Launching a business is only a half task done; you must work harder and smarter to sustain it in the long run. The business market is highly competitive as every industry has saturated with multiple businesses. In such a situation, your business can only survive if there is consistent growth.
Internet and technology have come out as one of the best aids for businesses to reach out to their potential customers, boost their growth and stay ahead of the competition.
Businesses are, therefore, making a paradigm shift to online that supplements their offline business growth and multiplies their revenue.
36% of all businesses are now making their sales online.
However, a part of the business community assumes marketing their business online would require a huge budget and therefore refrain from doing so. But to your surprise, you can boost your business online even with a small limited budget. Here is a quick guide on how to grow your business online without spending a lot of money.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. IDENTIFY THE NICHE & TARGET MARKET
There are millions of people on the Internet and thousands of businesses in hundreds of industries. Among these, you must figure out where your business belongs. Identify your industry and the business niche to understand the scope of your business, and your target market and define the marketing strategies.
Once you figure out which industry you best belong to, identify your target market - whether you are selling to businesses(B2B) or directly to the consumers(B2C or D2C), etc.
The target market for your business is nothing but a group of real-time people who might be interested in your product/service or to whom your business ideally caters. To better understand your target market, perform competitor analysis and find whom your competitors are targeting.
2. DRAFT YOUR BUYER PERSONA
Once you identify the target market, the following step is to draft the buyer persona. The buyer persona is nothing but a semi-fictional descriptive representation of your ideal consumer backed by extensive data and research.
There is a significant difference between your business's target market and the buyer persona, and hence do not compromise on any.
A target market is your business's customer base whereas a buyer persona is a fictional representation of an individual having the traits your ideal customer might have.
To draft a buyer persona, brainstorm to whom your product ideally caters and then jot down their demographic and psychographic information. When you draft a buyer persona, you realize whom you are selling to and dig deep into their needs and pain points, catering the best to their needs.
For example, assume you run a travel agency and sell a luxury holiday package, your target market might be people interested in travelling. However, your consumer persona would target certain demographics like age, occupation, social media habits, the purpose for travel, challenge in travel, favourite travel destinations, etc. When you answer these questions, you niche down to a single person representing your ideal customer rather than a group of people sharing similar interests.
3. DEFINE THE VALUE PROPOSITION OF YOUR BUSINESS
After you identify the ideal consumer persona, you must showcase the value proposition of your business to attract those consumers to your business. Drafting the value proposition of your business also helps you set the right narrative.
A value proposition is beyond the generic product/service description. A value proposition of a business is how it resonates and solves a consumer problem via its products/services. It entails the USP of your business.
Show your potential customers how your offerings are different from others in a similar industry earning your business a competitive edge. Hubspot has ready-to-use templates to help you brainstorm and write winning value propositions for your business.
For example, Apple does not market iPhones by their features but by presenting a solution to users' privacy problems stating iPhones do not hinder users' privacy. Apple does not boast about the camera quality or other features that every other brand is advertising about. They highlight their unique USP that solves a major consumer issue and stands way apart from the crowd. Thus sell solutions and not features.
4. CREATE A GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
Google loves to support small businesses and hence provides online real estate to every business, however small or big via Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business listing).
Using Google My Business, you can promote your business online for free and appear at the top of the local search results. 84% of searches are discovery searches like a business 'near me' and hence having a well-optimized Google Business Profile means boosting awareness and driving new customers to your business, thereby tapping into the untapped market.
Navigate to Google My Business, sign in with your Google account and enter your business name, address and contact details. Out of over 4000 categories available, select a primary category that best suits your business. You can also add additional categories for your business.
If your business is already listed, you can claim it otherwise you can make a new listing. Google sends a verification code to your business location, and once you enter this code, your account gets verified.
Post verification, you can add your products/services, business timings, and business details like logo, website address, etc., for users to get in touch with your business.
More than 50% of Google Business Profile visits further navigate to the business website, thereby boosting the chances for lead generation.
Similar to posting images on social media sites, you can also promote your business with posts on your Google Business profile. You can answer common queries regarding your business via the FAQ section so that visitors get to know better about your products/services.
