How Fast-Growth Startups Are Changing the Rules of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is undergoing a period of rapid change—and it’s influencing everything from which platforms companies choose to market with to the specific tactics they use to win over skeptical customers.

One noteworthy trend in our current digital marketing revolution? The fact that fast-growth startups are largely paving the way and bringing an emphasis on speed and agility. And this trend is often driven by strategic partnerships and AI.

Here’s a closer look at how fast-growth startups are changing the digital marketing game and what it means for your business.

1. Diving into data to deliver more personalized marketing

It should come as no surprise that many of the fastest-growing and most successful startups are doing so thanks to a heavy emphasis on data. 

As highlighted by the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, AI’s ability to analyze large quantities of consumer data, alongside predictive analytics and machine learning capabilities, gives marketers much deeper insights into who their customers are, what they want and where they spend their time.

This level of insight allows marketers to deliver better personalized digital marketing, and with results that follow that level of personalization. Research from McKinsey shows that this type of personalization can increase revenue by 15 percent while simultaneously cutting the cost of customer acquisition in half. Most notably, the companies with the fastest growth rates get 40 percent more revenue from personalization than slower-growth competitors.

Chances are, your business has a significant amount of customer data that it isn’t using. Even data that is collected specifically for market research often goes unused, resulting in duplicate research and customer insights that are never utilized. By investing in AI tools that help you dig deeper into your data and find actionable insights, you can deliver a level of personalization that will kickstart digital marketing growth.

2. Leveraging strategic partnerships over traditional marketing spend

One unique aspect I’ve seen with today’s fast-growth startups is that they often spend less on digital marketing than their peers, instead opting to use partnerships to reach customers in a more direct way—and at a lower cost.

For example, fintech startup Neobanc achieved an 800 percent growth rate within just five months of its launch. As just one example of the startup’s growth, it was able to achieve 100 inbound applications in the week it launched a new mortgage payment cashback feature without any marketing spend whatsoever.

The difference? Leveraging strategic partnerships through the founding team’s prior experiences at other startups. By joining the REACH program created by Second Century Ventures and backed by the National Association of Realtors, Neobanc is working to help over 1.5 million realtors create new revenue streams from rentals and leases.

These and other partnerships have proven critical in bringing in customers and prospects while keeping direct marketing costs at a minimum and giving the company more budget to focus on expanding its service offerings.

For other entrepreneurs, this highlights the importance of networking and building strong relationships with others in and out of your niche. Making sure your actions live up to your core values and maintaining contact with previous business partners, work associates and others can lead to surprisingly effective promotional strategies.

Data analytics is far from the only area where fast-growth startups are using AI to rewrite the rules of digital marketing. The fastest-growing startups are looking for myriad ways to incorporate AI beyond data analytics, in large part because this enables them to scale their marketing efforts even when they have a smaller team and budget.

For example, many startups use AI to dynamically adapt digital marketing content to achieve hyper-personalized targeting. As DesignRush reports, dynamic web content can increase visitor engagement by 40 percent, while predictive email campaigns powered by AI can double the engagement rate of a standard campaign.

AI also helps streamline a wide range of digital marketing tasks, whether that be fine-tuning an image or video, adjusting content for voice search or building a strategic content calendar. Real-life marketers are still needed to enact these strategies and lead out on human-focused marketing activities, but AI can dramatically increase their productivity. 

Regardless of the size of your marketing team, you should carefully consider which AI tools can prove most impactful for your digital marketing process, streamlining (and often automating) the minutiae while letting your team focus on the big picture. Don’t just adopt AI tools for the sake of adopting them. Consider which tools will contribute to your strategic goals.

4. Turning the startup mindset into digital marketing dominance

Today’s fast-growth startups are largely leveraging AI tools, combined with powerful partnerships, to reach their target audience in a more cost-effective and personalized manner. Regardless of your business’s size, niche or marketing budget, I believe these same principles can be applied to your own marketing strategy. 

By focusing on tools and partnerships that are aligned with your brand identity and audience, you can deliver a more memorable marketing experience that puts you on track for rapid growth in your own niche.

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