5 Smart Ways to Get More Customers Online
Usually, businesses create a website in order to find new customers. But in most cases simply getting online doesn’t do the trick. We’ve seen a lot of great companies with very beautiful websites that just sit and wait for the miracle to happen. But this is not how it works. In order to gain maximum effect from your online presence, you need to invest in your online strategy all the time.
So, the first important thing you need to know is that things do not happen with a magic wound. You need constant efforts in order to be successful. In fact, the problem is that many people don’t realize that and when they see that their website isn’t as effective as they thought, they think that the problem is in the website or just that being online won’t work for them. Once you have realized that you need to put more effort, you can start getting more and more customers.
Here are several things you can do for the purpose:
Invest in SEO
Don’t blow your whole marketing budget on your website. Save some money for Search Engine Optimization too. The thing is that there are millions of website out there and there is absolutely no way for your website to be easily found online unless you do some SEO.
There are plenty of guides online on how to do SEO for your small business website. We’ve even posted plenty of useful information for beginners on this blog too. However, keep in mind that if you mess things up, the worst thing that would happen is to get a ban from Google.
So, if you are not sure what you are doing and you don’t have enough time to educate yourself, just hire a professional to do it.
Create some ads
SEO is great, but what many people won’t tell you is that it’s slow and it doesn’t always work. First of all, SEO is slow because you just can’t tell Google “See, my site Is great. Why don’t you show in on the first page for my primary keyword”. Usually, it takes between 6 months or even a year for good SEO results and if you don’t have the time to wait, you need something faster.
Secondly, SEO doesn’t work for everybody. In certain niches, it’s so hard to get good SEO results, that you better don’t start at all unless you have a huge budget for that. These are niches where there is a lot of competitors with huge budgets for SEO. Furthermore, SEO doesn’t work in niches where the potential customer isn’t always aware that he wants to buy this specific problem. This means that if nobody is actually searching for that on Google, there is no point in investing in SEO.
So, if you either need fast results or think that SEO won’t work for you, you can create online ads. Here we won’t get into any details about online advertising as there are plenty of guides out there, but basically what you need to know is that you can advertise easily on platform such as Facebook and Google. Both of them offer a variety of options for online advertisers and the best thing is that you can target exactly your potential customer and make sure that he/she sees your ad.
Email Marketing
According to many experts, email marketing is the most effective digital marketing activity. So, if you have a website, you will most definitely want to collect your visitors’ emails and send them offers or valuable information after that. If you are selling products, you can send emails with discounts. People will appreciate this and want even more. You can also send information that is valuable for your audience. Just don’t spam them and remember – nobody wants to read an article about how great your company is.
How to start with online marketing?
It’s actually easier than you think. You just need to put email signup form on your website where you will collect emails. Usually, most email marketing platforms offer that. After that you will need to just come up with the content and set up the campaign in your email marketing platform. You can use any platform you wish, just google email marketing software and you will see that there are plenty of options.
Be on social media
Your website is essential but it doesn’t make for a full online presence. It’s very important to be on social media too. The benefits of being on social media are several. First of all, you by being present there you take advantage of the already established audience they have. Secondly, social media profiles and pages rank well on search engines, which brings more visibility for your brand. Furthermore, being active on social media is a great way to interact with people that is important for building trust and brand awareness.
It’s totally up to you which social media you will choose. Usually, you don’t need to be on every single one. Make a research where are your potential customers and be there.
Spread knowledge
People love brands that provide valuable information and make them feel smarter. There are several ways to do that online. The first and most popular ways is to start a blog. Blogging is great as it’s not only and easy way to publish articles online but also great for search engine visibility. The only drawback is that you need to be persistent. You can’t just write from time to time and expect to have a lot of traffic. Also writing the article is just the start. Sometimes it takes even more time to promote your blog post than to prepare it.
Furthermore, if you can produce longer and more in-depth content you can write an ebook or a case study.
Another useful way to spread knowledge is via webinars. A webinar is like a seminar, but it’s online. You can use Hangouts or Skype or any other video conferencing software for the purpose. Webinars are a good way to engage with new people.
How to use webinars?
It’s essential that you don’t use webinars to just promote your product. A good topic for a webinar is to show how your product or service can solve a real problem.