ADVANTAGES OF GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
A GMB profile brings the following advantages to your business:
i) Increased Visibility on Local Search Drives More Customers: The easiest customers you can get to your business are the ones in your locality. When someone in your location searches for a business of your kind, having a Google Business Profile boosts your rank on the local search results. The more visible your store is to people online, the better the chances for people visiting the shop.
The number of 'near me' or 'close by' searches has increased by 200% to 900% over the last couple of years.
Thus leveraging local search results, drives increased footfall to your physical store as well.
ii) Collect Reviews & Establish Business Credibility: You can encourage your customers to drop reviews about their experience on your Google Business profile. This way you establish business credibility and also send positive signals to Google and your prospects regarding the authenticity of your business.
According to a survey by Oberlo, 79% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and 59% of consumers read reviews on Google.
iii) Make your Business Easily Accessible: Having a GMB profile makes it easy for visitors to contact your business via the direct messaging option on your profile or by calling you. Thus your business becomes easily accessible.
64% of consumers have used Google business profiles to find the contact information of a business.
iv) Gain a Competitive Edge: You can also upload photos of your place and products which gives a better overview of your business to the visitors establishing a trust factor. Use this space to inform about the sales and offers to drive in more customers.
v) Equip you with Useful Insights: Google My Business brings you insights on how visitors reach your profile, what keywords they use to search, where your viewers are located, etc. These insights can be analyzed to improve your business online.
Case Study: Assume you run a cafeteria and have your business listed on Google. A group of tourists visit your city and search on Google for ‘a coffee shop near me'. Being listed on Google, your business appears on its search results, thus giving you the advantage of local search.
The aesthetic photos of your café added to the profile briefly describe the ambience of your place and give them an idea of how pleasant the atmosphere of the place is. The reviews added by your customers speak about the quality of your coffee and customer service, developing trust in your business over the others. The tourist group quickly reaches your cafe using your cafe location on Google Maps. Thus you gain a competitive edge over the other coffee shops that either do not have a Google Business Profile or fail to optimize it.
5. LAUNCH YOUR BUSINESS WEBSITE
There are several arguments on the Internet about whether a business needs a website or not. If you are also wondering whether your business needs a website or not, it is 2022, and a website is a basic essential for every business to grow online.
Benefits of having a business website
The Internet-savvy consumers of today look for a business’ website to find out more information about it before making a decision.
By uploading content on the website, you can boost your online visibility by ranking on search engine results and driving increased organic traffic without spending much of your fortune.
Include the relevant keywords and high-quality content on your website that addresses consumer queries to boost your rank on SERP. Higher online visibility means more brand awareness, more number of visitors and higher chances of converting your prospects to consumers.
Social media is undoubtedly one of the most evident ways to reach more visitors and build brand awareness, however, where will you direct your leads captured from your social media channels? Your website can be used wisely to nurture the captured leads and bring sales.
Share your story on the website, and tell the visitors who you are and how you can help them. With good website design, empathetic UI and UX, you can effortlessly move the visitors down the sales funnel.
A study reveals that nearly 75% of online users judge a business's credibility based on its website design.
Forms on your website help you collect vital consumer information including the emails that can be used for lead generation campaigns.
With an AI chatbot installed on your website, your website visitors can have 24*7 instant communication with your business and equipping them with the basic information. It makes the visitors feel your all-time availability for them.
With all these benefits, you might have got the answer to whether your business requires a website or not. If you wish to test the waters and do not want to invest money in website building, try building a website on your own on the Wix platform. You can build your website with easy drag and drop options without the knowledge of coding. Wix also offers cheap hosting plans where you purchase a domain and host your website with a minimum spend of more than 1500 INR per year.
You can also hire a freelance website designer to design an aesthetically appealing and technically sound website on WordPress. WordPress has many plugins that make your site faster and more SEO-compliant.
Keep a few things in check when you launch your website:
The website must be mobile-friendly as a maximum of the searches happen on mobile devices.
