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

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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.

1. Get a Unique Address for your Website

This is the first step towards creating a business website. The technical term for a website address is the domain name. Since this is the first thing that potential customers connect with, it’s important to get it right. It’s the first impression that customers get of a business. Through the domain name of a website, potential customers are able to have a picture of the business they want to transact with. Since a website’s domain name carries a great deal of significance, experts in website development advise that it should be the same as the name of the business itself. This gives a business’ target market the ability to easily recognize what and who they’re dealing with.

The process of choosing a domain name should begin with thorough research. The reason for this is to eliminate the possibility of having another address like yours. Also, it’s imperative to avoid long and complicated names. If you want to do away with the potential of errors, just make it short and less intricate. A valuable tip when picking a domain name is to avoid abbreviations or needless hyphens. The goal of an IT manager during the creation of a business website is to ensure that customers can easily find their favorite brand. Hence, make sure that the name is easy to find.

Moreover, get all the information you need to know about the cost of a domain name. There is a registration amount and money that’s paid annually. Finally, as you think about a domain name, you should think broadly to consider the possibility of business growth. Don’t be restrictive. It’s paramount, therefore, to work with all business stakeholders to find out the right domain name for the website.

2. Identify the Right Website Builder

This is an instrumental step when it comes to the creation of a business website for a startup company. From the onset, you should know that there are different website builders to choose from. Depending on the needs of a business, it’s possible to know the right website builder to use. For example, the website builder that’s good for a restaurant might not be the ideal one for an e-commerce store. Remember, choosing the right website builder goes a long way to create a suitable website for a company. Perhaps, a major point to consider here is that you’re creating a business website for a startup company. Thus, as you search for the best website builder, it’s advisable to settle for one that has the pricing, features, and design to fit such a company. “When creating a website for a startup, it’s crucial to prioritize customization and scalability from the beginning. It’s essential to focus on building tailored web solutions that evolve alongside the business, ensuring that the platform not only meets current needs but also supports future growth efficiently.” – says Bartosz Wrobel, CEO at Gorrion.io

One of the popular website builders today is Wix. As earlier mentioned, each website builder has features that a particular business would like to have. For example, Wix is a great option for users who don’t have high technical knowledge in regards to design. If you would like a website builder that will offer assistance in design, Wix is the way to go. Also, if you need a website builder that will give you flexible tools for specialized functions, Wix will come in handy. For example, if you have a restaurant business and you would like to have an ordering app, you can consider going for Wix. Therefore, take time to understand your startup business in order to choose the right website builder for it. Keep in mind that there are also other options. You can choose to create your web solutions using CMS systems like WordPress. Also, you may hire fullstack developers to create a custom website.

3. Pick the Perfect Template

After choosing the ideal website builder, it’s now time to settle for the perfect template as well. In technical terms, a template is the foundation of a website’s design. If you get it right in the template part, you’ll be setting the right pace for a superior website design. An IT manager should be able to apply creativity while choosing a template. The website builder you’ll use will determine the template you choose and the freedom of applying creativity.

For example, if your website builder is Wix, you’ll have much freedom to customize the templates available until you get one that fits you well. There are other website builders that do not give users much freedom to customize. For example, Squarespace doesn’t offer users much capacity to customize. However, this isn’t necessarily a disadvantage because their templates are great. If you’ve chosen Wix as your preferred website builder, you have more than 800 templates to choose from. Make sure to select an accessible theme. Otherwise, you should invest in a third party Wix accessibility solution.

Picking a template for a business isn’t always an easy thing. It’s possible to get lost in the choices available to you. The best advice that website designers give to users is to settle for a template that’s in line with your business goals. Here, you need to know what your business stands for and what you want to achieve. Since a template brings out the creative side of your website, you should go for one that speaks to your target audience. For instance, if your startup is about health and fitness, you should pick a template that resembles a health and fitness website.

4. Work on the Content Part

In regards to content, creating a business website for a startup company requires you to put in mind the pages that people will visit for content. Content is what target audiences will be looking for to learn more about a business and transact with it. For a startup company, a website will need the following pages:

· A homepage: A striking and well-designed homepage is necessary for a startup. Visitors should be in a position to understand what a business offers within the shortest time possible, and then move on to other pages on the website. IT directors should make sure that the homepage is strong enough to provide the information required.

