As an entrepreneur or small business owner, in the early stages of your business, the online marketing and promotion strategies you use to grow your business will be entirely up to you.
You might think that as a business manager, you don’t need to learn everything about marketing promotion strategies, and you don’t need to cover all the technical details; but you’ll soon learn that even if you don’t do everything yourself and you hire somebody to help you with certain areas of your marketing promotions, you still need to learn the basics of how online marketing works in order to get results (and not get ripped off).
At the end of the day, you decide how much you invest in each area, and if your decision is not based on numbers and facts, it will cost you!
But if you are a solopreneur taking the first steps in the online industry, you might find the avalanche of information overwhelming, and you might have a hard time focusing on what really matters for your marketing strategy.
Let’s take a walk down 7 of the most important online marketing promotion strategies and see how each one can help your business grow.
1. Build a personal brand
Whether you like it or not, as a business manager, you’ll be at the core of your business, so you’ll have to get used to being in the center of attention. Promoting yourself as a professional is really the easiest way to gain confidence and grow your small business.
The numbers don’t lie: an amazing 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people, even if they don’t know them, over branded content. People love to interact with other people, and before your brand grows the size of Apple or Google, people will associate it with you, your values, and your personality.
If you are just starting your business, but you have been working as a specialist in the same area, you might already have a personal brand, even if you don’t know it. But if you are changing your industry, you should learn the most efficient ways to promote yourself and build a brand identity to gain trust and authority.
The key is learning how to use your own personality to promote your business and become a role model for the people around you. This means you’ll have to get to know yourself, learn more about your qualities and defects, and find the marketing mix that works for your business and personality.
2. Work on your content marketing every day
For an online business, content is king! In order to succeed, you’ll have to create a blog, write ebooks, maybe start a podcast; so it’s important to learn how to create unique and relevant content, or at least you’ll have to create a strategy and hire someone to help you with the technicalities.
Content marketing has tons of advantages, and they’re not all about SEO. Your business has to get noticed in the online field, and if you’re selling something, you have to make sure you gain credibility before you ask people to buy from you.
3. Learn the basics of SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and make no mistake, it’s one of the most important parts of your online business.
Highervisibility.com surveyed 500 small business marketers to find out what small businesses know about SEO and discovered that a quarter of them were unfamiliar with the SEO best practices. In conclusion, learning more about SEO can instantly boost your business and give you a competitive advantage.
4. Engage in Social Media Marketing
In the last years, Social Media Marketing has become an important part of any online marketing strategy. If used right, it has lots of advantages for brands, and it can be useful in more than one area of your business. Social Media Marketing can increase your branding, boost your sales, and even help in areas such as customer service or SEO.
It’s all about creating great Social Media visual stories, finding influencers, and other creative ways to engage with your audience. Find your own voice: be fun, creative, and authentic!
Social Media promotion works great for big brands as well as for local business advertising.
5. Use Email Marketing to increase your conversions
Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways you can connect with your audience community. And, if done right, it is still one of the most effective online marketing methods out there. After all, you have the potential to enter your user’s inbox and convince them to take action.
A well-thought-out email marketing strategy will help your business make a profit. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32 (DMA, 2018).
According to the latest trends in email marketing, you should use interactive email marketing to get even better results! Interactive emails are a great way to engage your audience and get them to enter your website.
Newsletters don’t have to be spammy, all you have to do is find new and creative ways to engage with your audience and they will love it!
6. Learn to master paid advertising
Paid advertising is really efficient since nowadays you can access a huge database of potential customers and target your ideal customer with great precision, and follow them across all the internet.
You might think you don’t have to use paid advertising if you have an awesome product. Or if you don’t have much competition. Wrong, and wrong again! Ads are not only crazy-efficient but build trust among your customers. And, if they keep seeing you, you’re halfway to getting them to buy from you. If you need a more in-depth presentation, read our blog post to find out which advertising platform works best for your business.
Never underestimate the power of a great visual or animation within your ads strategy! We are visual beings, and we often notice and remember a great image much easier than a simple text. There’s a reason they say sometimes an image is worth 1000 words!
Actually, research shows people love good visuals; it seems 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual.
People love good visuals
7. Go mobile with Mobile Marketing
And, last but not least, let’s talk about Mobile Marketing. Nowadays we spend a huge percentage of our time glued to our smartphones, so creative mobile marketing apps or campaigns are great ways to enter the lives of our users.
While not a traditional marketing campaign designed to boost sales, this type of content talks about the brand’s values and mission, so it will surely be remembered.
So, there you have them, the 7 pillars of a successful online marketing strategy to get your small business on the right track. Now that you know how each one can impact your business, you can go ahead and work on your marketing campaigns towards success.