Your website must load faster as visitors abandon slow-loading websites, and you might lose your prospects in the run. The second delay in your website loading speed can cost you 7% of your leads.
The website navigation must be swift and simpler, providing relevant information to a visitor without much constraint.
Visitors must be able to easily contact you via your website and also get their queries cleared.
6. INVEST IN CONTENT MARKETING
When you are getting started to grow your business digitally, you might not want to invest a lot of money. At this juncture, you can grow your business with digital marketing; switch to organic content marketing at a minimum budget, producing lucrative results.
Do you know?
71% of people don’t trust sponsored ads, 69% don’t trust advertisements, and 65% don’t trust press releases.
The Internet users have started installing ad-blockers that leave the marketers helpless unless you are agile enough to switch to content marketing.
According to Content Marketing Institute’s survey, content marketing gets 3x the leads per dollar spent compared to paid search efforts & costs 62% less.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content marketing is a process of developing and distributing different forms of valuable and relevant content online to attract, engage, convert and retain customers. Content is any piece of information in the form of blogs, social media posts, videos, emails, newsletters, white papers, podcasts, etc.
Content marketing helps establish and nurture relationships with prospects and consumers who eventually turn your brand evangelists. Businesses that adopt content marketing witness a 30% higher growth than who do not.
Firstly, you need content to market it. A content writer is needed to fulfil the content needs. Content writing has thus emerged as one of the most sought-after skills in recent years. Entrepreneurs, at times, consider writing content by themselves, but trying to manage content and other tasks, they fail to dedicate enough time to their core competence.
Additionally, a professional content writer with years of experience knows the right tactics to frame content that brings good ROI. One other reason to hire a content writer is that he/she will write highly engaging content customized for every consumer touchpoint, thereby smoothly navigating the leads down the sales funnel.
The content on your website must reflect empathy, encompassing your prospects. It should satisfy Google's EAT principle - the content should project expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
There must be introductory content for first-time visitors like blogs, and case studies that attract leads – in short, include content for every stage of a consumer cycle on your website right from awareness to consideration to closing to retention stage.
Do you know what forms the base for your content marketing strategy?
It’s your buyer persona.
When you know your ideal consumer, you can create content around that persona for higher chances of conversion. Hence drafting a buyer persona is one of the initial steps to growing your business.
Let’s dive into the content marketing channels.
BLOGS & SEO
Blogs are not only a random page on a business website but a source of trusted information online. It is an avenue for you to educate the audience about your business, highlight their pain points, demonstrate how you can solve their problems, and nurture the acquired leads to becoming a consumer.
Blogs help exhibit thought leadership and show the audience that you own trusted expertise in the particular industry, and hence they can rely on your business.
It’s fine if you don’t believe me, but you would be amazed to find the stats on blogging.
A small business that blog get 126% more leads than those that don’t.
It’s for the lucrative benefits of blogs that more than 2.5 billion blog articles are published every year.
To stand out from run-of-the-mill blogs on the Internet and drive benefits for your business, follow these steps.
i) KEYWORD RESEARCH: Perform detailed keyword research relevant to your business. Think of the keywords your consumers might be searching for on Google, and consider their pain points. You can also find more keyword ideas from the competitor analysis, Google’s ‘people also ask for questions and community forums like Quora and Reddit.
ii) PRODUCE HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT: A blog is not a formality but an informal way of reaching out to your potential prospects and motivating them to make informed decisions. Thus it is worth investing in high-quality content for your blogs. The article must be written in a simple language that even an eighth-standard student understands. It must answer the consumer queries relevantly and inspire them to take action with the right CTA.
iii) SEO: SEO does not give you instant results but keeps bringing you relevant traffic in the long run. Include keywords in the title tag, H1 header, and in the opening paragraph of your blog. Break the blog into H2, H3 headings and optimally spaced paragraphs that enhance the readability of the content. Add relevant internal and external links with the right choice of anchor texts and add alt text for images. Do not indulge in random keyword stuffing that penalizes your content from getting ranked.
Do you know?
One of the main reasons online businesses fail is poor marketing and no search engine visibility.
