A question many small business owners, or those who are just starting out with their business often ask. The answer varies depending on what sort of budget you have to play with, but there are answers out there!
We will start with the basics…
Making sure you have a well structured and up to date website is the first and most important thing you need to do. Without a good website there is no way people are going to even look at your product or consider your brand.
It needs to be user friendly and easy to navigate around, otherwise your audience will not waste their time trying to figure out how to work your website when they can just go to another site.
Your website needs to be appealing as well, making sure the main points of what you sell or offer is clear. Then having an ‘about us’ page is always helpful, it allows your audience to get to know your brand.
Online marketing can be very challenging, you need highly technical knowledge in order to manage and maintain your online presence. Proper marketing can take lots of time and money.
Listed below are tools you can use which will help market your online business:
Blogging:
A good way to increase brand awareness is to start blogging about it. However, to write a good blog it needs passion, dedication and an inherent understanding of the subject. You also need to be able to connect with your audience whilst delivering great value and key information.
Once you have got your audience’s attention they will begin to find real quality in the content you share and your following will build up over time. Nothing is a quick fix.
Video Tutorials:
You can use Youtube as a platform for posting tutorials, or videos detailing how to either use your product or explain in detail how your service works. This means that you will be building brand awareness with the more views and shares you get.
It is always helpful, especially for new clients, to be able to get to see the product or service in action before they decide to invest any time or money.
By using videos, they can physically see what you are talking about thus giving them a better understanding. Sometimes, it is a more interesting way to keep clients engaged rather than just sending out written content all the time.
Email Marketing:
This is a good way to reach out to a number of people at once. By creating engaging content and using things like infographics, you are more likely to keep the reader engaged. The more people you can keep engaged the more brand awareness will spread, thus building up your client list.
Social Media:
In order to fully utilise social media marketing, you need to have a deep and in depth understanding of the mechanics of human behaviour. You also need to understand online marketing itself to see any traction.
To get the most out of using social media you might have to invest a fair amount of money to achieve the right visibility. But investing your money the right way, can in fact reward you with many positives further down the line.
Search Engine Optimisation:
Through SEO you can market virtually any product or service. It is one of the most inexpensive ways to market your online business. In its simplest form, SEO is merely anything done to improve the ranking of a website on search engine results pages.
The goal for literally all and any business is to increase their website visibility or traffic and ranking for targeted search terms or phrases on search engines. This means that your website will work it’s way up to the front page.
BUT…this does not happen overnight.
Every aspect that has been mentioned above will not increase your client list within the first week. Nor will it bring more traffic or get your website on the front page of Google.
It takes around seven days just for Google to track your website so it can build a report to show you how many clicks, views and subscriptions you’re getting.
Like all processes, it takes time and commitment. In order to grow you need to start small. With the right help and support around your online business you will have no problem getting those rankings up!
Here at Universal Web Design we can be the solution to all your web and marketing needs. With our vast range of products, we cover every aspect so you don’t have to worry. To find out more about how we can help call us on 01206 588000. Alternatively you can drop us a message via our website.