Digital Marketing on a Small Budget
Contrary to the still very widespread opinion, success and growth do not depend on expensive print and poster campaigns or TV spots at prime time. A common rule of thumb for young companies has been to invest up to 20% of their gross profits in marketing measures to generate the necessary buzz in the market and to lay the foundation for networks, collaborations and new customers.
Despite a small budget, many milestones can be reached with well-considered digital marketing measures. The most important thing here is to always critically examine the goals and find creative ways to reach the target groups. The diverse social media landscape makes it easy to enter into dialogue and build relationships in very different ways.
In the following you will read three basic tips on how growth strategies can be combined with digital marketing measures in an intelligent and above all efficient way.
Tip #1. Focus on viral effects and rewards
The product itself is usually not the reason why young companies fail time and again. Rather, it is due to too slow growth and a business model that is not profitable as long as the critical mass has not been exceeded. In order to successfully avoid this scenario, the level of awareness must be massively increased. Recommendations and word of mouth can be used effectively and away from classic campaigns.
The great advantage of both digital marketing instruments is that social networks give both of them a strong platform on which customers can become their own ambassadors, and where positive evaluations and reports of their experiences can be used to promote the company.
However, a simple dialogue via social media is not enough, because customers must be rewarded again and again. Dropbox, for example, rewards its users with additional storage space when they invite friends, link Dropbox to Facebook and Twitter, give feedback or use the Dropbox apps Carousel or Mailbox. The premium taxi app Uber even goes one step further and uses a bilateral bonus program as a digital marketing instrument. If an existing user recruits a new user, both will be credited a certain amount for the next trip.
Tip #2. Intelligent and individual tracking
Only those who know their own users can set actions correctly or, if necessary, divert them — how fast moving a product is and how often it is re-bought is an important criterion for assessing the consumption rhythm of customers. After all, those who offer long-lasting products will hardly generate regular or short-term repeat purchases and should focus in particular on the rapid growth of new customers.
At the core of every digital marketing activity should therefore always be analytics to calculate the costs per lead and channel and to work out expected conversion rates. In order to win new customers and to optimize the use of budgets in the channels, permanent A/B tests of the different channels are also indispensable. Documenting new customers and users at specific time intervals, which can be broken down to a monthly or daily basis, depending on the business model, has proven to be a very simple method.
Tip #3. Storytelling instead of advertising messages
Good stories that customers can identify with and thereby experience added value for themselves and their everyday lives can not only be played through a wide variety of channels, but are also easy to control financially. But one thing that should not be missing here — a great product can only convince with a certain passion that creates certain associations and responds specifically to the needs of the customer.
So when companies use inspiring stories to focus on human destinies, they can not only communicate their values in a comprehensible way as an institution, but also build up an identity-creating image with the target group and create trust. Regardless of whether in the B2B or B2C sector, the mechanisms for addressing potential conflicts and linking them to a solution can be applied everywhere and across target groups, as the digital marketing campaign for the Microsoft Cloud proves.