When you use the right keywords, write high-quality content and optimize your blog, it ranks higher on the Search Engine Results Page. The chances of ranking on a featured snippet which is the very first result even above the paid advertisements are also high.
Ranking on top means driving more traffic to your site, getting more eyeballs to your business, generating more leads and better the chances for sales.
The biggest challenge for around 61% of marketers is generating traffic and leads for their website, and 53% of marketers even allocate more than half of their budget to lead generation campaigns.
However, by incorporating search engine optimized blogs on your website, you not only save your budget but also generate high-quality relevant leads.
Hiring a professional content writer can help you get the best bang out for your buck as he/she understands your audience and brilliantly embeds SEO strategies boosting the probability of ranking higher on SERP.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media marketing should be an indispensable part of your online business growth strategy to improve your business and get more customers online.
The rise of social media is mind-boggling as an average consumer spends 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media every day. 63% of millennials use social media as part of their purchasing journey.
78% of small businesses attract new customers and engage existing ones using social media.
These stats are evident enough for businesses to hop on social media sites and boost their visibility. Using social media as an active part of their marketing strategy, 51% of businesses now engage more with their customers and clients online than offline.
Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest, mark your business presence on all these platforms. Initially, post relevant content on all these platforms and eventually find out which platform works the best for you.
Use high-quality visuals because social media is entirely a game of visuals. The attention span of users is too less as they continuously scroll the feed, hence your content must be attractive enough to pause their endless scrolling.
BENEFITS OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR YOUR BUSINESS
i) BRAND AWARENESS:
Being present on social media means reaching out to millions of eyeballs on the Internet. Consistently post relevant content on social media that educate, entertains or informs the audience. Use relevant keywords and hashtags that relate to your business to reach more people interested in your business offering.
ii) INCREASED CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Ensure your social media posts are high-quality and highly relevant, driving conversation from the audience. People can directly raise their queries or show their interest via the comments section or DM, and hence the engagement rate is higher on social media. Top brands on Instagram see the highest engagement rates compared to Facebook and Twitter. Find out which platform works the best for you and try optimizing your content for it.
iii) STAY TOP OF CONSUMERS' MIND
When you consistently post content, interact with the audience and stay ahead of the social media trends, it not only boosts your brand awareness but makes your brand stay on top of consumers’ minds. For example, if you think of dairy product brands, Amul always stays on top of your mind because of their consistent creativity and engagement on social media. Staying on top of consumers' minds means when the consumer is ready to purchase, he/she will consider your brand over the alternates.
iv) INCREASED WEBSITE TRAFFIC & LEAD GENERATION
When people get impressed by your social media post, they accomplish the Call-To-Action mentioned in the post. For example, you can add CTA like “Visit our website for a free trial" of the tool. Via this CTA, you can drive the social media traffic to your website and collect leads. These leads are already interested in your business hence give them the best offers and make sales. Thus your social media content acts as a lead magnet and increases your sales.
v) TRUSTED CUSTOMER SUPPORT
A business available for customers round the clock has better conversion and retention rates. Having a presence on social media paves way for customers to directly contact and get their queries resolved. Install a chatbot or use the preset FAQ feature on social media platforms to initiate a conversation with the audience and make them feel your availability.
To get the most out of social media, you must leverage the latest trends, analyze what is your audience interested in, optimize your content, keep track of the best timing for posting content, consistently respond to the comments and DMs, and devise good strategies and understand the algorithms.
Performing all these tasks single-handedly while managing your business could be overwhelming. You can, instead, hire a social media manager who maintains a consistent brand identity, brand voice and tone across all the social media channels of your business. The social media marketer aids you with timely reports on how social media is bringing good ROI for your business ad how to leverage it further.
EMAIL MARKETING
Whenever you visit a website, a landing page or a blog, you might find a form asking you to submit your email address. Do you know why websites have these forms? To build a contact list for email marketing.
Email marketing is one of the cheapest and a lucrative forms of business marketing. Emails you’re your business a chance to directly reach out to your consumer and motivate him/her to make informed decisions.
