Online Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Have you recently launched an online business and want to get your target audience to reach out to you? Or have you been online for some time but still can’t get your target audience to hit the dial? Well, you are right where you will learn how to market and promote your business online.

This article only deals with the marketing and promotion of your offers. In essence, I will describe the main aspects of online marketing campaigns and the tools you can use to grow your business.

Before delving further, you should have known who your target audiences are and the brand you want to be known for. If these are all clear, let’s dive right in.

Online marketing strategies

The main thing about online marketing and promotion is traffic generation. If you don’t have enough traffic to your website or landing pages, you may not be able to make any revenue. Getting your target audience to your online pages should be your number one priority.

So, how do you get people to your web pages?

There are various methods of generating traffic on the web. It’s either you use paid or unpaid campaigns. Still, you can use both for a wider reach of targets. And when starting for the first time, you should try to use multiple campaigns simultaneously.

Implementing several campaigns at the same time gives you the opportunity to quickly discover the main traffic sources. Apart from that, you will be able to avoid the risky of depending on one traffic source.

Below is the list of campaigns you can use to generate traffic to your landing pages or website:

Paid campaigns

• Search Engine Ads
• Social Media Ads
• Display Ads
• Post boosting
• Native Ads
• Solo Ads

Unpaid campaigns

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Content Marketing (blog, video, eBooks, podcast etc)
• Social Media Engagement
• Email Marketing

If you are unfamiliar with the terms used above, read Online Marketing Channels to learn more about each terminology. For any other concerns or questions, you can Request A Free Consultation at any time with me.

Setting up your campaigns

While it’s essential to use different marketing channels, it’s equally vital to be selective. Meaning, run campaigns only on the platforms where your customers are based. It’s possible your audiences are scattered across multiple platforms. In this case, your job is to know where they are significantly larger in number, then focus on that platform.

With enormous hard work, your marketing strategy will pay off in the long run. Whichever strategy you choose, the process is long. But how long it takes depends on how you are able to strategically connect with your audiences.

Now is the time to get ready to put your business in front of your audience. Your potential clients/customers will only know about the services/products you are offering when your business is set up for the public.

Here are the most relevant elements you need to get all set up and ready:

• A website and hosting package: If you want your target audience to see you as a professional business owner, you need a website. You can use open sources such as WordPress.org or Joomla to create one for free. Before the website can go live, you need a hosting service.
• Marketing automation tool: This helps you to be more efficient with your work. Instead of manually responding to every message you receive from new leads, marketing automation tool does the work for you even while you are asleep.
• Keyword research tools: With this type of tool, you will be able to know the problems or questions people are searching for online. With this, you can build your web contents around those questions to generate leads.
• Web traffic analytics tool: This is a must-have tool. It helps to track the origin of your website traffic and the number of visits to each page on your website.
• Search engine indexer: The quickest way to index your web pages on Google, Yahoo or Bing search engine platforms so that your contents can get out there as quickly as possible.
• Business listing: Apart from creating a social media presence, you also need to register your business on the local business listing. If you are targeting people living outside of your region, an international business listing site is needed for more reach.
• Copywriting skill: Copywriting is a writing skill that is vital for any business to learn. It helps in crafting persuasive short messages, service description and the titles for your web pages

Online marketing tools (optimisation tools)

Optimisation tools are used for monitoring, analysing and improving online marketing campaigns. Running a successful business requires adequacy in every aspect of the business.

To achieve this adequacy, you need some marketing tools to assist you in running effective and efficient promotions for your business. Below are some examples of the kind of tools you may need:

Free tools

• Google Analytics: This is a must-have web analytics tool. It is used for tracking and creating website traffic reports. More →
• Google Search Console: This is a web service tool that is used for indexing web pages on Google search engine platform. A must-have! More →
• Bing Webmaster Tools: This is also a web service tool used for indexing web pages on the Bing and Yahoo search engine platforms. More →

Paid tools

• Backlinks Indexer: For your website backlinks, use this tool to build stronger and relevant links back to your web pages. More →
• Keysearch: This tool is used to search for profitable and low competition keywords for creating web contents in a few seconds. More →
• Sqribble: If you blog or write so often, you can use this tool to create an eBook without going through the stress of typing in a few minutes. More →

Click here to see all the tools.

Conversion process

Conversation process can also be described as a sale funnel. It’s a series of processes a potential buyer goes through before finally making the decision to purchase your product or service. In fact, every business needs these processes.

Depending on your business model and strategy, your prospects will go through different stages within the process till a purchase is made. This process is applicable to any niches. With a proven copy and proper funnel, you will be able to attract leads.

The below chart represents the process of converting a lead into a paying client or customer.

Here is another example of the conversion process using a webinar.

How you structure the sequence of your funnel matters a lot and it differs from one niche or offer to the other. One thing is to have the right process; another thing is to have the right copy throughout the funnel stages.

The traits a marketer should have

Now that you have understood the different type of traffic sources, what qualities are crucial for you to have in order to run successful marketing campaigns?

Whether you run paid or unpaid campaigns, the best form of marketing is to make your target audiences come to you. You can achieve it through consistency and continuity.

Almost in every aspect of life, success doesn’t come with ease. Therefore, to succeed with your marketing strategies you have to be:

• Patient:
• Persistent
• Refining

If you do not have these three qualities, it may be difficult for you to scale your business to where you want it to be. Marketing is about testing and working out what works best for your business.

When you implement one strategy and it doesn’t produce the required results, revise it and try another. Gradually, you will grow to understand the best method to market your business.

Wrap up

Online marketing strategy is one of the key elements that strengthen the competitiveness of a company. Therefore, every company must strategically adopt effective methods of attracting clients or customers to ensure its survival on the web.

Whether you own an online business or not, the process is similar. What may be different is your approach and uniqueness in connecting with your audience. All in all, what matters most is to identify which of the marketing processes works for you.

In case of any questions or want to understand the right marketing campaign for your business, you can Request A Free Consultation at any time with me.