· About Us page: The About Us page should be informative. This is where a business should tell the story of their brand. It should be captivating and informative enough for visitors to understand the journey that a business has taken and the history behind its existence. It’s instrumental to include the team that leads the business on this page.

· Contact page: The contact page should be clear. This is a valuable page as it communicates to customers on how they can get in touch with a business.

· Product/services page: This is an important page as it tells customers what a business offers. The different products and services in a business are displayed on this page.

· Blog: This is where a startup demonstrates its level of expertise to its target audience. This page contains articles related to what a business does. Your target audience has questions concerning what you do and offer. This page gives you an opportunity to answer their questions and provide solutions to the problems they have. It’s also a brilliant way of helping your website to rank well with search engines and attract the much-needed traffic.

5. Integrating Relevant Features

Once you’ve made sure that there is content on your website that your target audience can interact with, you also need to add features that will add the functionality of your platform. This is where apps and extensions come in handy. They increase the features of a site and makes it more functional. This is great news for startups. As a startup, there is freedom to choose the applications that are most applicable to a brand. The following are good examples of applications and features that startup companies can consider when creating a business website:

· Google Maps: For a startup company, this app plays an integral role in allowing potential customers to find you. Since you’re not yet known by a good number of your target audience, this app comes in handy to connect you with them.

· Forms: With this app, you’ll have a viable alternative for customers to communicate with you. You’ll be able to get your enquiries organized. Additionally, companies use this feature to motivate customers to apply for email messaging.

· Live chat: This feature is valuable as it helps to interact with audiences in real time. As a way of getting feedback, this is an increasingly popular feature.

· Social media integration: Social media is a vital tool in the growth and development of startup companies. That’s why it rewards to put it in mind when building a website for a new business. Integrating this app into your website goes a long way to expand the reach of your company.

· Customer testimonials: Customer feedback on your site helps to build a strong relationship with your customers. As a startup company that wishes to build a high level of trust with customers and potential customers, integrating customer testimonials on your site is a big plus.

6. SEO Optimization

Having an amazing website is important for a business. Also, designing a captivating homepage carries a great deal of significance. However, unless a website is able to appear among the highly ranked websites after search engine results get displayed, it won’t add much value. In other words, you need to make sure that the visibility of your website is a priority. This is where search engine optimization comes in. There are factors that contribute to a site being ranked highly by search engines. It’s these factors that an IT manager should put into consideration when seeking to optimize a website for SEO or going for SEO services for startups.

One of the things to factor in is the speed of your website. Users don’t have the luxury of waiting for websites to load. Normally, if a website doesn’t load within 3 seconds, most users will abandon it and go to another. According to the New York Times, if your website is slow, it won’t perform well in SEO. Therefore, you need to try out strategies that allow you to fasten the speed of your site. For example, you can avoid having heavy images that make it difficult for your site to load faster.

Another factor that helps with startup SEO optimization is putting into consideration the need for mobile responsiveness. Not all Google searches are carried out by desktop users. There are those who use mobile devices. Therefore, it deems it necessary to format content in a way that such users are able to receive content in an effective way. This goes a long way to improve a site’s SEO performance.

Another strategy of SEO optimization is using the right keywords and using them appropriately. For you to know the right keywords, it’s prudent to conduct detailed research to establish what people are looking for. This will definitely give you a clear picture of the keywords to use and how to use them in order to rank higher after search engine results reflect.

7. Publishing and Regular Updating

After doing all the above, the last step is to publish the created website. This allows the world to get in touch with your brand. Once the website is up and running, you need to keep monitoring it so that you identify the areas that need improvement. As a startup company continues to grow, there are needs that will arise. It’s at this point that one needs to update apps and features to meet those particular needs.

Undoubtedly, in an age that’s technology-driven, startup companies need websites to be competitive in the digital space. This is increasingly becoming a priority for many businesses, and that’s why IT managers are constantly updating their knowledge on website development and maintenance. This goes a long way to attract optimum and quality business outcomes.

The post How To Create A Website For Your Startup Company appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.