How to market your business online

Having a digital presence has almost become an essential tool for any company operating in the current age.

The old days of telephone books and classified advertising are long gone, and the reality is that if you are hoping for your business to be discovered then you need to take it online. At the minimum, a brochure page with contact details is all that you might need, but the reality is, that if you are not online then you are going to be passed by your competitors and quickly you will not even be in the race. But being online is one thing, once you are there how do you go about marketing yourself and getting your brand in front of the right people?

Here are a few basic tips to help build your online audience.

Newsletters

This is one of the best ways to talk to your audience and to keep them coming back for more. Anyone who works in online marketing will tell you that the key to ensuring regular visits from an engaged audience is to offer them frequent calls to action.

A regular newsletter, for which the user will have opted in is one of the best ways of achieving this.

As long as you don’t spam them with too much material the chances are that they will click through on a regular basis.

Social Media

The socials, which include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are all very powerful means of growing communities and engaging with audiences.

Social media allows for easy sharing of content and it is the way through which many consumers like to make contact with a brand. Sadly, it is often to complain, which is why you need to ensure that your Facebook page is regularly monitored. But it is also a great place to solicit shares with competitions. Done right, social media is the cheapest way to reach the largest audience.

Display Advertising

This is the digital equivalent of old-school newspaper or magazine advertising. It is sold in the same way and the results are similar.

Essentially a publisher develops an audience and then charges a brand to speak to that audience on their platform. The rates and fees that are charged depending on the placement of the advertisement (above or below the fold, home page or not, etc) and the size of the audience. Where digital display advertising differs greatly from print is that it is much easier to measure the results and the effectiveness of the campaign.

SEO

This stands for search engine optimization and it is the behind the scenes magic that ensures that search engines like Google and Bing, not only find your page when people go looking but that it appears as close to the top of the search results as possible. Studies have shown that failure to appear in the top three search results essentially means that you won’t get any clicks, so it is important to ensure that your site is optimised properly. This is a complicated process that generally requires some expert insights and strategies to build links, design a content calendar and work on things like URL structure and site meta-data.