Startup Business Marketing: What to Get Right in the First 90 Days

Your website, not ads or social media, should be your first investment if you want ongoing visibility, credibility, and growth.

When you’re advising a team building their first marketing strategy, what’s the most common channel-selection mistake you see—and what would you tell them to do, instead.

The biggest mistake new business owners make is not creating the best website possible. When you consider that 61% of all advertising last year went to the internet, the importance of the website cannot be overstated. 

Your new website development needs to do two things: 

  1. Make your business appear to be one that a consumer will want to work with. That means showing your qualifications. If you are a home services business, a picture of the team is vitally important. People are going to be letting you into their homes so it’s important that the image not look like a bunch of guys who just got out of jail. 

  2. Generate leads. New business owners usually do a decent job of the first one if they hire an experienced agency or web designer. What they likely miss, however, is that most web designers know very little about SEO and with the recent importance of AI in search results they know even less. 

How has AI search changed the way you think about visibility and channel strategy? And do you think traditional SEO is still the right starting point for beginners, or has that shifted?

AI has been a game changer for SEO and today it is “search everywhere optimization” that matters as opposed to the legacy search engine optimization. An amazing 37% of all searches don’t happen on Google or the other search engines. Instead, consumers are searching on YouTube, TikTok, other social media platforms, and ChatGPT and its competitors. This has made SEO even more time-consuming, and more importantly, than it was previously.

I know it’s going to be difficult for a personally funded start up to fund an ongoing 6-month SEO campaign, but there are things you can do to get started, so your business at least gets on the playing field in search. 

First, invest in a directory listing service. This will not only build valuable backlinks to your site, but it will also help you get listed in the map packs on Google, Yahoo, BING, Apple, and others. 

Second, ask for reviews. This is free, or if you’ve built a database of customers already, you could purchase a reviews management service that will help you generate leads. Google wants to refer businesses that have positive and recent reviews. In the unlikely event that you have a poor review, it’s best to respond to it. 

Third, if you are a writer, add a blog to the website. This added content can be especially helpful in getting you into the answer engine optimization (AEO) that is atop most Google searches. Don’t ask ChatGPT to do your writing, as it is unlikely to rank. It’s OK to use ChatGPT for ideas, but it should never be the source for the entire content.  

Finally, since the SEO game has changed, use the online sites that are most likely to get you into the generative engine optimization (GEO) atop the Google searches. That means interacting and commenting on Reddit in the sub-Reddits that are pertinent to your industry. I’m also a huge fan of LinkedIn articles and Quora which is a Q&A site for getting into AI content. 

If a beginner marketer could only track one metric in their first 90 days, what would you tell them to focus on? And why?

Look at this as ultimate and interim KPIs. In most cases, your ultimate KPI is going to be sales, but there are steps along the way that will lead to those sales. These are the interim KPIs that your marketing team or agency is directly responsible for. 

The one metric that I’d deem to be singularly most important in the early days of a business is website traffic. In the early days for your business, you were not well known. The first step is getting consumers to know who you are. Traffic to the website is the best test of getting your name out there. 

About the Author

Bob Bentz is president of Purplegator Marketing Agency & Consultants—a marketing agency in Philadelphia. He is the author of three marketing books, including “Relevance Raises Response” (SECOND EDITION). Bob has been an adjunct professor for the past 11 years at West Virginia University and the University of Denver.