There are billions of customers in the world, and there are a large number of ways to promote a business.
Nowadays the Internet has made it possible to open a business with minimal cost. For example, to create your own online clothing store, you do not need to spend money on renting premises, consultants’ salaries and purchasing goods. You can purchase things upon order and invest only in advertising on the Web.
There will be never the right time to start something. So, let’s start to advertise your business now.
How to promote your business online?
There are many ways to promote your business. No matter which method you choose, you will achieve a certain result. The only important thing is constantly to make efforts and use the appropriate set of marketing techniques.
Below you will find a list of the best ways that will help you to get more customers. Let’s find you the best way to market your website.
NB! You can choose one channel/method, or several at once, for example, the Landing Page website, social networks and email campaign.
Promote your brand on social media
Other ways to advertise your business are social media. This is one of the most popular digital marketing tools for your business.
It is suitable for you if:
- You sell clothes, shoes, household goods, handmade jewelry, cosmetics, and so on.
- Your target audience spends time on social networks.
- There is enough information about goods and services to publish information posts.
- When choosing your product/service, a potential customer pays attention to the brand.
- Not ready to wait until six months to achieve the first results of the promotion.
- You do not have a large promotion budget.
In fact, the page on social networks will not be superfluous for any online business. If this is not a key channel of your promotion, then you can post links to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter on the site and regularly publish infrequent posts about company life or industry news.
This option is not suitable for large businesses with premium goods, the target audience of which will definitely not make spontaneous purchases through social networks.
Another thing is cosmetics, clothes, toys, textile products of the middle price category. Also, through social networks, the services of beauty masters, artists, artisans, and photographers are excellently sold.
Method Description
Promote your brand in any social media according to a single scheme:
Content plan development. Prepare topics and distribute publication dates one month in advance. Content may be duplicated. To do this, rely on competitors’ social networks, but do not copy them completely.
Content creation. The advantage of SMM is that this method gives scope for a wide variety of content: videos, texts, photos, pictures, podcasts. The main thing is that the content is consistent with the theme. You can hire an SMM ‑ specialist, copywriter, designer or videographer, or do it yourself. Also, you can use ready-made social media templates. They don’t cost much but help to present your business in a better light. All you need is to change texts on a template. Remember, it should be small and understandable to your audience.
The attraction of subscribers. Your content should be of interest to the target audience. For example, if you are selling tools for hairdressers, then on the page you should post tips on choosing such products, industry news, and useful life hacks. It is also necessary to set thematic hashtags and geolocation.
Social Media Favorites:
- Facebook. One of the most popular social sites in the world with business and entertainment content. Facebook provides a convenient service for advertisers, provides advanced statistics on advertising companies, is equipped with useful functions for working with targeted advertising. The main audience – solvent people aged 30-45 years, residents of large cities.
- Instagram. The platform contains mainly visual photo/video content with comments, which has the maximum number of views and responses. Instagram users are most loyal to branded accounts, willingly subscribe to business pages that provide the feed with unique, diverse content. The main audience is young active people aged 16-34 years.
- YouTube. Video hosting with social network features. It makes it possible to clearly demonstrate the product in video reviews, post videos with useful tips, lessons, expert interviews. The brand’s own YouTube channel is a great source of traffic. YouTube reaches the widest audience – from 12 to 64 years.
- Twitter. An independent communication channel, an online microblogging service that publishes the latest, relevant and urgent news. The main audience is young people aged 20-34.
Choose one or several social media depending on your target audience. For those who decided to pick several social media platforms, I can suggest using a digital marketing bundle. There are not only different social media banners, but also newsletter templates, mockups, fonts, icons, logos, etc.
Create landing page
A landing page is a one-page site that is used to sell goods and services. This is the most important and the best way to promote a new business.
It will suit you if:
- You have a small assortment (1-2 positions).
- To purchase your product/service, the client does not need to get to know your company closely.
- Your target audience is prone to impulsive one-click purchases.
- You are selling a seasonal product/service.
- You do not have the time, money or desire to work long hours with a multi-page website and groups in social networks.
I would say that a one-page site is ideal for selling one product or service. Moreover, it is effective for the implementation of both simple and inexpensive products, and for a complex, premium segment. For example, you only sell a portable speaker of a certain model or personal shopper services.
The advantage of this tool is that it does not require complex technical development and, with proper promotion, quickly leads to customers.
Landing Page is not suitable for online stores with a large assortment and for companies with an abundance of various services. This tool is also useless if, to stimulate a purchase, you need to arouse the confidence of the audience in the brand itself. For example, a company selling medical devices will need a site that contains detailed information about the company, services, and certificates.
Method Description
Not the only webmaster can create a landing page for you. You can do it yourself too. You can use any constructor (uKit, Wix, and others) or a ready-made website template. The second way is the most flexible and cheapest. For example, with ONE web development kit, you can create a website on any topic, have one year of free hosting, stock photos, graphics, and 24/7 online web support.
Join the MembershipThe effective landing should have the following parameters:
- There is one offer on the page.
