In recent years, the internet has immensely revolutionized and grown businesses. There has been a shift in how we conduct shopping these days. Some businesses fully leverage the internet and do not have physical stores. Potential customers just have to visit your website, add items to your cart, and checkout without moving their feet.
Among others, here are seven ways to grow your business online.
1. Build Your Email List – As expected, most customers who visit your website never come back to buy from you. Collecting their emails and reaching out to them ensures you get the most out of them at a minimal cost. All you need is to create a popup email collector and use an email auto-responder to create unique offers that are targeted to them. People often get distracted when in the middle of a purchase. Therefore, it is your responsibility as a business owner to remind potential buyers of their items left in the cart. It is not enough to send messages, make them very enticing while not coming off as pushy.
2. Use SEO to Gain Organic Traffic – Businesses should utilize search engine optimization to acquire more customers. You can hire a professional to go through your website and make it more search engine friendly to maximize your outreach. With basic training, you can learn to do it on your own. For this, you will need to find content that your customer is seeking and share it concisely. Remember, your keywords need to be planned and placed appropriately as per common search engine policies. To get started, you can use a tool like SEOCalc.com to find SEO experts.
3. Leverage Social Media to Drive Traffic – Social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter have hundreds of daily active users. These platforms provide an opportunity to grow your business through the sharing of posts whether in a picture or video format. Make it easy for your customers to share posts. Create competitions to get more engagement and customers. Create themed profiles that are frequently updated. To maximize this type of traffic retarget them with paid advertisements such as Facebook ads. Another cost-effective way is to use social media influencers.
4. Establish an Affiliate Partner Program – Creating a referral program extends your network as a business and helps you find new clients. You can set a program where affiliates are paid in commission. The system needs to allocate them unique links that can be tracked. Generally, social influencers whether from Youtube or Instagram have proven to be the best for such a marketing style. You may need to find influencers within your business niche to best results. For instance, if your business lies in the fashion niche it won’t make sense to partner with a gaming influencer.
5. Make Data-Backed Decisions – Data tells it as it is. Use analytical tools like Google Analytics to know your sources of traffic, where they live or, their age bracket, and other vital data that can aid better decision making. The data collected by such a tool can be used to formulate a content marketing strategy that is aimed at improving your weak spots. This data eliminates guesswork and shooting in the dark hoping that you hit something.
6. Use Social Proof to Drive Sales – The use of testimonials and trust badges builds credibility to the potential customer. Testimonials show potential customers that others have trusted and bought from your business. The psychological phenomenon behind social proof is what makes it work. In essence, people conform to other people’s actions based on the belief that it is the correct practice. In most cases, social proof works as a tie-breaker between competitors. You can share your statistics such as readership, subscriber counts, or even customer testimonials to drive that crucial sale.
7. Update Your FAQ Page – As you add more products to your portfolio it is imperative to update your frequently asked questions section. Answer every possible question that your ideal customer may ask to eliminate any possible confusion. Always keep in mind that unanswered questions may delay or disqualify the purchase.
Bottom Line
The online space keeps changing rapidly and will require your business to keep up with that. You can learn a lot by studying your competitor’s online presence, be it their socials or website. Your website’s poor loading speed can be a turn-off to most users.
Ensure your business website has an appealing and responsive web design to attract more customers. To succeed, your business will need to constantly find areas and ways to improve.
