a marketing student. They are writing essay for scholarships and university applications because they have to. But when they start attending courses and the professors demand more essays, it’s a huge disappointment. 

The format of these assignments is outdated. We can’t expect students to be excited about researching real cases of marketing and writing about them in the stiff 5-paragraph form. We have to make assignments more exciting for them. 

Team projects are much better! You can ask the students to partner up by their own choice. They will investigate a particular marketing campaign in depth, and they will present their findings through a PowerPoint presentation. This is the type of practical research that makes a real difference in their knowledge. 

To make things even more fun, you can ask the teams to come up with their own marketing strategy and execute it throughout the semester. For example, they can start their Facebook or Instagram pages on any topic and try to get as many followers as possible. Then, they will discuss their methods in front of the class. They will figure out what worked and what didn’t work. They will get inspired by the practices of other groups, so they will do things differently for their next project.  

Online Learning Is Great! 

It’s no secret that when the students don’t get what they need at university, they turn to eLearning for digital marketing. Google offers awesome courses through its Digital Academy. Most universities share their courses through Coursera and similar platforms. So if you fail to deliver what they expect, they will find a way to get the knowledge. But for a professor, that’s a failure. 

That’s why you should make all your lectures fit this format that students are looking for. They want to access the lessons at their own pace. Instead of taking notes in class, they would love to access the same lecture online when it’s studying time. 

Do your best to create a curriculum that’s suitable for an online course. Then, share all lessons on YouTube or any other platform, so your students will listen to them. This is how you share knowledge beyond the lecture hall, and you provide a more accessible lesson format for your students. 

Teach Content Marketing

Your students have to be aware of the classic marketing theories, so of course you’ll cover the marketing mix theory, Ansoff’s matrix theory, and all other traditional methods that still work to some extent. 

However, you also have to teach about contemporary marketing and compare it to the traditional methods that were used in the past. 

When your students get out of those desks, they will probably engage in content marketing strategies. You want to prepare them for that future. They should know all theories and practices, but they should also be encouraged to follow new trends and experiment with their own ideas. 

You can discuss the most interesting current cases of content marketing in the lecture hall. Ask your students to do their research and suggest discussion starters. You can create a private Facebook group for the students to join, so you can take this discussion there. 

Make Them Skilled at Analytics

Does your course cover digital marketing analytics? It has to! Without the right tools and strategies for analyzing the results, a marketing campaign is never complete. Current and future marketing experts must monitor the performance of their campaigns all the time. 

Teach your students how to use the most important tools, such as Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. Assign them projects that include creating a marketing strategy and analyzing its results with these tools. Becoming a great marketer is all about the experience. If university doesn’t provide that experience, what’s the point of getting a degree in marketing? 

Make your classes useful. Teaching analytics is a must!

Students Expect a Lot; We Have to Deliver!

Marketing is not taught through books and lectures. The students have to know some theory, so they will understand the psychology of buyers. However, they won’t care to memorize all this information just to do well on an exam. The professor should inspire them to implement theory into practice, so they have to shift the type of projects they assign. 

Did you get any great ideas on how to make your next lecture more interesting? You can start by assigning a team project that triggers an experiential learning process. Then, your students will analyze the results and you’ll discuss them together in class.      

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It Starts With Research

There’s more to a successful marketing strategy than just your great ideas. You need to do some research so you can back up your plan with actual data. Often, you’ll be surprised at what you find. Your customers may feel much differently than you thought they did, for example. It’s much better to prepared and learn this kind of information early on than have it turn up as a nasty surprise at a more damaging stage. Find out which customer profiles spend the most. Which customers will be most likely to come back?

Get to Know Your Audience

If you want to effectively market to a group of people, you need to get to know them. Your target audience should be something that defines your brand and can be something you come back to when you need to make adjustments to strategy. Find out where your audience spends their time online. What kind of social media do they like? Sites such as Facebook allow you to target your audience based on up to 10 interests. The more knowledge you have, the better you can interest your target market.

