The internet has been nothing short of a miracle for small businesses and entrepreneurs. However, many business owners are clueless about using the internet to their advantage. Here are eight effective ways to grow your business online to use the internet.
Host an Official Blog
Content marketing has been all the rage and for all the right reasons. Whether you’re in it for increased traffic, higher conversion rates, or just better relationships with your customers, content marketing is the answer to growing your business on the internet. A simple blog design targeting niche keywords can build brand awareness and bring in new clients and sales.
With a blog, your sole focus should be on providing high-quality, valuable information about your niche to establish credibility for your business in the space. All of this information needs to be delivered in a way that keeps the audience glued to your page. A few basic guidelines to achieving this are avoiding text blocks, using heads and subheaders, keeping the language easy to understand, etc.
Another important aspect of gaining credibility with your blog is to stay factually correct. Base your articles on hard evidence that you can link back to credible sources. Since it is so easy to circulate information on the internet, fake information is tossed around frequently. Therefore, it is pertinent that your audience sees you as a legitimate source of information.
Increase Sales With Upselling
One of the most interesting marketing strategies on the internet is to follow up with current customers and develop every customer’s lifetime value. Upsell to those who have already purchased from you. Here are a few ways you can achieve that:
- Send loyalty coupons digitally, which they can use on their next purchase.
- Send them offers of products that are in some way related to their current purchase.
- On the “Thank You” page, show them offers related products after purchasing.
Stay Active on Socials and Integrate Them Wisely.
The most beautiful thing about social media for business is free. You can easily put your business in front of thousands of consumers for free. However, those thousand need to engage with your business just because it’s present on socials. You have to become a part of the original premise that social media works on: social.
- Add daily posts to gain attention from your target audience on social media.
- Use images and videos without fail because these engage users better than text-based posts on social media. From a production perspective, they aren’t much of a hassle too. Online video editors come with pre-made templates so you can quickly create your offer posts or info posts for the socials.
- Being active does not just mean posting. It also means engaging with the community by retweeting accounts on Twitter, sharing useful blogs or websites, and commenting on other posts, all the while keeping it grounded in your niche.
 You could also establish long-term and personal relationships with thought leaders and other business owners in your niche. These relationships can be mutually beneficial and drive more business.
Use Video Marketing
Content marketing is no longer limited to just blog posts. Videos are the most effective way to reach an audience and keep them engaged. Start with the equipment you already have and bring some natural lighting into play. Outline a few simple ideas to guide your video and provide a unique value for your audience.Â
Focus on quality over quantity. Instead of 20 videos in a month, focus on just 3 or 4 extremely impactful videos that leave a mark. To make sure that happens, you want your videos to be high-quality, to the point, and clean of unnecessary bits. Using a video editor will ensure your video is of high quality and attract your target audience.
Integrate Email Marketing
Email is one medium that has been here forever and feels like it is here to stay. Because it’s just that effective. Even though building a substantial email list is a long game, brands who already work with a large list know the great value of this method.
The effectiveness of this comes from placing your brand right where it matters, the customer’s inbox. Once a customer signs up to be on your email list, they are essentially giving your business some real estate in their inbox, so there’s no reason you should not take advantage of this marketing to grow your business online.
You can effectively drive traffic back to your website for repeated purchases by sending periodic emails highlighting new products, sales, and services. Emails are also easily shareable, so your subscribers can also forward them to their friends and family if they find something interesting. This leads to more clicks, more subscriptions, and more sales for you.
Work on Search Engine Rankings
For most websites on the internet, Google has become the major source of traffic. Just by learning the basics of SEO, there are a lot of tweaks business owners can do to optimize their website for search engine rankings. The set of guidelines and techniques of SEO aren’t too technical and can be performed by anyone, at least the on-page optimization.
Some simple tasks to perform for SEO are-
- Analyze your competitors.
- Collect the key phrases and words you want to rank for.
- Optimize your on-page content.
- Submit your site to search engines.
- Optimize your website titles and meta tags.
These are not one-time activities. These tasks have to be performed after every few months. Actively optimizing your website is the only way to stay at the top of your search results and beat out the competition.
Work With Influencers
If you can get your products or services vouched for on a public platform by a trusted influencer in your niche, your business can grow exponentially. Such is the power of influencer marketing. This is because influencers are more relatable than celebrities or other influential figures. Therefore, most consumers nowadays turn to their favorite content creators to get their advice on what to buy.
Over to You
Things on the internet change so fast. One year on the internet means about five years in the real world. However, the basic principles underlying business growth haven’t changed at all. If you are starting, follow this list. If you have been on the internet longer, perform an evaluation and check which steps you neglect. You can’t go wrong with the basics.
