Practical Guide to Digital Marketing for Startups » Portal Insights

Since I started providing Digital Marketing consultancy, one of the markets that has always caught my attention has been startups. 

How is it possible that a group of extremely productive and intelligent people can come together to create a fantastic solution, with thousands of lines of code and complex technologies (that most people can’t even pronounce correctly) but, at the same time, make so many mistakes when it comes to Digital Marketing?

I remember that, on one occasion, I received a call from the CEO of a startup in Salvador, which was in the media because of its innovative recycling solution, who was simply unhappy with the return on his investment in Facebook ads.

We talked and talked, and after a few minutes of conversation he told me that he had invested R$6,000 reais in the last month but had not generated a single opportunity for the company. 

Intrigued, but already suspicious of the problem, I asked him to send me a printout of his ad manager.

This CEO, who was leading one of the most talked about startups at the time and whose ability to create an innovative solution surpassed mine by at least ten light years, was investing R$6,000 to get likes on his Facebook page.

The ads didn’t even have links pointing to the website. Much less suggestive texts and images about the solution. I won’t even comment on audience segmentation and budget optimization…

It was at this moment that I realized that most startups, made up of very intelligent people who are used to doing a little bit of everything, confuse “simple” with “easy” when it comes to Digital Marketing.

Yes, the concept of Digital Marketing is very simple and we will talk about it later. But is it easy?

Based on my experience with these clients and dozens of other startups in the national ecosystem, I tend to believe that this is not the case. In addition to strategic planning and technical knowledge, it is necessary to break some concepts formed with millions of videos and texts produced by companies that only want to sell the “tool of the moment”.

Fundamentals that startups need to keep in mind when investing in digital marketing

Over the years working with startups, I’ve learned that regardless of your segment, size or vision, there are three fundamentals you need to keep in mind to be successful with Digital Marketing.

1. Identity

Also known as branding , identity is the most important aspect in the long term but, because it is somewhat abstract, it is the most neglected by startups – especially those that need to “sell lunch to buy dinner” in the fight for survival.

It’s about how people perceive your brand. What feelings does it evoke in people? Does it convey trust, desire, or confusion? 

Aligning your Digital Marketing actions with the identity you want to build for your startup, whether in ads or email marketing campaigns, is essential because it guarantees long-term results and avoids the mindset of “anything goes to sell”, which is not healthy for your company (partners, employees, partners…) much less for the market. 

2. Costs

In a perfect world, everyone would have an “infinite” budget and worrying about costs would be unnecessary. But as you probably already know, that’s not how it works.

For startups, costs are even more critical, as a wrong choice can result in bankruptcy – especially if the startup is in the so-called “startup valley of death”.

There is no shortage of software and miracle methods available in the Digital Marketing field, and it can be tempting to hire everyone who knocks on your door (or appears on your social media feed), with the expectation that one of them will solve all your problems.

But trust me, there is no such thing. 

Set a budget and try to make the most of it, prioritizing those tools that can bring the fastest results to your business (and not the prettiest ones). Remember: in a world of limited resources, those who know how to prioritize investments survive; those who don’t are buried alive with a handful of useless tools.

3. ROI (Return Over Investment)

Your actions may be fully aligned with your startup’s identity and the costs may be super low, but all of this will be a waste of time if at the end of the day the return on investment is non-existent or, in the worst case scenario, negative. 

Yes, you will need a strategy

The idea that “action is what matters” has been gaining more and more traction among millennials. Although action is indeed very important, it is immature to think that it is absolutely what matters.

If that were the case, we wouldn’t have millions of people working more than 12 hours a day to earn a minimum wage, or super talented artists who have to perform at traffic lights to eat.

Having a strategy means not only having a projection of your startup in the coming years, but also knowing how to apply methods and practices for a specific period of time to transform this projection into reality.

But how do you define a digital marketing strategy for your startup?

First, set your goals. There are several tips online on how to set goals, but the best and most realistic one in my opinion is the SMART method.

With your SMART goals in hand, the next step is to brainstorm with your team what actions will be necessary within the given timeframe. For now, the order and clarity of the actions doesn’t really matter (that’s why I call it a “brainstorm”), but it’s important to have someone with the minimum necessary knowledge.

Then, it is the role of the project manager or person responsible to organize these actions and resources on a dashboard, which can be free software like Trello or a paid and more robust one, like Pipefy.

A common mistake at this stage is to focus exclusively on implementing agile methodologies, such as Agile or Scrum. 

Although both are valid and widely used by larger companies, it is important to remember that the success or failure of this implementation will depend on your organizational culture, the intellectual capacity of the team but, mainly, the time you are willing to focus on this. 

Remember that the time invested in implementing the methodology could be used for actions that bring results in the short term and the truth is that not every startup can afford to wait.

It is important to remember that every action needs to have a deadline and that someone needs to be responsible for daily monitoring. Otherwise, the “urgent” demands of everyday life will simply swallow up the strategy.

The process described here may seem simple, and perhaps it is in some people’s view. However, it is worth remembering that the more expertise you or someone on your team has in Digital Marketing, the more realistic the goals and actions will be.

