The challenges in digital marketing application in the Dutch startup sector

The technological advances made in the digital environment have not only transformed the ways individuals interact with another but has also greatly impacted the practice of marketing. Due to the rise of social media platforms, various new means of communication and strategic marketing in the virtual environment, digital marketing has become one of the most profound tools for businesses to enhance their visibility, brand awareness and subsequently drive growth in revenue. Therefore, smaller and young enterprises such as startups, which tend to have limited financial and human capital recourses harness these newly arisen opportunities in order to grow faster, stronger, and even compete with more well-established enterprises across all industries. However, uncertainty in decision-making in regard to strategic digital communication, scarce resources in time and financial capital, in addition to the limited human capital working on communications and marketing in a startup context, constitute towards a loosely-tied digital marketing strategy and insufficient emphasis on communication and marketing efforts in small enterprises. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine the characteristics and challenges of the Dutch startup sectors when applying digital marketing strategies. This research consists of theoretical and empirical parts of the study. Firstly, the academic literature and the theoretical framework explores digital marketing, various digital marketing tools, and their strategic implementation in practice. Secondly, the empirical part of the research consists of 11 interviews which have been conducted with representative experts from the Dutch startup sector in order to analyze and shed some light on challenges that the respective startups in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Eindhoven encounter while conducting digital marketing in their practice. The interview questions have been based on the academic literature and are divided into three separate, yet correlated themes, namely, digital marketing tools, digital marketing strategies, and the challenges in the aforementioned digital marketing tools and digital marketing strategy application. The findings of the study detail the fundamental nature of digital marketing and its fluidity which is caused by the ever-changing and rapid-paced digital environment. Furthermore, lack in decision-making and necessary technological and practical skills which are required for the creation and execution of digital marketing and its strategies are seen as obstacles in the startup context. Subsequently, deficiency in human and financial resources, pose challenges for younger or smaller startups which do not necessarily have enough financial resources to employ experienced and skillful professionals.