Markets and marketing have evolved to a great extent. The coronavirus pandemic unexpectedly pushed to a more transformed mode, but the experts say we would have reached such a point in the next few years. The consumer is now digital, shops on the go, and replaces the physical stores with a black screen.

Today’s consumer starts their search with a search engine query, that tells them about products and services, after which they head to social media profiles. As more and more millennials and Gen Z enter the workplace, covering your brand on social media is not an option but a necessity.

Why is social media important for business?
Every individual with purchasing power today owns a social media account, where they spend their leisure time. This is when a company can spread its brand message through targeted and personalized social media campaigns.

Using social media expands your brand’s reach, captures attention, and eventually drives traffic to your website only if you use it wisely.

Five benefits of Social Media in startups 

1. Social Media Marketing is cost-effective.
   Creating an account on any social media page is free, and so is sharing content. It is one of the most inexpensive marketing tools where you have to pay for other marketing costs. As a startup, funds are in scarcity, and you have to manage with whatever you have. Content sharing on social media will get you through the early phases.
   
   Even if you are looking to work with sponsored or paid ads, start on a small budget so that you can track the progress and the returns. The only thing that you need to invest in bulk is your time.
   
2. It boosts consumer engagement and loyalty.
   Because consumers spend a lot of time on social media, it is an excellent platform to interact with them. Engage with them on social media – post content relevant to them, answer their FAQ, resolve their concerns and let them know their interests are protected.
   
   In doing so, you provide consumers with a personalized way of approach, and they feel valued. A long-term brand-consumer relationship begins to build that rests on authenticity, trust, and communication. New consumers become more likely to convert, and existing ones become more likely to retain.
   
3. It increases brand awareness and visibility. 
   The first and foremost requirement for startups to get customers is for them to know the brand EXISTS! If you are new in the marketplace, it will take time for you to have a steady flow of consumers because they will hardly know about you. Therefore, you use social media as a tool to rocket-power your visibility.
   
   Content on social media gets attention, whatever it might be. Experiment with your content strategy on social media and regularly check what is successful in your industry, which posts are getting more engagement. Once you figure it out, you will be able to tap the thousands of prospects on the platform.
   
4. It impacts website traffic.
   Social media accounts are a great way to boost traffic to your website. Various companies deploy different techniques to get users to click through to their websites or landing pages.
   
   For example, if you are putting out a thought about the industry, you could give a sneak peek on social media and guide the engagers back to the website. If you are offering a discount or a giveaway, participants can be led back to a landing page or the website to shop or view the offer in detail. Marketers who use social media marketing have confirmed that it has a positive impact on their website traffic. 

Closing Thoughts
Marketing on social media has its cons as well. It can be an overwhelming exercise for your marketing team to keep up with all the latest trends and accommodate their content and brand message in it. Trends change daily, and if you do not have a basic outline, you will face challenges in keeping up with the platforms.

Don’t worry; we have got you covered. Growth Central VC offers a comprehensive quiz on social media marketing that you can take to identify whether you are ready for the challenge or not. Participants can interpret the quiz results to mean if you need to hone your skills more before entering the field. Visit our social media pages to know more!

Digital Marketing For Startups 

You have started a new business. You need to spread awareness about your brand and get people to purchase. But where do you go to tell the entire world that you have a new business? You use the Internet.

New brands emerge every day in the marketplace that need to make consumers aware of their business and their ideas. They have to compete with the established giants by reaching out to more people, and for this, they use the digital space.

Let’s see the basics of digital marketing for startups.

Why is digital marketing important for startups? 

People are shopping online more than in person, especially during and after the pandemic. They prefer discovering new brands on Instagram and educating themselves through videos on Facebook and Youtube. They scrutinize brands through their blogs and digital presence. In this era of marketing, it doesn’t require a genius to know that digital marketing is a necessity, particularly for startups that can easily advertise for free on the internet with their limited funding.

4 Best Digital Marketing Practices for Startups

Content Marketing
It is not an exaggeration to say that digital marketing starts with content marketing. More than 90% of businesses use content for marketing their business because it is cheaper and generates almost thrice as many leads as other forms of digital marketing.

