How to Smartly Promote Your Business Online?

How to Smartly Promote Your Business Online?

When starting a new business, the first thing that you plan is what product or service you are offering your clients. And immediately after that, you need to plan out how you are going to promote your product or service to make your potential customers aware of your brand.

In the early days, businesses used to hire salesmen who would go door-to-door to promote their products or services. That was a good way to market newer local businesses around the town. From there, if the business became successful, they would increase the scale of their marketing and invest in newspaper and TV advertisements.

Now though, with the advent and increase in the use of the internet through smartphones, people find the businesses for the product and services they want from search engines like Google. It also provides businesses a larger platform to market. Now, even local businesses can promote themselves to a worldwide audience.

However, marketing your business online is not as easy as it seems. Sure, it may have been easier have you started your business a decade or two ago. But now there is a lot of competition and Google makes sure that only the best stays on top, not for long though.

So, in today’s blog, we are going to discuss how you can promote your business online with smart digital marketing practices.

1. Create your brand’s Google Business profile

Your potential customers are more likely to search for your product or service on the Internet rather than in the real world. So, you need to make sure that your business is present in the virtual arena as well.

Create your Google Business profile for free. Enter all your details, like contact number, location, working hours, and images of your physical store or office. This will help to build trust among your consumers.

If you receive any reviews on your Google Business profiles, then be sure to respond to them appropriately as it will encourage more consumers to start trusting in your business increasing your business’s credibility.

Businesses that keep their business profile incomplete can be perceived negatively by the consumers. Hence, you must ensure that your business profile on Google is immaculately created and that you stay active enough to respond to any important review posted on your profile.

2. Create an interactive website

This is an important investment that you should make to promote and grow your business online. Your website is like your digital foundation, space where all your promotions and marketing tactics will lead to.

Your potential consumers may see your Google Business profile however they may still want to visit your website to know more about your brand and business.

A website works as a virtual home to your business where all your consumers can visit. Moreover, it can help you grow your business online by allowing your consumers to buy directly from your website without visiting the store. This means that you can cater to a larger audience across the world.

You may also later use Google’s paid advertising to promote your website on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) where your website ad can appear higher than other websites.

3. Optimize your content on website and webpages

Your website will only be seen by your clients and customers if and when it ranks higher in the SERP. However, only the websites that Google thinks are genuine and most relevant to the search query are organically on top of the result page.

It is not easy to rank higher on the search engine result page, especially when you are a relatively new business. You will have to continuously build your content to suit your customers’ needs. This practice, where you align your website’s content with the popular search terms of your industry to increase your website’s ranking on Google is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

With the changes in Google’s algorithms over the years, it is more about consumer optimization than search engine optimization. You constantly need to create and curate content based on what your consumer’s needs are. The popular search terms that they input are called keywords that you can include in the relevant content of your website.

Over a period of time with constant creation and modifications in the content of your website, more users will notice it. If your content is informative enough with good value, other people may share it as well. This will increase your reputation on Google’s list and so, your webpage will rank higher.

The best way to make sure that Google’s algorithm notices your website is to run a blog that provides meaningful information to your consumers. This information may not be only about your products and services but also about important news and information related to your industry.

Customers always want to know more about the industry before buying the product and if you can give them genuinely valuable information then they will share it more. In fact, other businesses from your field may also share the information from your blog. And this interaction will increase your rank steadily.

4. List your business on listing portals

It may take a lot of time to rank on the first page of Google SERP, so then how do you make sure that your consumers find you with ease? You can do it by listing your business on listing portals like Justdial, Indiamart, and Yellow Pages.

These listing websites already have a bigger reputation from where your business can reap benefits. Create a profile on these websites so when your potential customers search for the product or service you offer, these websites can share your details with them.

These websites rank comparatively higher than other websites and this means that when your business is listed on these websites, the chances of users or customers seeing your profile increase substantially. Many of these listing portals are free, for others, you may have to pay a yearly fee.

5. Create a strong social media presence

Having a social media account for a business that wants to grow online is almost mandatory. When more than three-quarters of your potential consumers are on different social media platforms, it makes little sense for you to not leverage its power for your business’s benefit.

Social media platforms are a great place to interact with your consumers and spread brand awareness. This process is known as social media marketing. The key here is to gain followers with value-added content (text, images, and videos) and encouraging them to interact with your brand.

As user engagement increases with your business, the brand awareness of your business will also go up. Once people start trusting your brand on social media, they will start to search for you on other places on the Internet as well which will lead them to your website.

Social media is a powerful tool for business for brand awareness, lead generation, increasing consumer engagement, and growing your brand audience. As a marketer, you need to make sure that you keep the conversation flowing between your brand and your consumers.

If you see someone tagging your brand in their post, be sure to check it out and repost the relevant posts, respond to as many comments and DMs as possible, encourage positive user-generated content, and don’t forget to like and share it with your followers. This will increase your brand reputation on social media allowing more user engagement and brand awareness which will eventually lead to increased sales and conversions.

6. Invest in advertisements

As we mentioned earlier, getting your page ranked in the top 5 results on Google SERP can take a lot of time. However, if you want to display your page on the top in a shorter time then you can run a paid advertisement on Google.

Google allows businesses to advertise on the search engine result page. These advertisements are known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. As the name suggests, you have to pay for every click your advertisement gets from the visitors.

When you run a paid advertisement on Google, your webpage is positioned higher than other websites that have reached there organically. You will have to use the Google Ads tool to manage your advertisements on Google.

Conclusion

The Internet has now become a virtual counterpart of our real world. If you are running a physical business, it is vital that you also have a strong presence in the virtual world to reach your consumers faster, easily interact with them, and improve sales.

With the right approach and dedicated marketing, you can successfully promote your business online too. Here is a summary of what we discussed above:

·         Create your brand’s Google Business profile

·         Create an interactive website

·         Optimize your content on website and webpages

·         List your business on listing portals

·         Create a strong social media presence

·         Invest in advertisements

These few steps when done correctly and with enough time and patience (especially for the SEO!) will give you positive results and increase your business metrics for the better.

You can also consider hiring a digital marketing firm to take care of your online presence on different platforms like social media, search engines, and emailing.

The marketing experts will not only increase your reach with digital marketing but also improve your brand’s overall online performance with their advanced tools and tested techniques. Moreover, it will also help you focus more on your business itself. You can start working with them for free over a trial period, after which you will have to buy a monthly or yearly subscription.

What challenges did you face while starting your business’s online journey? Do share your experiences with us in the comments section below.