Email marketing works well if you build a list of leads. Hence lead generation is always a prior step to a successful email marketing campaign followed by excellent email copies.
BENEFITS OF EMAIL MARKETING
Emails can be used as the first point of communication once a lead connects to your business. This can be a personalized welcome email.
Emails can be used to nurture the leads that submitted their contact on your website or a landing page.
Consumers love personalization, and via emails, you can have a personalized conversation with every lead boosting the chances for sales.
It can be used to remind the consumers who left products in their cart without completing the order. You can also offer personalized deals to such consumers motivating them to complete the purchase.
Case Study: Assume you share a social post and inform the audience that you are giving out a free e-book on ‘how to grow business online' and collecting the visitors' emails in return. This way you generate a lead and build your mailing list. As soon as the visitor submits his/her email, you send a personalized welcome email along with a copy of their free e-book.
After a few days, you release another e-book based on the advanced version of the same subject but price it at some X dollars. Now the people who submitted their contact and received the free e-book the previous time are your highest potential customers. They have already passed through the awareness and consideration stage of the funnel and are most likely to make a purchase i.e. conversion.
A study suggests that it costs upwards of 5-6 times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Hence you re-target your old mailing list and send them a personalized offer for buying your new book at a discounted price. This way, you not only retain customers but also boost your sales.
Do you receive brand emails? How many emails do you even open? The open rate of emails vastly depends upon the subject line. Additionally, the subject line of the email triggers the algorithm to categorize it as a primary, spam or promotional email.
Hire a professional copywriter who plays with words and writes email copies that generate higher open-rate and click-through rates.
7. PAID DIGITAL ADVERTISING
When you search for a product or a service on Google, have you noticed that the top few results are sponsored ads? The top part of the SERP’s real estate gets covered by these ads, and only when you scroll post 4-5 ad listings, do you reach the organic search results. Not only on search engines but even if you scroll through any social media site, your feed gets loaded with sponsored ads. This shows that paid ads occupy a majority stake in digital marketing.
Though you have a limited budget or limited experience in digital ads, it is worth giving a try. Digital ads are hyper-localized and precisely targeted based on various demographic data. This saves your ad budget from showing the ad only to the people who fall under your buyer persona.
Digital ads are easy to monitor, and they equip you with useful business stats and analytics. You can further utilize these analytics to boost your organic marketing as well.
There are paid search ads and paid social ads to choose from for advertising your business. Before you get overwhelmed with all the digital ad placement options, make a thorough analysis of what are your advertising goals. Do you want to drive brand awareness, generate leads or make sales? Once you decide on your goal, you can strategize your ad campaigns.
PPC ADS
You can advertise with Google Ads and PPC(Pay-Per-Click), where you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. With PPC ads, you can target the keywords that your potential customers might be searching for.
Brainstorm the relevant keywords for your business and check the cost-per-click of these keywords. If the CPC falls under your set ad budget, bid on those keywords. Once you bid on those keywords and follow the Google ads guidelines and design a relevant landing page for your ad with good and relevant content, your ad campaign gets launched.
With well-written PPC ads, you can occupy the top portion of the search results depending on your CPC bid and ad quality score. Because the PPC ads depend largely on the relevant keywords you target for your business, the audience searching for these keywords is likely interested in your business/products/services, hence the chances for conversion are higher.
SOCIAL ADS
Social media ads are nothing new to businesses these days. Facebook is one of the go-to platforms to run ad campaigns owing to its convenient and effective audience targeting options. You can display your ad to a group of people who fall under your set demographics, interest and other factors.
You can run image ads, video ads or carousel ads based on your ad goals. To help you better understand how to experiment with ads, Facebook offers courses on Facebook Blueprint.
With Instagram, you can also boost your top-performing posts but running a full-fledged ad campaign gives you better insights into how your ad performed. There are various ad placement options like you can run feed ads, story ads, explore page ads or reels ads.
Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn and every social media platform provide advertising opportunities. It is up to you to decide on which platform your target audience is majorly present and capitalize on it.
