It’s just one single word: “Trust”. Why is there a problem with trust?
Though I have experience working for startups doing digital marketing to get leads and sales, the condition is always the same.
It’s because, when you’re ready to show your product to the world, nobody – literally nobody – knows about your brand.
So, for example, if your startup sells t-shirts, why would I buy a t-shirt from your company? I don’t know your brand. If I buy a t-shirt from your own e-commerce store, how do I know if it’ll arrive at my home? You’re not Amazon.
Those are the questions that so many startups face from their potential customers, and if your startup comes with an app it’s double trouble because you must convince your customers to download it and make a purchase.
When I started working for the first startup that hired me, I thought it would be like the TV show “Silicon Valley”. I’d left a good job, with a good monthly income, to have my first experience in a startup.
But reality hit me hard. In a startup, if you don’t sell, then you literally do not eat, and in my own first month, we only made four sales.
How do you start making sales when nobody knows about you?
That is the question I asked myself when the CEO and the co-founder explained that they needed sales to pay the salaries the following month.
I told myself: “Ok, doing search engine optimization will be a long-term process, social media marketing also takes time nonetheless it can help… the one thing I can do is paid to advertise, but I desire a budget”.
At this point you have to remember this about digital marketing:
In digital marketing you have three options to promote your website, weblog or startup:
● Search engine optimization
● Social media marketing
● Paid advertising
Search engine optimization is an extended process; it can take months to see organic traffic on your site or blog, but once you get organic and natural traffic the chances of getting leads or sales are big.
Social media marketing can be a process, because if your web site or blog is new then nobody will find out about this new site or brand. So, the work here is to select the right social media platform to market your website or blog.
Paid advertising is the quickest way to promote your website or blog because, for example, in the event that you run a campaign to get leads on Facebook you then will get leads during that campaign, but after the campaign is over, you won’t get any leads.
So the ideal way to promote your website or blog page is a mix of these three strategies.
Trust = Sales
If people trust you, you’ll get sales. That is what I learned from my experience working for startups.
It’s because, if your brand is new, people will have doubts about your product, your services, and everything.
My recommendation is to work on a social media plan with the goal of building rapport and trust.
I know that you want sales. That will take time, but you can run an advertising campaign on social media, though that campaign needs the enforcement of a social media plan.
Everything takes time, regardless if you work in a startup where everything goes at a fast pace.