Digital marketing has evolved rapidly over the last two decades. It’s now impossible to run a successful business without doing some marketing online. Here are just 8 ways in which you can promote you business on the web.
Start by building a website
Building a company website should be every business’s first priority. A website is your shopfront to the digital world and is where you’ll generate most new customers – almost every other form of digital marketing is simply a way of leading customers to your website.
There are lots of factors that go into creating a successful website from a striking homepage to easy navigation. You can create your own website using free website builders like WordPress – you don’t need any coding know-how to do this. For a more elaborate and bespoke website, you could alternatively hire a professional company such as Svitla Systems custom web development company to build your site. Both have their advantages – you’ll save money with a free website builder, but could have more freedom when it comes to design when choosing a professional company.
Consider search engine optimization
Having a website is no use if people can’t easily stumble across it. The most common way in which people stumble across websites is through search engines like Google and Bing. SEO (search engine optimisation) is a means of improving your rankings on search engines when certain keywords are entered. It’s possible to do your own keyword research and incorporate these words into your site, but you could be better off using an SEO company who have a more thorough understanding of keywords and the general field. Keywords aren’t the only thing that will boost your rankings – having a strong presence can help, which all the following marketing methods can help to achieve.
Reach out to new clients with social media
Social media is another great medium for finding new customers. By creating engaging content on these platforms, you can lure in new customers and then direct them to your website.
There are lots of different social media mediums, all of which can be worth getting involved in, although certain social media channels may deserve more focus depending on the nature of your business. Local businesses can thrive using Facebook, whilst global businesses can benefit more from Twitter. LinkedIn can be great for marketing to other businesses, whilst Instagram is better suited for marketing to general consumers. There are then mediums like YouTube, which can be used for creating video content.
The key to generate leads through social media is to make it fun and engaging. Constant promotional content won’t get people interested – ideally your social media should be 20% promotional, 80% non-promotional. This could include using humours or offer advice or simply sharing facts and world news related to your niche. Images, videos, creative hashtags, memes, emojis, infographics and polls can all help to make your posts more varied and engaging. The likes of Facebook and Twitter can allow you to pay to promote posts to extend their range beyond your existing followers to strangers.
Build trust with online reviews
Many customers look for signs of credibility before committing to a company. Online reviews on sites like Trip Advisor and TrustPilot are the best way of building this trust. You can help to build positive reviews by encouraging all happy customers to leave a review on these platforms. If you receive negative reviews, try to reply to these if possible as this can give you a chance to publicly apologize and explain yourself, which could help your reputation.
Get other people to promote you through blogs and social media
You can expand your online presence further with third-party endorsements. This could involve getting a blog to write a promotional post on your company, getting a social media influencer to shout about you or encouraging a fellow company owner to endorse your work. Often this involves doing something in return – you may throw some money their way, or promote them in turn. The more people you encourage to promote you, the greater your web presence. This can be a great organic way of attracting clients much like word of mouth in person.
Try email marketing
Another way of promoting your company online could be to use email marketing. This is most effective at encouraging return customers as it involved sending emails to people that are already on your mailing list. Like any form of digital marketing, there’s an art to email marketing – your emails headers firstly need to grab people’s attention and the content needs to be engaging. Email marketing is mostly used for letting people know of updates and new promotions that you’re offering.
Create PPC ads
PPC ads are what most people think of when they hear ‘digital marketing’. These are the adverts that you find all over the internet. PPC stands for ‘pay-per-click’ – you usually pay an ad to run for certain amount of clicks before it is taken down. There are picture ads that you’ll find on most sites and there are text ads which you’ll find displayed at the top of search engine results. You can hire a professional PPC company such as Click Consult to design a picture ad or run a text ad marketing campaign on Ad words.
Use video advertising
Video advertising is another way of promoting your business. Before the internet, the only form of this was TV advertising, but the internet has made this exciting form of advertising for accessible for the average person. Video advertising include starting a channel on YouTube from which you create videos with your own camera and mic, or it could involve hiring a professional video production company to create content. This could be live action footage or an animation depending on what you feel is best for you. Video advertising is thought to be the future of digital marketing with a huge growing interest in the field.
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