Set a minimum budget and experiment with different types of ads on various platforms and assess the results to find which platform and which ad type works the best for you. Digital marketing is always a trial and error process where you only grow when you keep experimenting and executing.
8. SET KPIs & ASSESS YOUR GROWTH
Executing business strategies without assessing the results and tracking the progress is similar to riding a train without knowing where you are heading to.
Every business has its key performance indicators that are nothing but a set of measurable values that help a business gauge how successful it is in achieving the set objectives or targets.
There are long and short-term KPIs, and there is no hard-fast rule for KPIs; every business has its own customized KPIs based on its goals. These KPIs vary from time to time as the business progresses.
The goal that you set must be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For example, setting a goal like increasing the lead to conversion rate by 25% in six months is a SMART goal.
The KPIs your business would set for achieving this goal would be something like, getting a 5x landing page traffic and 3x lead generation rate. By measuring the lead generation rate, you can assess whether your marketing strategies are driving visitors to take necessary actions or not. This assessment can be further utilized to optimize your landing page to boost the lead-to-conversion rate.
KPIs help the team stay focused on the same page towards achieving a common business end goal. Tracking the progress helps find out which strategies work and which do not thus save you from spending your time, money and efforts on things that don’t work out for your business.
Use tools like Google Analytics to analyze the key performance metrics that help you make better decisions by finding where your web traffic is coming from and which pages on your website are performing better so that you optimize them for better results.
9. USE FREE BUSINESS MARKETING TOOLS
Whether it’s finding the right keywords for your business, running email marketing campaigns, or designing logos and social media posts, several marketing tools are available in the digital market.
It is not necessary to burn your pocket on all these tools; there are various free tools available.
CANVA: An easy-to-use design platform that meets all your designing needs like logo, social media posts, videos, infographics, etc.
WIX: Convenient drag and drop features to design and host your website, landing page, e-commerce store and blog, starting with a free plan to cheap paid plans.
SEMRUSH: Discover the keywords relevant to your business, SEO audit of your website, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, etc.
MAILCHIMP: Design good emails, build mailing lists and boost your email marketing campaigns at zero costs.
ZAPIER: Automate the tasks for your business, saving time like sending a welcome email to the people who submitted their email address on the contact form on your landing page or nurturing the leads to convert.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: Appear on top of the local search results, showcase your products and services, collect reviews from your customers and boost your website SEO.
GOOGLE TRENDS: To find what’s trending so that you can create content leveraging the trends.
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE: Gives useful insights into your site traffic and website health. Check whether your webpage is indexed, find the keywords on your site that perform well, and check the core web vitals.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS: Find where the traffic to your website is coming from, understand who your audience is and analyze how well your marketing strategy is performing in terms of using website metrics.
BUFFER: Social media management with post scheduling and better insights into useful analytics.
TRELLO: A task management tool that all the team members can use to track the progress of a project and stay on the same page.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Consumers have moved online looking for better product insights, deals, brand interactions and effortless customer support, motivating businesses to move online.
To grow your business online, identify your niche and the target market which is a group of people likely to be interested in your business.
Draft your buyer persona – a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer who will make a successful purchase.
Create a Google My Business listing to drive traffic from local search results, collect and display reviews from your customers and drive increased traffic to your website.
Launch your business website enriched with good UI/UX design that smoothly moves the visitors down the marketing/sales funnel.
Invest in content marketing to grow your business digitally with a small budget.
Publish SEO blogs that inform and educate the audience about your product/services while addressing the common consumer pain points.
Utilize social media channels to grow your brand awareness, establish communication with your consumers and prospects and provide customer support.
Collect leads from your landing page and send them emails with enticing subject lines that motivate them to open the mail and perform the intended actions.
Invest in social media advertising to boost your brand awareness, and show the audience how you bring a solution to their problem.
Always set the KPIs for your business to track its growth and use free business marketing tools that help you boost your business.
CONCLUSION
The roadmap shared above will help your business set its mark in the saturated digital business marketplace. These are the initial steps to get your business going, however, for consistent growth, you must keep experimenting with the next-level strategies like the podcast, influencer marketing, collaboration with brands, AI-integrated digital marketing and so on.
