This Thursday STARTER Basic teams learned how to reach their customer and how to sell their services & products on digital media. The workshop was lead by Taavi Raidma, who is a google's certified trainer and has previously held many international trainings. He has been a mentor for many STARTER programme teams before and has worked with a lot of startup accelerators (Buildit Accelerator, Startup Wise Guys, Ignite100, Spark10) as a digital marketing specialist.

When most of the marketing has moved online, a modern company needs to be aware of all the opportunities and dangers of the online marketing world. The biggest benefit of online marketing is the ability to see the whole consumer journey, analyze even the smallest bits of information and give meaning to the information. Taavi emphasized that all the information available needs to be used correctly to maximize the reach of marketing and the profit received.

Taavi introduced different online marketing strategies, from brand awareness and price quotes to conversion and how to make the most of them. But before starting with the specifics, the teams had to construct their ideal consumer persona. The personas were very different and exciting, making all the participants think of their friends that would fit them.

From there on Taavi touched all points of building a strong marketing strategy. After introducing the basics of the strategy he concentrated more on specific opportunities. He introduced SEO optimization and why it is important to keep your website in line. Pleasant email advertising was covered and taken apart bit by bit and the opportunities of Google AdWords, FB ads, and Google analytics were also introduced to the teams.

But what happens after you carry out the marketing campaign? Taavi had answers for that as well. He emphasized the importance of profit return on advertising cost and how to see different warning signs from the available analytics. The specifics of bounce rates, budgeting, and spends and much more were introduced in great detail and made the teams see the analytical part of marketing that most of them hadn't thought of.

To finish off his workshop Taavi introduced several different free online marketing tools for the teams, that they could get straight into the matter when the ideas were still fresh. The teams were highly motivated to start forming their online marketing strategies and the flow of different utilizing ideas filled the room with a pleasant chatter when the workshop came to an end.

STARTER Basic is funded by European Social Fund