It’s practically impossible to market a business without going online, so building your internet presence is a must. Here are some of the best options for companies looking to increase their following online.
While there are plenty of brick and mortar stores still thriving, there can be no denying that the main place we do business nowadays is online. Since the early days of the internet, companies have been buying, selling and promoting themselves using websites and social media, often to great effect.
Business has been thriving online for years, with the ecommerce market being worth approximately $3.64 trillion, and it is still in a period of growth. From 2023 to 2027, global ecommerce is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 11.34 percent.
Even businesses that don’t sell online can still use the internet to market themselves. Tools like social media, video sharing sites and analytics platforms can all be used to improve marketing, making more people aware of a business and bringing in more customers.
It’s clear that businesses that want to succeed need to have an online presence, but how can you build one up? Here are some of the best ways to do so.
Invest in SEO
Whether you want your customers to visit your small-town bakery or enable them to play poker tournaments online, you’re going to need to let them know you exist. The best way to achieve this is with a website, but no site is useful unless your audience can find it.
This is where search-engine optimisation (SEO) comes in. Put simply, it is the art of making your website more likely to appear in search engine results whenever someone searches for a product or service you provide.
For example, if you are a pizza restaurant in Birmingham you will want to appear in search results whenever someone types in “pizza Birmingham”. You will also want to appear when they use similar but different terms, such as “takeaway” or “Italian”.
In order to appear for those searches, the words that are being searched need to appear on your website. It’s not enough to just list them either; they need to occur naturally on your site, otherwise search engines could penalise you.
There’s a lot more to SEO, but these are the basics. Research the keywords your audience are searching for so you know what to put on your site, and make sure you use them naturally rather than stuffing them in.
Use social media
More than half of the world is on one or more social media sites, so it would be silly not to use them to market your business. However, this can be tricky depending on what site you use.
The basic way to use social media for marketing is to post regularly about engaging topics your audience will find interesting. However, you need to strike a delicate balance: your posts need to be relevant to your business, but not too focused on sales.
People won’t follow you if all you are doing is aggressively trying to get them to buy your products or services. Instead, think about what you can offer that might be useful, interesting or funny to them.
For example, if you sell a food product, maybe you could post about recipes that feature that product. That way you are giving your audience new meals to try, while also marketing your product in a way that isn’t too obvious.
Measure and test everything
Tools like Google Analytics can be extremely useful for building your online presence, as they let you know what is working and what isn’t. This means you don’t need to guess whether or not you’re posting the right content on your website or social media pages.
Analytics tools show you the traffic that is coming to your website, how long people are spending on each page, how many pages they are visiting and more. You can use this to measure the success of blogs, for example, looking at which ones are getting the most traffic to work out what your audience is most interested in.
Social networks generally also have their own analytics tools as well, which can be even more useful. For example, Facebook’s Page Insights tool shows you details about the people who follow your Facebook page, including demographic information.
This means you can learn the age range and gender balance of your audience, and tailor your content to match their interests. This will allow you to build up your online presence much more effectively.
Creating a solid online presence isn’t always easy, but with hard work these tactics have a good chance of paying off. If your business is struggling to attract customers, a solid online presence is a great way of ensuring your success and boosting business growth efficently.