Always have an eye on the recent trends in the market with the help of Google Trends and social media. Try brainstorming how you can leverage the trend for organic marketing of your product/service.
Keep a track of your consumer pain points and keep innovating solutions for them. Customer satisfaction must be your end goal, and revenue generation, branding and business growth goals will get accomplished in the process.
To maintain consistent communication with your consumers, enrich the consumer touchpoints with engaging content. You can reach out to us at Content Writer OPJ for efficient content strategy and content writing that help your business drive increased consumer interaction.
We will also help you reserve more time for your business by handling your social media management. Get in touch to elevate your business to a whole new level with a result-driven content marketing strategy.
FAQ
1. Can any type of business be grown online?
Every business has a scope to grow online with the right strategies and consumer communication. As 82% of consumers use online media every day compared to offline media, it is more likely that your customers are online. Initiate conversation with them, establish a relationship and drive more sales.
2. What is the difference between my target market and buyer persona?
The target market for your business is a particular group of people to whom your business aims to cater. The buyer persona is a fictional representation of an individual who is most likely to purchase from you as he/she is your ideal customer. The target market is selected based on the common interests of people that align with your business, whereas the buyer persona is built based on the buying potential of an individual.
3. Why should I have a Google My Business account?
Google supports small businesses via Google My Business listing. It gives your business a competitive advantage by boosting your brand awareness on local search results. A higher rank on search results drives increased online traffic to your website and increased visitors to your offline store as well. It also helps you collect reviews from your customers that become social proof to impress your prospects.
4. Do I need a website for my business?
As every offline shop needs a physical address, growing your business online requires a piece of real estate in the digital space. A website gives your business an upper hand over the competitors who don’t have one. You can create a website on Wix with an easy-to-use interface and with minimal (if you purchase a domain name and hosting) or without investment. Your website gives more information about your business to your prospects, establishes business credibility and initiates instant communication with the prospects. By tracking your website traffic, you get insights like when and where are your potential consumers located and how they reach out to you.
5. Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
Your Facebook page or your social media channels serve as a great place to market your business and give a brief about your products/services. But these places are used to drive brand awareness. The visitor-turned-leads from your social media pages must be redirected to your website where you give them a detailed overview of how you can help them. Consumers trust a business which has an active website. For example, if you own a resort and post photos of the attractions at your resort on your FB business page, the audience might be interested in your destination. They will look for the option to navigate to your website to find the best booking offers and deals and make a booking. In this case, if you don’t have a website, you might lose a potential customer.
6. Should I hire a content writer for my business?
Content marketing generates 3x as many leads as outbound marketing but costs 62% less. To capitalize on the lucrative benefits of content marketing, your business must create unique, enticing and engaging content that slides through the audience’s brains, keeping your business on top of their mind for a long. A professional content writer will help you the best to accomplish this objective and get your business a competitive edge in the market. Hence hiring a content writer is highly essential for every business trying to grow online.
7. Should every business have a blog? Do I need a blog for my business?
Every business trying to grow online must have a blog as blogs allow you to speak in-depth about your products/services. It makes the audience aware of the problem they might be facing and how it could be solved while gradually placing your product as a solution. A blog is the best place to include all the relevant keywords for your business and rank for these keywords, driving increased traffic consistently even after months. Well-written and optimized blogs also bring you high-quality backlinks that boost your website authority. Blogs are the best content pieces for TOFU and MOFU levels of marketing and driving leads into conversion stages.
8. Which social media platform should I use for my business?
Identify the niche and target market of your business and find out which platform your potential prospects are highly active on, where they discuss their issues and where do they come for solutions. Once you find the answer to these, you get an idea of which social media platforms best align with your business marketing plan. If you are still confused, post content on all the top social media sites for a certain period, check the insights and performance of your content on each of these sites and decide on which platform is giving the best ROI for your time and efforts.
To boost your business online via engaging content and content marketing, reach out to Content Writer OPJ.