Scaling the Marketing Efforts of Startups: 5 Essential Ways to Modernize Your Lead Acquisition

The marketing ecosystem is evolving at a rapid pace. With the emergence of Web3 and an entire 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 there are a number of measures that can help small businesses to 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 offers an indication of how comprehensive digital transformation can be for the marketing efforts of businesses of all sizes, but 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 really is, the level of personalization they expect, and the type of content they want to digest.

But what measures can be taken today in order 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 will be capable of adding 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 for a greater understanding of what can inspire customers to enter your sales funnel. This insight into ‘why’ as well as ‘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 on insight into the interactions between their website and its 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-and 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 that are trusted by their audience.

To build impactful customer experiences, forward-thinking businesses are dependent on understanding what motivates their leads, and work to gain insights into these motivations first-hand.

The beauty of zero-party, self-reported data is that it’s reliable, and the actionable insights that 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 to generate a larger bank of data should the negative sentiment towards third-party cookies continue to grow.

Work Now to Embrace a 5G Future

You need to incorporate 5G planning into your marketing strategy today. We’re already accustomed to seeing digital ads appear on our smartphones, screens in shopping malls and airports, and online, but 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. Today, 5G ready smartphones are dominating marketplaces, making consumers more accessible through 5G advertising.

This means that small and ambitious businesses have more freedom to incorporate creativity into their marketing strategies. With some brands already working to develop advertising in the metaverse and via augmented reality cameras, the sky seems to be the limit with what marketing can achieve in the coming years.

With this in mind, it’s essential that you incorporate 5G preparedness into your strategies, and look to the opportunities that more high-quality campaigns can bring in terms of lead engagement and acquisition.

Furthermore, faster data means that its collection is likely to 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 who are prevalent on social media platforms.

In fact, an Animoto survey found that four-times as many consumers prefer video as opposed to 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, it’s essential that you utilize the right tools to help you to achieve them. Luckily, there are plenty of great options that are low-cost for startups to get started with their strategy.

Online software like social media schedulers, for instance, can help to provide analytics to keep track of what your audience is engaging in and what they’re largely ignoring. The aforementioned Google Analytics is a highly advanced tool that presents wide ranges of data that’s open for interpretation.

For more specialist marketing tools, there’s HubSpot Marketing Hub, which helps users to consolidate all their marketing tools into one single platform, while the likes of Trello and TrueNorth all work wonders in providing campaign management.

Although the digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, recent advances in technology promise to be a watershed moment for an industry that’s 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.