Today, more than ever, it’s essential for businesses to have an online presence. Especially since the pandemic, the landscape is reshaping and many companies are reconsidering their digital strategy to reach out to more clients. However, it may be hard to know where to start and how to maintain a sound digital strategy. In this article, I’m going to share 8 ways to promote your business online effectively. Some are short-term solutions, and some are long-term ones, but they’ll all add value to your company and, eventually, drive traffic to your website and various online channels.
To begin with, you need to identify your target and define your goals while remaining realistic about the effort you’re willing to put into your digital strategy. Time is a real bottleneck, and if you do not have the resources to maintain your plan, you should revise it. Once you are ready, you can trace a roadmap and action distinct tactics to reach your KPIs in conjunction with your company’s business objectives.
Social Media
This one may be pretty obvious, but as simple as it may seem, being on social media requires your full attention and effort. You need to figure out a strategy, be on the right social media, post frequently, at the right time, and produce as much quality content as possible. You can publish your company’s announcements, news, updates, and stories, still remember to add substance and purpose to those. For instance, bring value to your audience by teaching them something, providing tips, or creating tutorials.
If you’re selling clothes, you need to take high-quality pictures to promote it, hire models, and show those in context to be appealing to your audience. You also need to know where your public is: if you’re a B2B company, you might want to have an active presence on Linkedin. If you’re a tech company, you obviously would have a Twitter account. As a fashion or food company, you would undoubtedly benefit a lot from Instagram. As we said earlier, the strategy needs to be well-defined before producing any content for your publication.
Social media will mostly bring your business visibility, but it might also bring sales. Indeed, these platforms are more and more looking into promoting your products and increase your sales. Facebook just announced the launch of Facebook Shops, which allows businesses to create a shop on the platform directly. On Instagram, you can also tag products directly from your e-commerce store, such as Shopify.
Last but not least, if you have an advertising budget, you might want to consider investing it in social media as you can reach a specific audience, and if your ad is well-made, it could deliver outstanding results.
Google My Business
Google My Business is an efficient way to promote your business for free and requires minimal effort. More than just showcasing your business on the research page, it allows you to post news like exclusive offers, events and keep in touch with your customers. It also shows reviews that will give people the first impression of the quality of your product or service. For instance, you have a physical store; you can ask satisfied customers to leave a review and offer them a discount on their next purchase.
Google My Business also allows you to showcase your opening hours, pictures of your company, your contact information: it’s a real contact point between you and your customers and it can easily make your business more attractive.
Newsletter
Writing a newsletter is an excellent way to connect with your customers regularly. Once again, your content needs to be valuable and exciting. For example, if you’re a fashion brand, you can advise on how to wear certain clothes. If you’re a finance company, give your audience tips on investment and news from the finance world. Mentioning your products, services, and company updates are essential, but the newsletter can’t be all about you unless the customer is already really attached to the brand.
If you want to collect more emails, a pretty standard way to do it is to provide an insightful e-book on your website about a specific subject linked to your industry and ask for the email address to download it. It will not only show your expertise to the prospect but also provide you a potential customer email address.
A blog
Creating a blog will help you build a long-term digital strategy through content marketing. It will not only improve your SEO but also help you create content around your product/service that will show your expertise and reach more customers. It would be best if you defined an editorial calendar, brainstorm ideas, and set the recurrence of your articles.
In your articles, you can answer frequently asked questions from your customers, share an update, advise customers by sharing your knowledge or even share your customers’ testimonies and how your product or service helped them. The idea is not to sell directly through your blog but to gain visibility, authority and, in the long-term, more traffic and sales.
Videos
This format is trendy online because it’s highly engaging. Whether it is on your website, social media, or dedicated YouTube channel, videos can be an excellent way to reach your prospects or interact with your genuine customers. Additionally, it is an exceptional contribution to your SEO, as YouTube is the most used search engine. Don’t you believe me? When was the last time you didn’t use YouTube to watch content tailored to your liking?
“Statistics show that 55% of people watch videos online every day, and social media videos generate up to 1200% more shares than texts and images combined.”
Through video content, you can showcase your office and team, advise on your industry, host interviews, or even create funny formats. This setup requires a bit of work and equipment, but it’s incredibly valuable.
Communities & forums
To be visible and trusted, you can engage in conversations on forums and online communities. You have the expertise and authority to talk about your field of expertise. Showcase it on those community platforms.
Especially if your product or service is an answer to a specific need, you can engage with people looking for this solution. It can require a bit of time to monitor the web and find the right places, but once you find it, you can quickly boost your marketing efforts. It places you one people’s radar. The method can similarly be applied to social media: you can monitor some phrases and expressions and then engage with people talking about them. For example, if you sell web design in Galway, you might want to watch phrases like “best web design in Galway,” “where to find branding agencies in Galway,” and so on, so you can wave at these people and let them know about you.
A podcast
Podcasts are on a high-trend and are now part of most people’s daily lives. A lot of brands quickly understood the considerable value they brought and started their own. If you’re not familiar with this format, we recently made an article about our 15 favorite podcasts, and we launched our podcast, Almost Black, a few months ago.
Podcasts are the perfect opportunity to address topics related to your industry, have guests, and, again, share your expertise.
We admit that when you start a podcast, it can be overwhelming to figure out how to do it, whether technically or in terms of content. But it’s not that complex. The Minimalists’ article on How to start a successful podcast was insightful and really guided us through the process. It gives you all the steps to follow, from purchasing the right microphone to recording, editing, and promoting your podcast. They also provide excellent technical advice and useful software that you will need.
An incredible website
Of course, after all these efforts to be visible online, it would be a pity not to have a quality and professional website for people to land on and contact you. Your website needs to be appealing, user-friendly, and aligned with your values. At Black Pug Studio, we can help you create a website adapted to your needs and budget. Especially during the recent challenging world events. An online presence is of the utmost importance, and if you want to do it right, how about we help you?
Of course, there are many more ways to promote your business online, but these are some of the first steps you can take to stand out and get the word out about your company. As we said earlier, it’s essential to bring value to your customers and prospects by offering them quality content that matches their needs. If you master your content strategy, this is the beginning of a love story between you and your audience that will last long!
About Black Pug Studio
Black Pug Studio is a multidisciplinary creative agency in Galway crafting premium and uniquely tailored web design, branding, digital design, and software & web technology experiences.
We partner with companies to create their ideal business tools using the latest technologies available wrapped in beautifully designed interfaces.
Get in touch today and start building your project with us! We are looking forward to hearing from you.
How to promote your business online was originally published in Creative by Black Pug Studio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
