Digital Marketing Strategies for Students Entering the Business World

We hear it a lot, don’t we? Digital marketing. It’s like there are only 2 words left in our digitalized world. Oh, and SEO, of course. That makes 3 because SEO is not an abbreviation but a wholesome word. Right? Search engine optimization, which sounds too long, is an important component of digital marketing. I’m sure most students are aware of this and juggle with the terminology. For millennials, internet marketing strategies are like a habitat.

Or do I exaggerate slightly? It’s not because those words are spoken daily, and are all over the internet, that we know how to implement the tactics. Do you know every digital marketing strategy behind successful modern-day entrepreneurship? Neither do I. We all have to start somewhere. And it is kind of amazing that most components aren’t used for much more than entertainment. When listing them, you will think, ‘Of course, nothing new here.’ And you’re right. But if you have plans to enter the business world, playing time is over.

Nothing (is) new under the sun. Even so, we fail all too often to connect with what’s right in front of us. Let’s talk about how important digital marketing is for starting your own business. Let’s connect the well-known tools. Can you use a little guidance? If so, keep reading and look into 3 free and interconnected internet marketing strategies.

Effective online marketing strategies for beginners

This first strategy leads to the next. Once one strategy is firmly established, it seamlessly merges with the next step.

First step: Marketing through Social Media

Promoting your business by approaching your existing and expanding audience shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Converting your online presence into a professional medium can go gradually. Or you can connect your existing profiles to new ones that are exclusively set-up to support your new business.

Linking is a good business practice. A good example is LinkedIn. ‘Facebook for professionals‘ is the ideal base for marketing your business. You may call it advertising or promoting. What’s in a name? it all means the same. The main ingredient is “reaching out and connecting”.

Everybody knows about ads (and that they don’t come for free). If you wish, you can make use of this way of advertising. But is that the only way to implement online marketing strategies through social media? No. Let’s take Facebook. Even without having to resort to paid ads, Facebook already lets you build a company page.

It’s important to link all your social media. As if they’re different branches of 1 tree.

Influencer & Referral Marketing

Both are based on the same principle: good old word of mouth leverage. Make no mistake, these strategies logically follow-up a strong social media presence but will take time. A considerable amount of time and effort.

Influencer campaigns involve influencers who use their channels to help to promote your channel/product/business by producing specific content or by making use of the content you provide. Influencers are role models and carry authority.

People listen to role models, and that’s why it’s such an important part of your strategy. If you can connect influencers to your product and business, all the prior hard work will get the reward it deserves. Don’t make a mistake underestimating the power role models have.

If you need some convincing, I recommend you to read an essay about role models. Any essay on role models (and there are plenty of free examples to check out) will help you to understand why influence marketing is such a huge aspect of the successful strategic promoting of new businesses. Influencer marketing involves word-of-mouth marketing activities, which doesn’t mean all word-of-mouth marketing is done by influencers.

Referral marketing is another way to do word-of-mouth marketing. In this case, happy customers take up the role of the celebrities (some influencers do have the status of movie stars, as you very well know). Happy customers will refer your products to people they know. These personal recommendations can give your young business a serious growth spurt.

Provide better content and make good use of SEO-techniques

It’s often said that good content is the secret ingredient of most online marketing strategies. Engaging content is what attracts new customers, generates traffic to your platforms, and keeps clients involved. Combine your content with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, and you will do your startup a big favor. SEO will get you organic (natural and free) traffic from search engines.

Learning all you can about writing quality content and using SEO techniques is the best investment possible. It will generate exposure that no ad campaign can ever reproduce.

Content marketing is an ingredient of other marketing strategies and a market strategy on itself. It will improve

• your visibility in search engines
• the authority of your campaigns.
• referral traffic
• social traffic
• the reputation of your brand

As long as your content doesn’t read as one long advertisement, it will increase your brand reputation and bring your (potential) customers closer to you. When customers value and trust the information you provide, they will buy from you.

Conclusion on Digital Marketing Strategies for Students

Starting a business already can be expensive. Spending a small fortune on marketing is to avoid when you are new in entering the business world. Free marketing methods are just as effective.

Conventional digital marketing methods tend to overwhelm customers by an avalanche of marketing messages. Most people ignore digital ads or are even annoyed by them. The easiest and cheapest entry into the world of digital marketing is by using social media to promote your upcoming or new business. This is ideal for students who already are very used to communicating through social media platforms.

You know how to interact with your audience and are aware of the impact of engaging content. Yes, we can call the people on your friend list, your followers and subscribers Your Audience.

Even the people you know, I mean in real life, become members of your audience the moment they read your posts, watch your video’s and so on. Use this level of authenticity as your most significant weapon in promoting your new business.