Content marketing spans into an omnichannel approach. Your blog, social media handles, and any other place where your consumers might be, are updated regularly with relevant content from your industry and your company. Content marketing establishes you as an authoritative voice, a thought leader, and speaks volumes about your brand’s values in simple words.

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is one of the easy on your pockets options to boost discoverability and brand awareness. You need SEO because there are numerous sites in the same business as yours, and to compete with them, show up higher than them on SERPs, you need to optimize your site according to the search engine’s algorithms. 

Target keywords, optimize sites for mobile screens, add backlinks and use the best practices to make sure you appear at the top when a potential consumer searches for something related to your product or brand. Not only does it drive traffic to your site, but it also builds trust with your consumers. 

PPC campaigns
PPC or pay-per-click campaigns are a fool-proof way of getting traffic to your website. These are similar to paid advertisements, with the exception that the consumers who click on your campaign are ready to make a purchase. With a PPC campaign, you will have to pay for each time your ad is clicked, which makes it a tricky line to follow. PPC campaigns are invaluable when it comes to bringing sales, because it reaches your consumer at the right time. The ROI on PPC campaigns is high and the results are almost immediate.

The only downside to this technique is that it can drain your budget very quickly, which is dangerous for a startup. But it is a risk you have to take, as its advantages overshadow the risks. If you can get a professional to design a relevant and intelligent PPC campaign for you, search engines will charge less and the revenue spent on every click will be covered by the sales.

Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the most engaging tools for marketing today. It is beyond a platform where an individual interacts with their friends and relatives. It has become a marketplace of content, where your target audience is usually found spending their time.

Graphics catch the eye and attention of users much more than blog texts, which is another advantage of using social media. Create high-quality content and maintain a content calendar for social media. Identify the platform that is most frequented by your prospects. Engage with the community with replies and re-shares and invest in paid ads. Your company handles will do well.

Final Words

Digital marketing is extremely crucial for the growth of a company, especially a startup. It is the easiest way to boost brand engagement, discoverability and awareness. But before you get yourself deep into the job, you must have adequate knowledge about the way digital marketing works.

Test your knowledge with Growth Central VC’s quizzes on Digital Marketing and Paid advertisements! Know whether you are ready for this fast-paced exciting world of marketing by honing your skills. You can also check out our social media pages for inspiration. 

Why are Business Incubator Support Startups Popular? 

India has a lucrative startup ecosystem that houses over 38,000 start-ups and over 5,000 active investors, according to this report by Inc42. Startups move the culture of entrepreneurship forward and provide the youth with a platform to materialize their ideas and solve society’s problems.

Running a start-up is not an easy task; it requires unlimited patience and dedication. More often, aspiring entrepreneurs need to look for resources and mentors to help their businesses establish a name for themselves. The solution is – business incubators.

So why are business incubator support startups so popular?

What is a business incubator? 

A business incubator is a company or an organization that helps startups and solopreneurs set up their companies. Incubators usually provide new enterprises with services like management training, capital-raising, and networking opportunities.

Why do I need a business incubator support startup? 

As you are venturing out in a new and competitive corporate world, it always helps to have someone have your back. In the case of startups, incubator support startups are your parents – they help you to your feet and push you to grow further.

Let’s look at a few reasons you MUST turn to incubator support if you’re a budding enterprise. 

1. Funding 

One of the most common problems that startups face is funding. They struggle to get adequate monetary capital to start working and put themselves out in the market. Incubator support helps these startups reach out to potential investors through investor relations or funding opportunities. 

Startups could also seek out the partners of the incubator support startup for capital. Some support startups also provide investment programs to businesses that need additional funding. Incubators have different areas of emphasis, so if you are looking for an incubator, make sure you select one that provides the right amount of funding you need and applies to your industry.

2. Equipment 

While dealing with funding needs, many startups lose adequate capital to purchase quality equipment for their manufacturing. Even the equipment required to get you started in some industries is costly and causes problems for emerging businesses.

If you join incubator support, on the other hand, there is a good possibility that you can get your hands-on good-quality machinery and equipment to get started. For example, the life science industry depends a lot on incubator-supported equipment as it is expensive yet indispensable in its importance to the startup.

3. Partnerships and Networking 

There is no better way to partner or expand your network while in the bud stages of the startup than to do it within an incubator. Business incubators support numerous startups, which gives you one place to find hundreds of people to interact with. 

