You might have a fantastic website, but if customers don’t know about it, or where to find it, visitors and sales are likely to be very slow. To dramatically increase your chances of success it’s vital that you put some effort into marketing your business website, especially in an ever increasing competitive online market.
Our top tips are:
- Create an online community or wealth of information: Starting a forum or blog on your website should encourage people to to repeat visit if they are interested in the content. Once your website becomes established as a valuable resource people will feel inclined to link to your site further boosting search engine rankings.
- Blog elsewhere: Write blogs or articles on other websites, therefore publishing your name and your business into the wider public domain. It’s important to make sure that your articles are original and resourceful otherwise they won’t be read.
- SEO: Even the smallest of businesses will make gains though improving their search engine rankings. You do need to be patient to see results, but by following good standard SEO practices you will make progress against competitors, and increase the quality and awareness of your brand identity.
- Engage in Social & business networking: Add your business to the popular social networks such as facebook and twitter, create a link back to your website and encourage people to follow your online business. Maintain regular updates with useful or interesting information for your followers, and perhaps reward them with unique special offers from time to time. Business orientated social networks such as LinkedIn and XING are a useful way to interact globally with related professionals within your field.
- Directories: Relevant and reputable directories can increase there likelihood of your business being found by potential customers. These could be business directories, or interest and subject-based directories. You should also try to boost traffic by linking to other relevant sites.
- Advertising: Like any other form of business you should expect to set aside a budget for advertising your website. Resources such as Google Adwords can be very helpful. Yes, you have to pay but the cost can be low and it could be the key to kick-starting a profitable business. You are guaranteeing exposure and you can also carefully measure how successful the campaigns are by using analytical tools.
- Good, old-fashioned marketing: Websites don’t have to be marketed online only. Business cards, leaflets, posters, van-side promotion, headed notepaper and even word of mouth can also work wonders. Genereally such mediums are not overly costly and can be quick to distribute.