- Text and graphic content are intended for one target audience. If your project has several, then it will take several different pages.
- At the bottom, there is always a call to action – and offer to buy a product or service.
- The text is divided into logically connected, small and visual blocks.
- After reading, the potential buyer has no questions and doubts.
- The purpose of the page is to quickly inform the buyer in the most accessible and selling form about why he should buy the presented product or order a service.
Create an online store
Landing Page is not suitable for online stores with a large assortment and for companies with an abundance of various services. If you already know that you need an online store, you need a suitable website template. The best platform for it is Shopify. Try to use one of Shopify themes. With it, you can create an online store or customize it to any niche.
Download Apparelix Shopify Theme
So, if you have another business, you don’t need to buy another website theme.
Create a blog with quality content
Write regularly interesting blog posts in your store. Blogging is a great way to promote your store. Creating a blog will help increase traffic by increasing interest from Google and will lead to increased credibility in the industry. And this will increase your visibility, and as a result, sales too.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the second way to market your website. It will help to attract attention to a brand through contact with the target audience. It is suitable for almost any online business.
It is suitable for you if:
- You need to establish direct communication with the audience, to increase brand loyalty.
- You are interested in resale (prompting the customer to purchase at least one more product/service along with the first purchase or immediately after it).
- You have a limited promotion budget.
- Your brand strategy involves a large number of discounts and promotions.
- You regularly or periodically conduct thematic events.
The advantage of email marketing is that it does not require large financial investments and you can deal with it yourself.
But newsletters cannot be the only promotion tool on the Web. This is just a great additional tool that stimulates sales, increases recognition and stimulates brand loyalty.
Method Description
A mailing list about a company, goods, and services, as well as promotions and news of your business sector, can solve different problems:
- Sales promotion, including through promotions and special offers.
- Increasing company loyalty.
- Increase brand awareness.
- Develop relationships with them using systems such as Get Response, Aweber, Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Do not try to sell something right away. Build first a trusting relationship and then focus on sales.
Hold contests and Giveaways
A great tool to engage your audience and increase the visibility of your business.
When conducting a contest, the best thing to use as a prize is to use the goods of your online store or the product that you produce. Especially good contests and various promotions work on social networks.
Сontextual advertising
Let’s not forget to promote business on Google too. Contextual advertising allows you to display your site in the top for search queries without using SEO promotion.
It is suitable for you if:
- It is necessary to bring traffic to the site as part of SEO promotion.
- You have a new site, which so far by default cannot rise to the top of search results by SEO-promotion.
- You urgently need the first clients for a speedy payback of the project.
- You sell seasonal goods or services.
- The target audience is looking for your product or service in search engines, and not in social networks.
- You do not have strict budget restrictions, and you are ready to make significant financial investments.
- Contextual advertising is well combined with SEO, making work on website promotion in search more effective.
Method Description
Thanks to a properly configured advertising campaign, your site appears in the first place with a note “Advertising”. The advantage of this digital marketing method for your business is that it gives results in just a few hours after the setup.
You do not need to wait a few months for the first customers to come to the site. Google Ads is the most popular service for setting up contextual advertising in the largest search engines. There you will find a step-by-step guide on setting up and running an advertising campaign. Also, you will find practical tips on how not to waste your budget on promotion and use the tool most effectively.
SEO
SEO optimization is a set of internal and external works for website promotion in search engines.
It is suitable for you if:
- You are ready to wait until six months to get the first results.
- The target audience comes for your product through the search.
- For a potential buyer, trust in the brand is important.
- You have a big budget for promotion.
- You are ready to combine SEO with contextual advertising or other methods of promotion to accelerate the work on bringing the site to the top.
Search engine promotion consists of several steps:
- Checking technical errors on the site.
- The formation of the semantic core – a set of words and phrases that characterize the activity of the site.
- Usability improvement.
- Link building – the number of active external links to a site hosted on third-party sites.
- Project analysis and content strategy development.
There are plenty of plugins for SEO-optimization. One of them is Yoast SEO. It has a free and premium version.
Use directories like Yahoo Local and Google Local
If you want to offer clients living nearby a brick or mortar, then you should enter your site in business directories such as Yahoo Local and Google Local.
Google Local is the best way to promote your business and to provide company information. The service allows you to display information on Google Maps such as the address of the company, hours of operation, etc. Just be sure to provide accurate information.
Conclusion
So, you have chosen the best way to market your website. The work did not end there. Control the intermediate results, draw conclusions and respond quickly to them.
If something goes wrong, does not bring results at all, then you need to make adjustments to the strategy.
However, a universal check of all promotion methods does not exist. For example, SEO gives the first results only after 3-6 months, and the quality of contextual advertising settings is immediately visible. Attracting real customers to the social network will also take time, and the effectiveness of the email distribution largely depends on the size of your contact database.
Regardless of what kind of marketing tools you use, promotion is always based on the right choice of the target audience.
Follow marketing news, promote your brand on social media, apply new advertising tools and pay attention to the audience’s reaction.
I wish you good luck with the promotion of your business. If you have more questions, feel free to ask them below in the comments.