Creating a website is an easy way to start an online business, but most business owners are unaware of how to make their target audience notice their business in this competitive digital world.
Imagine you are running a physical store on a bustling street, but you don’t have a store name. Nobody knows or cares what you are selling. To attract customers to your store, you should give your store, a name, put up some banners and posters about what you sell, or what you offer, and advertise your store.
Similarly, setting up an online store alone won't attract customers; you need to market your business online. Here are the action items you should consider to get your online business noticed.
Create Social Media Pages for Your Business
Social media platforms are different from each other. You should discover which platform is best suited for your business to grab the attention of your potential audience.
Start with creating a business account on those platforms and promote your business through your social media pages. This will help you attract more customers & build brand awareness.
For example,
Let's consider you have a business called “Organic Skincare Products” and your target audience is people between 18 and 35 years old.
First, you need to figure out which social media platforms your target audience uses the most. If they use Instagram and Facebook a lot, then you should create business pages on those platforms and focus your efforts on creating vibrant, engaging pages about your product/service, so that you can easily get noticed by your target audience. This strategic approach helps your brand reach more audience which will eventually increase customer engagement & brand Awareness.
Boost Engagement & Create Quality Content
Content creation can be done by anyone but what makes your audience engaged and noticeable is the quality of your content. So what is quality content?
Quality content is content that is relevant, engaging, and valuable to your customers. It helps them solve their problems, and their needs & learn something new, or achieve their goals.
It also helps your website rank higher on search engines, as Google prioritizes quality content that matches the users’ search intent.
To create quality content, you need to:
- Understand your audience and their needs.
- Choose the right format and platform for your content
- Write clear, concise, and compelling content
- Optimize your content for SEO
- Add visuals and interactive elements to your content
- Measure and improve your content performance
To produce quality content, follow these key steps:
1. Understand Your Audience: Identify their problems, challenges, and interests. Make your content meet their needs and provide helpful resources to solve their problems.
2. Choose the Right Format and Platform: Whether it's blog postings, videos, or social media content, choose formats and platforms that are relevant to your audience.
3. Write Clear, Concise, and Compelling Content: Use information that is clear, simple, and engaging to effectively communicate your message.
4. Optimize for SEO: Improve your content's visibility by incorporating best SEO practices.
5. Enhance with Visuals and Interactivity: To make your content more unique and engaging, add engaging elements, videos, infographics, and other visuals.
6. Measure and Improve: To ensure continuous growth, use analytics tools to track your content's performance and improve your strategies based on the gathered information.
Ask Friends, Family, and Colleagues to Refer Your Business
One of the best ways to get your business noticed online is to ask your friends, family, and colleagues to refer your business (Your Official Website) to their social media pages and networks. (This means real-life connections, which can help build credibility for your product or service).
Referrals are powerful online marketing tools that can help you grow your business faster and easier.
Why? Because referrals can increase your brand awareness, trust, and loyalty. People are more likely to check out your website and buy your products or services if they are recommended by someone they know and trust.
Referrals can also reduce your marketing costs and efforts. You don't have to spend a lot of money or time on advertising or SEO, as your happy customers will do the marketing for you.
How? It's simple. Encourage your friends, family, and colleagues to share your website with their social media pages and networks.
You can also encourage them to write a review or a testimonial about your product or service or to tag you in their posts. Make sure you thank them for their support and show your appreciation.
Testimonials from Existing Customers
Reviews and testimonials are powerful online marketing tools. They can help you build your online reputation, credibility, and trustworthiness.
They can also heavily influence your buyers' purchase decisions. They can see how your product or service helped people to solve.
Reviews and testimonials can also help you improve your user experience, & SEO. With your existing customers, you can generate more relevant and fresh content for your website or social media content. Also, you can encourage users to generate content with your product or service which is called UGC- User-generated content. They can increase your social proof, build credibility & improve word-of-mouth referrals.
For example, let's say you are selling skincare products online. One of your customers regularly uses your product and she loves the results. She decides to share her experience on social media.
She posts a glowing review of your product, along with a before-and-after photo. She compliments your product for making her skin smooth, radiant, and healthy. She also mentions how easy and affordable it is to order from your website.
Now, there is a huge opportunity for your product to outstand other products in your segment because buyers who are looking for reviews are now one step closer to purchasing your product. In the meantime, you can share & distribute this UGC on your social media and websites for the same.
Therefore, receiving a review or testimonial from an existing customer can help your business reach and attract new customers.
Note: Referrals, reviews, and testimonials naturally extend the reach of your business, especially when your products or services deliver strong value by solving a problem.
The Power of Engaging with Your Audience ASAP
Engaging with your audience and responding to their opinion is important for building trust and loyalty.
You should always thank your customers for using your product and ask them to share their feedback and suggestions even if it is positive or negative feedback, Your response time and the way you react to sort out their problem builds customer relationships.
There are many ways to engage with your audience. For example: You can prepare a survey with specific questions about your product and business and share it with your customers via email or social media.
By collecting and analyzing their input, you can learn more about their needs, preferences, and satisfaction levels.
This way you can improve your product and service quality and increase customer retention and referrals.
Nurturing Customer Loyalty: Enhance Engagement with Incentives and Rewards
You know how some customers are always coming back to your business and they are the ones who are more likely to spread the word? Those are your loyal customers, and they are the best thing that ever happened to you.
You want to keep them happy and loyal, right? Well, one way to do that is to offer them incentives and rewards, like discounts, coupons, and freebies, or enroll them in exclusive loyalty programs.
These gestures will show them how much you value and appreciate them, This not only encourages repeat purchases and positive referrals but also inspires them to spread the word.
Note: Building your customer relationships is as important as delivering quality products.
Bonus Tip
Use Analytics Tools to Measure Your Performance
Promoting your business on social media alone isn't sufficient. You also need to use analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, to monitor how your website and social media pages are performing.
By tracking metrics like traffic, conversions, engagement, demographics, and reach, you can see how much audience you are engaging and where you need to improve.
For example, let’s say you run an online store that sells organic skincare products. You have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, where you share tips, reviews, and promotions.
You want to know how effective your social media strategy is in driving traffic and sales to your website.
To do that, you need to use analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, to monitor how your website and social media pages are performing.
Google Analytics 4 can help you track metrics like traffic sources, bounce rate, average session duration, and conversions. Google Search Console can help you track metrics like impressions, clicks, and ranking positions.
Using these free tools, you can see how much audience you attract from each social media platform and how they behave on your website. You can also see which products or pages are most popular, and which ones need improvement.
This way, you can optimize your social media content and website design to increase your reach, engagement, and conversions.
Wrapping Up!
In today’s digital world, getting your online business noticeable requires more than what you think.
You need to optimize your website for search engines, utilize social media platforms to reach your target audience and create original, shareable content that showcases your expertise and value proposition.
By implementing these strategies consistently and effectively, you can enhance your online visibility, attract new customers, and ultimately, grow your business in 2024 and beyond.
