There are many strategies to market a business online, gain visibility and attract new customers without spending a dime and millions of entrepreneurs like you are already using these strategies.
You’ve probably heard about these and the many possibilities the internet offers for your business growth so you decided to find out the right steps you can take to promote your business online.
As someone that’s worked with businesses to drive their growth outcomes for a number of years now, I can assure you, there are a lot of opportunities for small businesses in Africa and beyond to boost their growth using online strategies.
But, to experience real growth, you have to be able to find and identify the right strategies that will be best fit for your business based on your location, economic realities and brand goals.
That said, in this article, I’ll be listing out some of the key strategies that’s worked for some businesses and how you can use these strategies to sell your business online, in the following paragraphs.
Create a Goal
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I usually tell my clients, start with a goal. Because It’s nearly impossible to market a business online without creating a clear goal that outlines the specific things you want to achieve with your online marketing efforts.
So before you hit the road, take out a pen and paper to outline the things you want to achieve with your marketing effort.
Doing this gets to guide your marketing strategies, leading you to easily identify the realistic strategies that will lead you to actually achieve your outcomes.
Even if you’re without any decent idea about digital marketing and you want to engage an expert to handle your online marketing, take some steps to try and know exactly what you want to achieve so you can state it clearly to the expert you plan to engage.
With this, you will be able to create and align your strategies in a way that will lead you to achieve your outcomes much more easily.
Use Blogging & Content Marketing
Content marketing provides a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to market their business online without sounding salesy or overly promotional.
It is one of the biggest strategies that have been popularized with the onset of the internet. And it is being actively used by some of the most popular brands you already know. From Nike to Coca Cola, Apple and the rest of them.
Now, the thing about content marketing is that it gives you the opportunity to identify your audience clearly, find out their current problems or needs, create solutions to the problems and needs using content marketing thereby getting them to get acquainted with your brand, product or services.
What this does for you is that you’re able to effectively target mostly the people that will be interested in your brand with your content. It also gives you the chance to solve their problems while positioning you as the expert they can listen to.
Leveraging this strategy, you can grow your brand from scratch, and position it at the top echelon of the niche overtime without breaking a sweat.
This is one of the strategies that have worked for our brands when we got started. We’ve also implemented it for most brands and it has generated consistent results.
You can also leverage result driven and consistent content marketing to grow your brand, regardless of your location.
Get a Website
As an entrepreneur seeking to market a business online, getting a website should be one of your priorities because most of your marketing strategies are all going to lead back to your website.
Outside needing a website to promote your business, you also need a website to display your product, portfolio or as a platform where you get to reach people from different parts of the world.
To get started with getting a website, you’ll need a domain and web hosting account. Look at getting a domain that reflects your brand name and a hosting account from a company that is reliable.
As soon as this is sorted, you can take steps to create your website using a content management system like WordPress or building it from scratch using your own code.
After your website is all set up, you need to create specific pages that describes your services or products, using very compelling words that will convince customers to want to do business with you.
Furthermore, you want to create a testimonial page which shows what clients are saying about your business, services or products.
In a nutshell, create a catchy and nice website that clients will easily want to buy from.
Implement SEO
SEO or search engine optimization has helped a lot of businesses to grow from scratch without having to pay for expensive advertising.
It is a very important strategy that many businesses have used to grow from scratch without spending a lot of revenue on advertising. It is also a great strategy to drive sustainable growth. So you don’t just need a website, you also need SEO implemented on your website.
What search engine optimization does for you is that it gives you the chance to optimize your website, content and web pages with the right keywords and search terms used by your target audience.
It also allows you to know the content that matters to your target audience based on their searches and with this knowledge, you can create a better and more result driven content.
With all this in place, you’ll get to attract free visibility and web traffic to your website. And most times, this traffic can turn to paying customers.
So, as a business aiming to market your business online, you must plan to make search engine optimization a part of your key promotional strategy. This is very important.
Get your website optimized for search visibility, using all the on page, off page, technical SEO and all other important strategies that matters.
Engage in Social Media Marketing
The social media is a great place anyone can use to market a business online. Be it Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, the social media in itself is a huge part of the internet that’s given rise to so many business ideas.
As a business seeking to get visibility online, you can use social media marketing to create organic visibility both for your brand and website.
To get started with social media marketing, consider identifying the platform with the largest number of your target audience. This is because for the best results, you don’t have to get on all the platforms out there.