At this stage, many startups choose to hire consultants, who can charge fees ranging from R$100 to R$500. Some consultants may even be responsible for the day-to-day management of the strategy. Obviously, the investment will be higher, but there will undoubtedly be fewer errors throughout the process – and fewer headaches for those involved.

One question I often get from clients is about the validity of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, a methodology that proposes brand communication that is much more aligned with “Why?” than “How” or “What.” If you have no idea what I’m talking about, look for the video “Start With Why” on YouTube.

The Golden Circle has a strong branding appeal and is very important in the long run, especially when your startup has direct competitors (and better known than you) in the market. 

But you have to be careful.

Because it is abstract and has a more conceptual impact on the brand’s identity in the eyes of the target audience, a startup should never put all its chips on discovering and publicizing its “why”. Especially in commodity segments or low added value services, where often what matters most is price and/or features.

In other words, it is important to have a “why” but even more important is to have cash in the bank to pay your employees, suppliers and deliver quality to your customers.

The art of learning fast from your own tests

I see more and more people and companies promoting Digital Marketing methodologies and “secrets” that can save your business, or make it grow 10x in a year.

This worries me a lot, for two reasons:

1. just as there is no universal medicine that can be used to treat all diseases, there is no formula in Digital Marketing that meets the needs of all companies;
2. This view hides the truth that very few people know what they are doing in Digital Marketing and that in the end the difference in your strategy will be the ability to test and learn faster than your competitors.

Just like in product development, a test and learn cycle can and should be applied to your digital marketing efforts. Otherwise, all your startup will be doing is reproducing an inflexible strategy that may or may not work (which is most of the time).

After defining the goals and schedule of actions described above, your Marketing routine should look like this: raise hypotheses, test, analyze, conclude, continue doing what worked and archive what didn’t work.

Regarding the recurrence of this cycle, everything will depend on the size of your team and the maturity of the processes in your startup. I recommend a minimum time of one week and a maximum of four weeks to run an entire test cycle. 

Practical method for transforming data into actions in digital marketing

This is the time when you simply jump to the next topic. No one likes to talk about measurement and data analysis because they either don’t like the subject or they simply don’t understand how to do it.

But that’s okay, I’ll be very direct so as not to lose your attention…

Analyze only what is necessary at most once a week if you don’t want to get completely lost in your strategy. Data in the right dose can work miracles, but in the wrong dose, it can swallow your team and make your life a real chaos. 

In the reality of most startups, this means:

1. Define which performance indicators (KPIs) NEED to be analyzed – here I emphasize the word NEED, do not make the mistake of analyzing what does not matter;
2. Create a dashboard in Google Analytics for the indicators that can be collected by your website and/or application – it can be a little complicated if you don’t have experience, but there is no shortage of tutorials on this on the internet;
3. Create an Excel spreadsheet for indicators that cannot be collected automatically – update this spreadsheet monthly;
4. Once a month, get your team together and do a kind of “brainstorm” of conclusions that can be drawn from this data;
5. Select a maximum of five hypotheses from this brainstorm;
6. Create a schedule to test these hypotheses within a week.

Knowing how to prioritize will save your startup

By far the most common mistake I see in Digital Marketing for startups is wanting to do everything at once.

In a perfect world (with unlimited time and resources) this wouldn’t be a problem. We could easily focus on SEO, social media, paid media, content marketing, partnerships, affiliate strategy and at least ten other possible avenues within marketing.

But, well, unfortunately this world doesn’t exist and, if you want to have any success, you will need to leave some things aside to make any progress, even if it is slow (I like to say that consistency is often more important than speed in Digital Marketing). 

Below, I’ve listed the most important actions for startups in terms of priority. It may be tempting to try to do all of these at once, especially if you have the investment to do so, but my advice is to focus on one step at a time and, once you’ve completed the last one, implement an optimization routine for all of them.

• Personas and Target Audience : Discover the behaviors and demographic characteristics of the people you want to attract;
• Communication Line : Define which language (written and visual) will be used to connect with these people;
• Paid Media Ads : Create ads to drive these people to your website, preferably encouraging them to take a specific action (get in touch, start a trial, download…;
• Onboarding and CX: Create and implement an internal process capable of taking these people “by the hand” and guiding them in using the service or product offered – the better this part, the greater the possibility of growth through “word of mouth” marketing;
• Outbound Campaigns : Use tools to prospect potential customers and contact them by email or phone. Consider this action a measure to prevent unforeseen events, in case the ads are ineffective;
• Remarketing : Create ads to bring back people who visited your website but didn’t take the action you want;
• Social Networks : Create and implement an organic publication calendar on the main (don’t make the mistake of wanting to be present on all) social networks for your startup;
• Marketing Automation : Start sending nurturing emails to your lead base (potential customers) to keep them engaged and on your sales team’s radar. 

Obviously, each of these steps can be broken down into several others, which may vary slightly for each startup. But if you’re lost, following this step-by-step guide will solve 90% of your digital marketing problems.

To make it easier to implement all these actions in your startup, use our digital marketing checklist for startups.