It’s the digital age, and in the digital age, everything is on the internet. If you have a business, the internet is how your customers will find you. But the internet is also a two-way street, where you find customers.
But you’ll need a good internet presence, which means launching your own marketing campaign. The good news there is that digital marketing has made getting your name out there easier, cheaper and more effective than traditional media marketing.
If you’re looking for tips on how to get as many eyes as possible on your business, take a look at our guide.
Get on top of your social media
A very basic social media presence can be very beneficial to your business. More and more users have gotten into the habit of researching the brands they buy from, and they’re going to do that through social media. It’s also the place they trust most to get your information. If you have a premise, a means of contact, a website to direct them to, etc. they’re going to find it on your social media accounts.
If you sell products, your social media account can even be where you sell your products. All the major social media platforms are making some push into retail, and in the case of Instagram, this means features that allow customers to find and instantly buy products directly from the website. If you keep your Instagram updated with photos of your items, you can then tag those items and direct users straight to your site to buy them.
That’s the basic, but the best social media accounts get their audience from around the globe with quality content. Users are expecting a higher quality of content from their brands too. If you are used to posting one graphic of your sale, adding a caption of the details, and then posting it over Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you need to step that up.
The adaption of short-form video content has allowed a lot of people to get across a lot of information to a population with a shrinking attention span – and a lot of marketing ideas have come from it. You can show a day in your life, an anecdote of the job, how your products are made, how they’re used, reviews, and much more.
Make sure your website is superior
The state of your website, unfortunately, reflects the state of your business. An unprofessional-looking website is going to make customers assume that your business is unprofessional, at best. At worst they might think it’s a scam website, that won’t send them products once they’ve taken their money, etc.
Make sure nothing hinders the path from homepage to payment. Your customer needs to be able to clearly locate what they are looking for, with clear layouts, search engines and filters, then have no glitches blocking their way to the checkout. Online customers are very fickle and impatient, and they are not going to wait for a long loading screen or come back to see if a glitch is fixed.
On the point of payment, if you are looking at features to add to your site, you should add as many electronic funds transfer payment options as you can facilitate, be that deposits, debit and credit card transactions, or pay-by-phone options, etc.
Adding features to your site that might make your customer’s lives easier is a big plus. If we can do it on the internet, we’re not about to pick up a phone. So, FAQ’s that answer customer’s questions without calling you, booking forums to make reservations or appointments, and other features can make your website look more professional and therefore your business will too.
Understand your data
The one thing that your average business owner isn’t likely to have a more than a basic understanding of is the data that makes a successful marketing campaign. If you’re a small business owner, you’ve been on websites, you’ve browsed social media, you have seen from a consumer standpoint what the big companies are doing that has impressed you. But the data behind those decisions? If you haven’t already looked into it, chances are it’s lost on you.
That’s where real research is needed. A good marketing campaign relies on consumer data, and you can attract more customers with SEO data. One is analyzing the customers you have, and the other is analyzing you as a company. If you are going cross-eyed reading that, it’s time to get the books out.
What is useful about it is that there is no big secret. You can take courses from LinkedIn and Skillshare and other subscription-based classes to breakdown everything from affiliate marketing to keyword research.
To give you the basics, your SEO defines where on Google search results you arrive. If you are on the second page of a search result, you’re out of luck. No one is going to click on your website. You can improve your SEO result by making your website as informed as possible – and your work with keywords will help you out there too.