Marketing your business online can be a challenge. There are so many ways to market yourself, and there is a digital marketing company for every method. Today, we’re going to look at 8 effective tips to help market your business online. These tips are holistic and don’t delve too deeply into how to run the marketing all by yourself but give you a great overview on how to get started, and how to get results. So, without further a-do, let’s get into it.
1. Make your goal as clear as possible
So, you’re looking to market yourself online, you’ve heard it’s a great idea, and you want to take advantage of all the benefits Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other online platforms have to offer. It’s an exciting concept and it can be tempting to just want to jump in. One thing to keep in mind however that is you will benefit from actually taking a step back and just figuring out the context of your online marketing campaign. Do you want to do this on your own? Or do you want to get a digital marketing company involved? Once you have that answer down, your next move is to figure out what you want from this. Do you want more people contacting you? Do you want more people engaging with content you produce? Do you want more people buying your products? Or do you want to increase your website traffic? Whatever your goal may be, whether or not you seek professional help, identifying this goal will dictate what digital marketing method you choose, and the platform you use.
2. Identify your audience
This step is as essential as the last and will help you get the best results with your chosen campaign. Having a good idea of the people that will typically be interested in your business helps with how you target them online. These aspects include the age group, the shared interests, the location of them, and also the platform that you think that will give you the best exposure. Both Google and Facebook are the most sophisticated digital marketing tools available to getting this data and targeting your chosen audience. Having this in mind allows you to look at how people engage with your business online, and how best to optimise your campaign to target that audience better and better every month.
3. Getting your website online
As simple as it sounds, just being online is going to be a great first step. Having a website is like having a digital billboard, or a digital business card. This digital billboard is going to do more than just look nice, it’s going to entice people to engage. Engagement is going to be a great marker of how effective your content is. But before you worry too much about performance, and how optimal your website is, get it live with the basics so that you can be realistic about the changes you need to make.
4. Learning how to optimise
Now that your site is live, now that you have some website traffic flowing and now that you are doing what you do and showing that online, we can now begin the optimisation process. With optimisation, it is important you use all the tools at your disposal. If you are running some SEO (search engine optimisation) getting some analytics from Google Analytics will show you some of the things you are doing right, and some of the things you need to improve upon. The same for Google Ads, going into your overviews and seeing what works well and what doesn’t by testing different ads, ad groups, and keywords against each other. Finally, go back to your website and make sure you are doing all you can to improve your CRO (conversion rate optimisation).
5. Get social
Now that you are marketing yourself effectively online, and have your relationship working with Google, it is time to start developing a community through social media. This is a great way to not only be easily reachable, but it gets your brand exposed in a familiar setting. Facebook and Instagram have over 3 billion users using their platforms worldwide. In Australia alone, there are 16 million users on Facebook, over 10 million on Instagram, and over 1 million on Tik Tok. This takes up the majority of the population and is something that has digital marketing tools available for you too. In a nutshell, you can be very passive with your social profiles and post as you need, and update as you need, or you can aggressively market on socials to maximise all opportunities across multiple platforms. If you have the time, money or desire, this can be a very worthwhile boost to your business if you’re looking to create community around your business.
6. Get Blogging
So, your website is up, your socials are rocking, and you’re doing a little bit of advertising through Google. Things are looking up, and you’re improving month on month. This is a great opportunity to begin writing about why you started this venture in the first place; it’s time to express your brand’s voice, and your identity through your blog on your website. Having this content on your site is going to assist in your SEO rankings, pushing you way up Google’s SERPs, and you will also be reminding yourself about all the good things your business stands for. Creating listicles, and writing about stories that inspired the business will not only bring you joy, but will also help create the foundation of content for socials. Blogging has more than just one function and it’s important to keep it up.
7. Build consumer trust
You guessed it; it’s review time. One of the most important factors about being on Google is that anyone can say anything they want about you, so long as they have a Google account. Providing great customer experiences in person, and online, will help ensure a 5-star review on Google. Getting lots of these rated highly will help people to decide if they will engage with your business. Even if your branding, your name or any other part of your business doesn’t resonate with a potential customer, you can bet that if you have a bunch of great reviews, they’ll think twice before writing you off as an option.
8. Give a little to get a little
Lastly, making some offerings, or producing fun content, or doing something that doesn’t need to be reciprocated is going to do you wonders for your brand awareness. Not everything has to be done to get a conversion, sometimes we can go back to our roots, and do things for other people without needing to get something in return. Creating something or offering something small online can be a really simple way to at least allow people to create a positive association with your business. Doing so, will make it likely that people will want to engage with you again. It makes it likely that people will pay for something down the track, and it makes it very likely that you will feel good about yourself for having done something nice.