While in an incubator, you can network with professionals from different fields, all of who are running to establish their business just like you. While a partnership might not be in the best interest of your company at this time, meeting potential people leaves you with opportunities to exploit in the future and exposure in the industry. Side bonus? You can learn a lot of special tricks.

4. Resources and mentorship 

Starting with a new venture is a challenge, not just establishment-wise but management-wise as well. If the entrepreneur does not have the required skills or knowledge or hires people not suited for their job profiles, it can lead to the startup’s downfall even before it sees the light of the day. 

Having incubator support helps you to learn from the mentors who have successfully established themselves. You meet industry leaders and attend workshops, learn from the mistakes of others and figure out new ways to go about the problems.

An alternative to this skill development is learning through online courses. Growth Central VC offers an excellent range of in-demand courses for new entrepreneurs to help them sharpen their skills and prepare for the industry. Whether it be learning the basics of a new language or just rebuilding your personality, Growth Central VC has everything you need to know before starting up. 

Why Are Digital Skills Important for Students Today? 

The undeniable fact of our present and future remains that technology has evolved largely and crept into all aspects of our lives. Institutions all around the world are trying to incorporate technology and digital tools to teach better and simpler. Businesses and services are increasingly leaning towards having a digital presence to boost their discoverability and establish themselves as an authoritative source of information and quality product.

Here’s a question. Who is executing, creating, and managing the digital platforms of millions of companies around the world?

It’s the millennials. It is definitely the millennials who are learning a new digital skill every month to run their organizations. And eventually, they will pass down the high-paced technological world to Gen Z to manage. 

What are digital skills? 

Digital skills are the ability to use a range of digital devices with ease, communicate effectively over digital platforms, and use networks to access and manage information. It extends to knowing to behave with technology in an appropriate manner.  

Why is it essential for students to have digital skills?

1.  Makes them stand out 

Since the world is turning to more digitally creative techniques for its operations, students proficient in digital skills are more likely to be preferred over others. Suppose they can work with unlimited data on Cloud apps, channel their creativity on designing platforms, create e-portfolios, and know the etiquettes of communicating over digital media. In that case, they are undoubtedly assets in the marketplace today. 

2. A stepping stone to financial independence 

Financial independence is a stone in the subconscious part of the brain of every student. They realize their parents’ financial stress for higher education, college, and accommodation. We will not believe it if you say you have never had the urge to take up a side hustle and relieve the pressure on your parents. 

Having digital skills like graphic designing, content creation and management, digital communication, coding, etc., are very useful when one is looking for internship jobs for freshers or summer jobs for teens because most start-ups outsource their digital services to freelancers. If a student wants to gain financial independence, a stepping stone is to sharpen their digital skills, intern, and earn.

3. Boosts creative thinking, reasoning and problem-solving

Digital platforms and tools make it easier to complete tasks. In a coronavirus-affected world, people across the globe adapted to their circumstances and yet continued their jobs with the help of digital tools. Zoom became the meeting platform, Padlet and Slack brought groups together, and the plethora of drive services overruled physical paper copies when student groups were scattered across the country or even the world. Projects and assignments, clubs, and societies all shifted their operations online, and in using these applications, they developed their own personalized way of creating, solving, and learning.

4. Digital skills are going to determine their employability
The shift to digital workspaces is most likely going to stay even after everything goes back to normal. It means that by the time the last of Gen Z and their future generations are ready to be a part of the workforce, company operations and services will have been conducted online for a few years now. Recruiters will look for candidates equipped and experienced in relevant digital skills and do not need to be trained once they join the workspace. Having digital skills is going to determine whether one is deemed eligible for a job or not. 

Final words
Gen Z was born with a mobile phone in their hands; they have grown up using the digital space and can navigate their way into the deepest of webs. It is not a challenge for them to learn the basics and advances of digital tools or skills. The only issue is whether they think it is worth the effort or not. Well, apart from the fact that anyone who can create animations is seen as ‘cool, think about the fact that the person can quickly get a flexible job as an animator instead of slugging at their desks from 9 to 5.

Digital is the way ahead for the world, and Gen Z is lucky to be born in an age of physical comfort. If they do not attend to the screaming need to be digitally skilled, they are on the path to unemployability and non-existence in the future.