The marketing ecosystem is evolving at a rapid pace. With the emergence of Web3 and an entirely new frontier of interconnectivity on the horizon, more businesses are seeking to modernize their approaches to lead acquisition as part of a wider digital transformation strategy.
But how can these modernization efforts be used for startups with smaller budgets? It pays to prepare for tomorrow today, and several measures can help small businesses embrace the future of winning and retaining customers.
Many of the approaches that can be taken today can help businesses to become more focused in their acquisition efforts and to gain greater insights from the data of their conversions.
(Image: Smart Insights)
The six pillars of effective digital marketing devised by Smart Insights indicate how comprehensive digital transformation can be for the marketing efforts of businesses of all sizes. Still, they won’t necessarily require wholesale changes.
In terms of conversational messaging content, media, and customer experience, for instance, the emergence of big data can leverage powerful insights into who your target audience is, the level of personalization they expect, and the type of content they want to digest.
Scaling the Marketing Efforts of Startups: 5 Essential Ways to Modernize Your Lead Acquisition
But what measures can be taken today to modernize a startup’s digital marketing efforts for tomorrow? Let’s take a look at five key ways that lead acquisition can be enhanced with the future in mind:
Leverage Big Data
The voracity of big data means that it’s become an essential and powerful marketing tool that can significantly enhance the customer experience. For instance, you could want to improve your customer onboarding measures through insights. Utilizing AI programs to interpret masses of visitor data, how they behave on your pages, and what key pain points are can help to illuminate where your website excels and struggles.
By adopting big data analytics, your startup can add better personalization to customer-facing services–vastly improving their experience in the process.
These insights can also be adapted for future marketing campaigns by gathering emails through your website’s lead magnet. This information can also be used to understand better what inspires customers to enter your sales funnel—this insight into ‘why’ and ‘how’ can be invaluable for shaping self-perception.
The quality of insight that big data can provide can’t be underestimated. It stands as a powerful marketing tool that can bring numerous advantages. It forms the foundation for reliable information built on research, automation, targeting, and personalization. Platforms like Google Analytics stand as strong low-cost services that can offer startups a great wealth of insight into their website’s interactions with visitors.
Prepare for Zero-Party Data
Businesses with an eye on the future need to look beyond third-party cookies. In the age of GDPR, we’re seeing more users become suspicious of sharing their data with businesses–rightly so. However, this poses new challenges for the future of data acquisition.
Zero-party data is self-reported information and is voluntarily shared with companies trusted by their audience.
To build impactful customer experiences, forward-thinking businesses depend on understanding what motivates their leads and work to gain first-hand insights into these motivations.
The beauty of zero-party, self-reported data is that it’s reliable. Moreover, the actionable insights it provides can pave the way for revolutionizing the experience you can deliver for your customers.
Preparing for zero-party data today by incorporating subtle surveys and questionnaires on your pages and marketing materials can help generate a larger bank of data should the negative sentiment towards third-party cookies grow.
Work Now to Embrace a 5G Future
You need to incorporate 5G planning into your marketing strategy today. Of course, we’re already accustomed to seeing digital ads appear on our smartphones, screens in shopping malls and airports, and online. Still, the arrival of 5G has the potential to supercharge digital marketing.
With connectivity becoming increasingly available from anywhere in the world–even in rural areas–businesses have more freedom to consider their digital advertising. In addition, 5 G-ready smartphones dominate marketplaces today, making consumers more accessible through 5G advertising.
This means that small and ambitious businesses have more freedom to incorporate creativity into their marketing strategies. However, with some brands already working to develop advertising in the metaverse and via augmented reality cameras, the sky seems to be the limit to what marketing can achieve in the coming years.
With this in mind, you must incorporate 5G preparedness into your strategies and look to the opportunities that more high-quality campaigns can bring in lead engagement and acquisition.
Furthermore, faster data means its collection will likely improve significantly in the 5G era. Finding out more about your customers will pave the way for more responsive personalization, with experiences capable of being seamlessly tailored to the needs of customers.
Embrace Video
According to a report from Technology Advice, fewer than a quarter of businesses surveyed claimed to use video in their marketing efforts. However, this is a faux pas when considering the popularity of video for consumers–particularly those prevalent on social media platforms.
An Animoto survey found that four times as many consumers prefer video rather than reading about a product. Today, technology is making video-oriented campaigns more advanced and high-quality–without the need to turn to professional editing teams and choreographers.
Given how easy it is to create video content, small businesses have the power to create impactful marketing campaigns that are far more likely to get noticed by customers and acted upon.
Use Advanced Tools to Your Advantage
When you’ve strategized your modernized marketing goals, you must utilize the right tools to help you to achieve them. Luckily, there are plenty of low-cost options for startups to get started with their strategy.
For instance, online software like social media schedulers can help provide analytics to track your audience’s engagement and what they’re largely ignoring. Google Analytics is a highly advanced tool that presents a wide range of data open for interpretation.
For more specialist marketing tools, there’s HubSpot Marketing Hub, which helps users consolidate all their marketing tools into one platform. At the same time, the likes of Trello and TrueNorth all work wonders in providing campaign management.
Conclusion
Although the digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, recent technological advances promise to be a watershed moment for an industry always ripe for further innovation.
As the potential of 5G and big data are further realized, we’re likely to see a new flurry of ambitious and advanced campaigns designed to personalize experiences, engage, and entertain audiences.
By planning to accommodate these technologies today, your startup will be capable of reaping the benefits faster tomorrow.
