What's the Best Route to Promote Your Online Business?
Marketing and promotion of your online business is the key aspect that can propel your entrepreneurial journey to new heights. It is important to keep looking for effective ways to elevate your venture's reach and lay a robust foundation for future growth. Often, businesses struggle to make an impact in the industry, mostly because they fail to present themselves as the right choice for the consumers, which is a leading consequence of ineffective marketing. You must have thought numerous times about what the best route is to promote your online business.
Well, there's not one, but a number of ways for the same, which we are going to discuss in this article.
1. Create a dedicated page on social media
The entire world is on social media. It is, by far, the most accessible and easiest way to increase your business' reach. You can start by creating a dedicated page for your venture on all the available social media platforms, and use it as a catalogue to showcase the services you offer. It also makes it easier to let your consumers know about upcoming products, deals, offers, and giveaways.
The only thing to keep in mind is that the posts you make must be interactive, easy to comprehend, and not solely related to your business. Use sarcasm as a way to promote business and products on social media, and doing it through memes is one possible way to go about it.
2. Overhaul your website with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
This has become the most sought-after tool to increase search engine visibility of a product, service, blog, or any other thing on the internet. People consistently use Google for almost all of their daily internet requirements, but how does the search engine list results for any search query put forward? It uses a combination of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools to give the most relevant returns to the search made by a user. This is where SEO comes into play.
All you have to do is use relevant keywords while uploading content on your website, including location dynamics, being regular with your blogs or uploads, and using the right images to complement the written word. More than a businessman, you need to think like a consumer to achieve the best results.
3. Effectively advertise on Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook
It is not an unknown fact that advertising is both a source of earning and a mode of expenditure for businesses. It depends squarely on which side of the table you are. The majority of the social media platforms have started offering dedicated business tools for advertisers on their platform in return for a pre-decided sum of money. They put the control in your hand, and you get to choose everything, right from your daily budget and keywords to the specific time and day of the week you want your advertisement to run. And guess what, you need to pay only for legitimate clicks on your ads. Isn't that great?
Just keep in mind to use the most creative and effective piece of content, be it a picture, video, or just a blog, to promote your business. While Google Ads help your promoted content to appear on top of relevant searches, Instagram allows it to appear between stories, reels, and home feed. If you have a YouTube channel, use YouTube ads to promote your products through creatively crafted videos. This leading video streaming platform provides convenient tools for advertising like pre-roll, mid-roll, and end-roll insertion of advertisements and skippable ads. Here also, you pay only when a consumer either clicks on your ad or watches a specified part of it.
4. Use online listing services
To make your business appear in 'nearby places' on Google Maps, and advance its visibility on Google Search, you can register it with 'Google Places.' After completing the verification process, you'd be able to add contact details, address, and any other relevant information.
Other platforms offering similar services are Yahoo! (Yahoo! Places) and Bing. Listing services are free to use, and give good returns in terms of reach and visibility. Try utilising them as much as possible by providing ample information regarding your venture. It would help a potential customer skip the arduous task of hovering over the comments section for the required information.
5. Bank upon the rising influence of podcasters
The Indian audio market is gradually finding its place, and this is probably the right time to bank on it before it becomes expensive to do so. You can contact podcast hosting platforms or directly email a podcaster you know is famous and get them to either place a pre-created ad in their podcast or ask them to rate the same in their style. At the moment, it doesn't cost much and provides a good reach to a considerable base of customers. Some of the platforms you can try out are Hubhopper, HeadFone, Spotify, Gaana, etc.
Another way of doing this is by starting a podcast of your brand and creatively promoting your products. A specific benefit of audio platforms over video and visual ones is that consumers can consume content even with their phones stored in their pockets.
6. Hire a digital marketer
If you don't want to do any of the above tasks on your own and prefer outsourcing the marketing work as a whole, hiring a digital marketer is the way to go. Digital marketing is the best way to promote your business. It has even defeated the traditional way of marketing through offline modes, such as posters and pamphlets.
You can either get in touch with a professional digital marketing company or directly hire a freelance digital marketer, with the latter charging way less than the former. The benefit of a professional firm, though, is that it provides guaranteed results, whereas a freelancer may or may not be as efficient. It is your call in the end, and it depends on the requirements you have. Digital marketers have subject knowledge in promoting content online and have access to a plethora of products, which help them cover almost all aspects of marketing.
Conclusion
In this competitive world, it is important to strive for success using the right online marketing tools for your business. Once you develop the hunger for providing quality services at an affordable price to the consumers, it won't take much time for you to climb the ladder of success. The growth of the internet is visible to everyone, and with the advent of social media, it has become a strong force to reckon.
Over the years, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube have come up with innovative tools to help businesses promote their products at affordable costs. They have a large pool of users, and you only need to target the right ones to convert them into your future customers. On the other hand, a tool like SEO can give a real push to your rising ambitions.
However, there is no use of any of the methods mentioned above if you cannot implement them in the right way. This is where a professional digital marketer helps because they have the practical knowledge and tools to shape your promotional plans. In the end, it is you who has to make a call between hiring professionals to carry forward your marketing or doing it on your own. So, buck up and choose whatever’s right for your venture.
Also read:
1) 10 Best Ways to Promote Your Small Business
2) How Many Social Media Sites Can I Promote My Online Business On?
3) Online Business Ideas You Can Start Quickly
4) 8 Online Business Ideas That Could Make You Hit Gold in 2020