Marketing your business online is critical to the growth of your company. Whether you’re just starting out with a new business or you’ve been running one for years, some of the tips in this article will help you increase your skills.
First off, in my opinion and experience the best marketing is online. Don’t waste your money on paper advertising unless you have a HUGE marketing budget. Nowadays, almost everyone uses their phone, tablet, laptop etc to search for what they’re looking for.
Your potential clients can use GPS location on their phone to give them a list of businesses nearby with ratings and reviews from other customers. Will your business show up on that list? Let’s make sure it does.
Print media simply cannot compete with this technology and is dying a slow death.
The first thing you MUST have is a website. Without this, nobody will find you online even if you’re the best marketer in the world.
Defining Your Target Market
Who are they?
What do they do?
Where do they hang out online?
What do they want?
What is stopping them from getting it?
Having answers to these questions will help you make the most of your advertising budget by targeting the specific customers or clients you want for your business. This is an important point so read carefully.
You only want to attract the type of clients you actually want to have, don’t worry about the rest. A big mistake so many marketing newbies make is trying to blanket advertise to everyone. Bad idea.
You want to be specific in your advertising campaign. This not only saves you money, but it weeds out those pain in the ass customers that just waste your time and don’t make you any money. To do this, you need to create keywords and phrases specific to your business and tailored in such a way as to attract specific clientele.
If you’re a law firm practicing in personal injury or vehicle accidents, you’ll want to focus on your specific area of law and make your keywords attractive and specific.
So, you may use a phrase like “Important first steps after your car accident” or “Free guide to dealing with your injury”. What you don’t want is something boring like just your business name or “Free Consultation” as these will not attract your target market.
An incredibly important piece of your marketing efforts should be “Providing Value“. We have an entirely separate article on this topic here which I suggest you read thoroughly. This is the new way of doing business. Providing valuable FREE information will pay you back 10 fold! Why does this work? By providing value you are building trust and when someone trusts you, they buy from you.
Tools to Market Your Business
I’ll be going into specific details on each of these in later blog posts but here are some of the fundamental tools to help you start marketing your business online.
Google Adwords
– These are the ads you see down the right side and top of your Google searches. They are very effective but can get costly
Facebook Ads
– These are the ads you see down the right side and within your timeline
Facebook Groups
– Join like minded individuals and companies on Facebook and provide value
Youtube Videos
– The thought of recording yourself for the world to see is a scary concept for some but videos are one of the best ways to advertise.
Twitter
– Twitter helps you get the word out fast to your followers about promotions and company news.
Blogging
– Blogging is a fantastic way to provide value with free information. This will build relationships and trust with your readers.
Using the above tools effectively will bring targeted traffic to your business while staying within your marketing budget.