Find a New Place to Advertise

One sure sign of an outdated marketing strategy is a company that refuses to (or doesn’t think to) change where they advertise. Don’t throw your money at banner or magazine advertising just because it used to work. People see these conventional ad spots so often that they unconsciously ignore them; they don’t work. Get creative with your advertising dollars.

Use Creative Visuals

People respond to visuals. Identify some unique visuals you can use to make your brand stand out and put them out there. Maybe you’ve got a nice-looking logo, a cool mascot, or even just a very recognizable and branded color scheme. Remember you’re trying to get attention, but you’re also trying to keep that attention, so they’ll remember you later on. People see hundreds of ads in a day, so you need to find a way to make them remember yours. Try and keep things consistent aesthetically so your campaign will be familiar, but not boring.

Spend Your Resources Wisely

When you’re allocating your ad dollars, remember that not every platform is as effective as the next. Do your research and determine which ones are actually worth your money. Some platforms may work great for one business, but that doesn’t mean it will be as effective for yours. Search advertising, for example, can be very useful for an established brand or product/service, but not very useful for a startup company.

Try Micro-targeting

There’s no sense in marketing to everybody. A huge target doesn’t mean huge profits, it likely means you’ll appeal to nobody. The more specific you can target the better. Don’t target women, micro-target young middle-class women in urban areas. Think about what your product does and then think about who will benefit from it. Once you’ve got a target you can create much more effective ads specifically appealing to them.

Throw a Popup Event

Holding a fun event can be a great way to introduce yourself to the community and show them your value. Your best bet is to do something fun that people will want to do, rather than just throwing a trade show. Ask yourself, what would you want to do at a popup event? You could give people a fun inside look at what you do and even let them try something out.

Conclusion

Digital advertising should be a part of every business’ marketing strategy. Life happens online and that is where your audience spends a lot of their time and looks for new solutions to their problems. Improve your marketing strategy with these seven digital advertising ideas.

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But even if resources and people differ, big companies may also not understand how to refocus their efforts when it comes to marketing. That means that the two sizes of businesses can use insights from each other in order to put what’s called enterprise marketing to work.

One way to do that for any company is to rely on what’s called the Ansoff matrix. It’s also called the product-market matrix and helps companies evaluate opportunities to increase sales. How are they penetrating the market? How are they developing their products currently? How can they change their market development in the future? And how can they diversify?

This isn’t as simple as it sounds and take some good, hard thinking on the part of executives and marketers. New markets, for example, aren’t as simple as finding a new batch of customers the next town over. It may be as broad thinking as figuring out a whole new product to create a whole new market.

An enterprise marketing expert can help big companies in one of their main challenges: How do they get back to that personal touch that was so ever present when they were small? That matters to people, especially in the age of big tech that feels like you’re just one in a number of millions of email blasts. And remarkably, this is where artificial intelligence can help. What does that whole process look like? This graphic explains it.

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In the digital world in which we live, it is easy to assume that the only marketing channel worth investing in, is the online world. After all, all you need to do is throw out a few tweets with a discount code or launch a fun competition across your social media channels and you have everyone hooked.

But it takes more than this which is why considering who your customers are, where they are and how to best connect with them often leads companies and businesses of all sizes back to offline marketing.

Offline marketing – did it ever go away?

The truth is, offline marketing has never gone away and with large global companies still spending a portion of their budget on offline marketing methods, it makes sense to take a second look at offline promotional tools and methods.

A powerful combination

But as the team at Colour Graphics know, the combination of offline and online marketing is a powerful tool. Why choose one over the other, when pay-per-click adverts can guide people to your high street shop or, your poster campaign can lead customers to your online emporium?

But it is important to understand what all the offline and online marketing options are and deciding where your customers could be hanging out. And this is why Colour Graphics created an invaluable infographic that lists and links all these offline and online marketing tools together. It allows you to understand if guest posting is an ideal marketing vehicle for your business, or whether combining it with a billboard campaign would give it more mileage.

Take a look – which offline and online marketing tools would spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S for your business.

How Different Types Of Marketing Work Together

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