Launching a business requires a tremendous amount of hard work, blood, sweat and often tears. You will have spent hours finely tuning your brand and commercial identity to create an image that represents your ethos and the products and services that you provide; but how do you get the attention for your online business that it deserves?
1. Analyse the competition
This may feel a little sneaky, but rest assured, your competition will be keeping an eye on your business too! Take time to understand what activities your competitors are undertaking to attract customers and clients. Are they running a promotion? Do they have a particularly active social media presence? Or, are they hosting events and being physically more visible?
From the comfort of your office chair, you can gain valuable insights into how their business is faring. Check out online reviews to see where they are failing and where they are succeeding. By analysing what your competitors are doing,you will be able to develop a strategy to help your business grow.
2. Know your customers
For you to attract customers to your website, you need to know who they are. You may already have a fair understanding of who they are in terms of gender, age and location, and previous purchase history. Increase your knowledge by encouraging customers to provide you with additional information such as their likes and interests. This data can be collated from a form that they fill in during checkout to create an account.
The key to increasing market share is by developing meaningful customer relationships. Your aim should be to establish a long-lasting customer lifecycle and loyalty. With knowledge comes power, if you act upon it!
Once you know who your customers are, you can target them on platforms which they frequent. For example, older people are more likely to use Facebook rather than Instagram. This way you are putting your business in front of them in a situation that they are already comfortable and familiar with.
3. Update your website
Merely having a website is not enough to increase your business’s visibility and give you a competitive edge. Everything that is on your site needs to be geared towards helping your business reach its full potential. It needs to be technically optimised to rank highly in search engine results pages and populated with content that will appeal to your target audience. Digital marketing is a multi-tiered approach to increasing visibility and incorporates strategies to drive the relevant audience to the website through organic search, pay-per-click or social media.
To develop the relationship with your visitors, you need to provide them with shareable content that inspires, excites and has clear calls to action. To boost your ranking, you need to have great content. Your content needs to:
Once you have had some experiences with promoting your brand, you will be able to see what appeals to your customers and what needs further attention. The great thing about marketing your business online is that you are able to respond to emerging trends and patterns swiftly and take full advantage of the opportunities that arise.