As soon as you’ve been able to identify the platforms with the largest number of your target audience, head over and create your profile on that platform, using usernames, profile picture and bio that describe your brand.
After your account is all set up, head over to find out other account in niches similar to yours, find out the content they are creating and the impact of the content on the audience based on the engagement. Do some further content research beyond this, to fully understand the content that matters to your target audience.
When this is fully done, you can start creating and sharing content on your platforms for your audience.
To get the most out of your social media, optimize your content using the right hashtags, tagging options and industry trends.
Don’t limit your content to one content form. Play around with different content format including written text, videos, audios, images etc. to fully understand what works for your audience.
At intervals, you can also share your blog posts on your social media platforms but ensure that this is done in a way that it doesn’t become spammy or too self-promotional.
Try out Guest Posting
Guest posting is a great way to reach a larger and bigger audience on other platforms, using strategic content marketing.
Most entrepreneurs have leveraged guest posting to market their business online by creating content and strategically posting them on platforms with relevant audience.
In return, these brands have been able to attract visibility, gain new readers heading over to their websites, attract new backlinks and in the long run, new customers.
To be successful with guest posting, you want to choose websites that have a relevant audience to your business. If you’re considering websites that are not directly relevant then the website has to be very big in terms of traffic so you can at least gain the benefits of a backlink or byline on the website.
Also, while trying to pitch websites for guest posting, pay attention to aim for websites that have previously published guest posts from other authors or websites actively looking for guest posts, instead of websites with no known guest posting content history.
Furthermore, to get a better chance at getting published, create content that is fully human created not AI generated content. This will increase the chances of your post getting approved for publishing.
Initiate Brand Collaboration
Brand collaborations gives you the chance to provide value for other brands while getting access to their audience and brand good will in return.
You can use brand collaboration to market a business online by engaging and working with other brands with audiences relevant to yours, to promote a particular cause that will expose you to that brand’s audience.
It could be anything from co-hosting a free event, content collaborations, sponsored posts etc.
Before engaging in brands collaboration, you have to identify and work with brands that have an audience relevant to yours, regardless of the industry.
Also, identify the key ways your collaborations will benefit the other brands and your own brand before getting started. Then as part of your proposal, point out this benefit to the other brand.
Invest in Storytelling
Storytelling has become a powerful tool for businesses to market and promote themselves. A lot of small business owners have leveraged.
This is one of the key strategies that worked for us when we were just getting started, many years ago. I’ve seen it work for other brands too, regardless of their location.
You can use storytelling to promote a business online in different ways. Starting from social media, you can use powerful storytelling as part of your social media content marketing effort.
Beyond social media, you also get to include it as part of your content marketing effort on your website.
Done well, this can make your content more relatable, improve your credibility while positioning you as a subject matter expert with industry experience.
And the best part of storytelling is that you don’t necessarily need to have the best stories. All you want to do is be able to craft and capture your personal experiences in your industry or with your products and services in a way that is both compelling and captivating to your audience as part of your content marketing effort.
When you put in the effort to do this so well, eventually, this becomes a major part of your brand experience.
Leverage Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the top digital marketing strategies engaged by businesses of all kinds, to drive engagement and build new audiences.
A lot of marketers believe it is one strategy that delivers a lot more returns on investment, compared to most other marketing strategies.
As a new entrepreneur seeking to market a business online using email marketing, you can consider building your email list from the scratch or using a cold email marketing strategy.
While building an email marketing list will take a longer time, in the long term, it will create a list with users that are already familiar with your brand, thus making it easier to convert this kind of audience with your marketing.
Final Words
There are many ways to promote any business online, free. But, the strategies you read here are some of the most realistic strategies that will be suitable for you if you’re running a business on a budget, regardless of your location.
The best part is that these strategies are not just time tested, they have been used by many entrepreneurs with clear results available all over the net. And I have used these strategies both for our brands and for our clients.
As you get started using these strategies, you want to pay attention to showing up consistently, putting in the work, creating a great product/service and a great customer service and you’ll watch the results trickle in, right before your eyes.
That said, you can get on our trainings here to get more adept at implementing these strategies for your business or contact our experts here to work with you to fix your online visibility for faster results.
Now, it’s over to you. What are your challenges when it comes to getting a better visibility for your business? drop your comments below.
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