Congratulations! You are about to embark on an incredible—albeit absolutely crazy—adventure!
We work primarily with new startups, ventures, side projects, and young businesses. Before you get too far into setting up your business, there’s a number of digital marketing factors you should consider:
Names Are Everything
What’s in a name? Turns out, it can make or break your businesses success. We talk with businesses that got started with a name only to encounter serious problems. Here’s a quick list of what to consider:
- Is this brand name unique enough that if it was Googled, it would be the only one to appear for that name?
- Is there some way this brand name could be misunderstood or misconstrued as a different product/service?
- Are there other businesses in the same industry using the same or similar name?
- How distinct is my brand name among my competitors?
- Is getting a short domain name (URL) using my brand name even possible?
One tool that we highly recommend is Namechk for testing a potential brand name. Namechk will show you what services, websites, and social media sites already have users with that handle or name.
It can take months to settle on a good name, so take the time you need to make sure it is the right one.
User Journey
We see a lot of businesses that jump right into getting a website or posting on social media without giving any thought to the user journey. This is a pretty simple process to do at a high level:
How do you want people to learn, research, and then purchase your product/service?
Let’s say I’m selling really cool running shoes. I could just start posting on social media, but how am I going to process payments when people want them? I could also build a website with a great cart function, but how am I going to get people to hear about it?
Spend a few minutes reviewing one of your recent purchases and think through the process you went through prior to purchase. What pieces of that journey can you copy? Where do you need to have a presence? What do you want the final checkout, purchase, or scheduling process to look like?
Measure Up
Businesses need to be able to see their progress, but you can’t gauge your success without good performance metrics. We can’t stress how important this is to figure out prior to launching any aspect of your digital marketing.
If your goal is building awareness about your brand, you should hold yourselves, your agency, and your digital marketing campaigns to driving impressions or people who see your brand.
Maybe you have awareness, but people just aren’t buying or contacting you. Are you tracking phone calls to know if they are calling instead of submitting forms? How easy are your forms for users to fill out? Is there something broken in your shopping cart experience?
By setting specific goals it becomes much easier to figure out where to invest your marketing dollars and spend your time.
But Learn As You Go
All this being said, there is still so much you will figure out as you go. However, following these three tips will make sure that you are considering the most important things as you get your business off the ground.
Want to kick around an idea with our team? We’d love to do a free consultation about your next big project!