If you are starting a business, marketing online can help expand your customer base. Here are tips on building a strategy for marketing online.
If you’re just starting a business, how will you attract new customers?
The answer is simple—you need to go online. Digital marketing is one of the best ways to grow your company, which means you need a strategy for marketing in the online space.
With search engines, social media, and SEO, it can all be confusing—what should you do first?
Don’t worry, it’s easier than you may think. Keep reading to learn eight top tips to build an online marketing strategy that will work for your business.
- Your Strategy for Marketing Should Identify Your Target Audience
Your digital marketing strategy should fit into your overarching marketing strategy—this needs to include your target audience!
Before you can develop an online strategy, you need to know who it’s targeted at. Your online customers may be different than those who shop in-person at your store, so make sure you understand both groups.
Try to develop an ideal customer persona, working out key demographics, location, occupation, and hobbies. You can then use this data to tailor your marketing strategy accordingly.
Google Analytics can help with this data, or you may want to survey your customers.
- Social Media Marketing Is King
Your strategy has to include social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 37% of customers use social media to find inspiration for their next purchase, so if you’re not on social platforms, you’re missing out.
Use your social media accounts to increase attention to your brand and engage with your audience. You can also run targeted social media ad campaigns to let potential customers know about your product—you select the demographics and budget, making it an easy way to grow.
Share images and videos of your products, let customers know about special offers or share news and updates from the company—there’s plenty you can do with your social media accounts.
- Build an SEO-Optimized Website
To get noticed online, you need a website that was built with SEO in mind. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a series of best practice actions that help your website rank highly on Google.
There are many benefits of SEO, but most importantly, it is the most important way of getting organic traffic.
You can also use your website to collect data through an email sign-up form. Why not ask potential customers if they’d like to schedule a call to learn more about how your services can help them?
Then, you can use the BANT sales process to work out if they are a worthwhile lead to pursue.
- Start a Blog
You may want to include a blog on your website. Posting regular blog posts helps to establish your company as a leader in its field.
It’s also helpful for SEO, as each new post has the potential to draw new readers into your site. Blogs should be informative, well-written, and answer questions that your readers want to know.
Blogs should also be written for SEO, including using proper headings, photo descriptions, and a relevant call to action at the end. You’ll also need a mobile-friendly website to ensure your blogs are easy to read on desktops, phones, and tablets.
- Collaborate with Influencers
For many companies, working with social media influencers is a big part of their digital marketing plan.
Influencers have thousands, even millions, of loyal followers. When they recommend a product or activity, it leads to sales, as their followers check out the company.
You may want to pay influencers to promote your product to increase your reach—just make sure to work with influencers who have an audience that matches your own.
- Use Google Ads
Most businesses use Google Ads to get noticed online. You can create ad campaigns to show your business at the top of Google when customers search for certain keywords.
Most online ad programs, like Google Ads, are PPC—pay per click. This means you can set a certain budget and you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad.
This helps you spend your marketing budget more effectively and drives interested consumers to your website.
- Understand the Importance of Linking
As part of your SEO strategy, you need to use linking to your advantage. This includes internal linking, which means linking pages from your own website.
Internal linking encourages readers to stay on your site longer and helps with the navigation process when Google crawls your site for indexing.
You’ll also want to work on backlinks, which are links back to your website from external sites. Backlinks are a signal to Google that your site is high-quality and worth referencing, which helps your SEO.
You want backlinks from premium websites, so you can offer to write guest posts as a way to increase your backlinks and hopefully get noticed by a wider audience.
- Make Use of Email Marketing
Digital marketers know the importance of email marketing. It allows you to build up a database of customers, target them with sales and special offers, and send them news about your latest products.
Marketers can also create sales funnels to turn warm leads into buying customers, so take the time to learn how it can work for your business.
Grow Your Business Online Today
To succeed, every business needs a strategy for marketing. Using the suggestions above, start developing an online marketing plan that will work well for your business.
Your customers are online, so you need to be there with them. If done well, online marketing will increase your sales and help your business grow!
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