Today we see a lot of online businesses, spreading like an epidemic on social media platforms and enjoying the best times of their life in terms of profit and popularity. Everyone running an online business wants that kind of omnipresence and attention from the customers and wants their business to grow a great deal.
But have you ever noticed how these businesses get hype all of a sudden? What tactics and strategies do they use to be everywhere around you, whether you surfing on Google search bar or going through your random Instagram feed, leisurely killing time on Facebook, looking at posts on Pinterest, or microblogging your views on the Twitter account, you will see them targeting their audience a sticky message from every online nook.
By following a set of picky strategies they are able to hop around these social media platforms and grab a hefty share of profits from their customers. Building an online business is easy but there are some things you need to do before getting into this business.
Everyone loves the freedom an online business offers, people are way more interested in these intangible online stores than tangible ones. These online stores provide convenience to buyers to shop from their homes and on the other hand, entrepreneurs can too earn profits while sitting at remote locations.
So yes no sweat at all!
Just a bunch of tricks and methods and there you go with a popular and profitable online business.
But According to our research, there are 7 things that you can do to get better results for your online business and increase your business presence online.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Everyone who has opted for the online business category must have heard the term SEO-Search Engine Optimization. A technique to increase your website finding on the search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. People think that it is some kind of technical task that only people who are experts in technical information can do well but as the matter of fact, it’s not that tricky.
With basic research and some online free tutorials, you can learn some necessary techniques to do SEO yourself. Yes, there are some advanced-level tools you can go for, but those tools are paid versions. There are tons of free tools to do a better SEO for your online business and this improves your website visibility in the search engine. Some keywords are juggled with a tinkering of simple SEO techniques and you will have your website appearing on the top searches.
There are certain Browser plug-ins that can report you on your website metrics and assess them. You can have the reports on your website’s speed, malfunctioning, readability, and security. So before shaking hands with SEO one needs to go for thorough research on these free and paid tools and what they have to offer in terms of ROI to your business.
Click here to learn everything about SEO.
Social Media Marketing
Nevertheless, Email marketing is very a tactical marketing strategy to get in touch with customers who are away from social media epidemics but why leave the big majority always ready and waiting for your product and services to pop out on their social media accounts and ready to try them out with a few engaging and catchy posts, ads and short videos?
Yes, they are the biggest influencers and are responsible for word-of-mouth marketing for your product/service. If you want to peak your business you can not underestimate the power of these social media platforms creating a grand effect for your business, just on the palms of people.
Studies have shown that just Facebook alone has 1.47 billion daily active users, which are around 18% of people around the world. Other famous platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, YouTube all have highly engaged users round the clock and around the world. With so many users these social media accounts present great opportunities for a business to flourish.
There are tons of social media marketing strategies that a growing business can opt for but the key is to keep your social profiles active, grow your following and bring traffic to your original website(If you have one otherwise you can sell through these platforms alone too) where users can easily shop for your offerings.
A business that has just started can always go with baby steps before heading for rigorous paid social media marketing tools. You can easily engage with your customers by quickly responding to their queries, giving them detailed product information in direct messages on Instagram, and offering promotional starting prices and discount offers on festive occasions. The essence is to connect with them, to make them realize the importance of your solution in their lives, and to be in their sight.
Email marketing
Search engine and social media platforms are great for getting discovered by a wider lot of customers but not many people have social media accounts but even if they are using just a simple search engine like Goggle or Bing they must have an email address and that is where you can start to touch your customers.
Not by some vigorous or complex set of marketing strategies you can always start by making an email list of your customers and being in their sight by sending newsletters, promotional offers, transactional emails, and lifecycle messages. It works best because here you can directly send personal, relevant messages about your products to the segmented list of recipients. Email marketing gives you full control over your channel and is a great way to be seen the way you want to be seen.
Email is still the best way to retain and strengthen the relationship with customers. Customers who frequently shop online prefer to buy similar products. Email in this scenario plays a central role in persuading customers to go for a second purchase. Because according to research the cost of retaining a customer is way less than acquiring one.
Focus on Your Audience
Focus on your target audience is the key to getting a thriving business in a short period of time. For this, you have to know your audience first. Market segmentation is the key to targeting your product/ service to people who are more likely to spend money on them. People who see your product as a solution to their problem, not just a random pop-up ad that they can ignore. As we know that this is an age of information abundance and people are more immune to information overloading than ever.
To tackle this problem you have to know the psychographics, demographics, geographic, behavioral, and other types of Market segmentation. Based on these segments you can select your niche and target that chunk of interested audiences.
This will eventually save you cost and money for advertising and you will gain more profit from this specific niche than targeting your ads to everyone. Targeting everyone instead of focusing on a particular niche creates haphazard marketing resulting in the loss of potential customers. After your business gets a boost this knowledge of your audience will save you a lot of money. So instead of targeting every general segment, you can fine-tune your ads and only show them to your desired target audience.
Network with Other Businesses
Creating an online presence for your business will put you in front of the whole wide world of online businesses. Online businesses that have matured and have a reliable brand name can help you go up the ladder with them. By joining hands with them you can shine your online business’s luck a lot better.
Networking conferences are the best way to build your contacts with other businesses. Initiating a joint venture with a relevant business will serve in your favor and can generate immense profits for your growing online business. That is why businesses go for sponsorships because this venture mutually benefits both partners.
But for this research matters a lot you have to find the right business to compliments yours. Big online giants ask for your product’s competitive advantage over others that can create a good value for their business too. In short networking with other businesses creates profitable monetary Synergy on a bigger level.
Quality Content
Online presence asks a lot more than just responding to the queries of your customers or engaging them on these platforms. People are more attracted to what they see and hear. You cannot just put up a business page and hope people to flock it. You have to be part of the premise behind the idea of being social.
For growing your business you have to create an innovative and relevant message that people get interested in. Adding a number of posts in the day can increase your online presence as well as will evoke curiosity in people to try your product/service. Some businesses need to post their ads five to ten times a day and some online businesses just need one post on daily basis, this index can change according to your products and your business’s maturity.
People are more attracted to striking colors and eye-catching pictures, so it is important to pay attention to the photography and video of your offering. You can pair a great picture with a number of details on it and your customers will get informed in just seconds. People tend to share images more on these platforms than in a detailed passage.
They want to grab as much information as they can with just an image. Video messages and creative meaningful content also draw the majority of attention from the buyers. To get information about how to create highly indulging social messages you have to study basic metrics of content that people prefer and like. This can be done simply by click-through rates, likes, and comments which are the indicators to know what pictures, videos, and content people are more attracted to.
Call-to-actions
By doing all these heavy marketing campaigns what we really want at the core is to have more customers at our side. Businesses set their marketing strategies on these online platforms to gain more visibility and as a result, have more people cling to their offering.
Acquiring a new customer costs more than retaining a loyal one and these loyal customers generate most of the profit for a business. So whether you are engaging with your customers on email newsletters or on any social media platform, always give them a call to action button to click on, so they can always head to your website.
In emails, you can put a link, and on social media platforms like Instagram, you can direct customers to your website through the “Swipe-up” option in the stories. Encouraging your customer’s purchase in a sorted way will boost your online business and give you immense advantages over others.