Marketing your business in the modern-day means leaving behind most of what you know about traditional marketing and getting your business and your marketing spending and strategy where consumers are seeing it – on the internet. Understanding what drives your potential customers to your business and what converts them into paying customers is one piece of a puzzle, but knowing where and how to market your business online is the equivalent of first building the sides of the puzzle.
But how do you get started with the shift to online marketing and where is your marketing budget spend going to be the most effective? Today we look at 5 ways to market your business online and what you need to do to get started with each.
Make Sure You’re Listed, and Your Listings are Updated
The most rudimentary of these marketing methods don’t cost anything. Check your listing on the big local listing services and make sure all your relevant information is accurate and complete. This means you should list your operating hours accurately and list your physical store locations if you have them. If you don’t want to spend too long on this, then Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing are the three you should ensure you’re completely up to date on.
If the incorrect operating hours are listed, and someone shows up to your physical location or tries to call you outside of these hours with no answer, you’ll be sure that they will almost certainly not be back. The details of these listings and their accuracy should also be updated whenever you change your hours or extend them for holidays or sales.
Search Engine Optimisation Is Worth It
Understanding SEO (search engine optimization) and how it works can feel like trying to complete a maze in the dark, but it’s a service that is critical to your visibility online. The more contested your market is, the more you should know about SEO, and the more important it is that your website shows up high up in the rankings, especially if your business search terms are generic.
If you aren’t an expert, you should consider outsourcing to an SEO Perth company. Outsourcing to Perth Web Design means getting their experts with intimate knowledge of how it works and how to best apply their SEO services amongst other services that can be useful for businesses looking to increase their visibility and marketing presence online and with the big search engines. You Need to Get Social Now
Social media and maintaining a strong presence on social media will probably be one of your most crucial marketing methods when you take your marketing to the internet. It allows you not only to interact directly with customers, and get involved with the social media culture and influencers who can help you market your products, but it will also let you control the online narrative by responding and interacting with those who have experienced both good and bad service from your business.
Add a Blog to Your Website
Blogs have several important functions when you add them to your website. They’ll keep users coming back to your site to read your new blog entries, they’ll be indexed by search engines and increase the number of times your business website shows up in search engine results, and they’ll boost consumer confidence in your business because it will demonstrate that you know your market and products. If you make the blog personal and include ways for your customers to connect, you can also create a community around it. Adding to local online communities is another great way of getting your name out there.
Contribute to Your Local Online Communities
Imagine for a moment that you ran an internet service provider. Now consider a forum that has a large online presence of users talking about internet service providers. Imagine if you had a presence on this forum and could directly interact with users when they post about your service or can recommend options that you can provide to them when they are looking for internet connectivity solutions. Not only will these users appreciate that you take the time to assist them, but you’re building a connection and personal relationship with the users of the forum and it doesn’t even cost much – just some of your time.
On the modern internet, being seen is becoming tougher, and often, particularly with social media, organic reach isn’t enough anymore. You need to direct some of your market spendings into the arena of social marketing – both for buying ads and for getting your products into the hands of those that influence these platforms. The name of the internet marketing game is essentially making sure people see your company name and what it offers, and that means visibility, which these ideas are designed to increase.
Paid Advertising
Running paid search engine or social media ads is another best way to get your business in front of more potential customers. You can opt for Facebook advertising or create the best Google Ads scripts to reach your target audience with the right message at the right time. It will not only increase conversion rate but business credibility in the market as well.