How to Grow Your Business Online: Part 2 – Drive Customers
Posted by. Disrupt Tech. February 5, 2022
This is the 2nd part of the How to Grow Your Business Online series. In part 1, we have walked through the market research process. Today, we are going to discuss how you can drive those people you researched into your business. So, let’s get started.
Driving more customers online means getting more exposure for your business on the digital marketing channels. Why is this online presence essential?
According to the Local Consumer Review Survey, 2020 – “93% of the consumers searched online for a local business. From these, 34% searched every day, while 73% searched weekly (up from 70%).”
We will discuss how to build online visibility. But before that, you need to remember that driving customers and monetizing customers are two very different things.
Think! Did Apple ever force you to buy an iPhone? No. What do they do? They show you the experience you’ll have with an iPhone or iMac or whatever. Why?
It’s because they play the long game. And, every business should. Thus, you need to focus on creating a delightful experience rather than forcing people to convert.
Sadly, all these don’t happen overnight. If you see other people making quick sales and getting ahead in the short term, don’t get confused. Most people trade long-term brand building for short-term progress.
Anyway, let’s start our step by step journey to drive more customers into your business –
Step 1: Build Your Website and Social Channels
Whatever your niche is, your business needs a website. Your website is your home. And this website needs to be SEO optimized to rank on the first page of SERPs (search engine results pages). There’s a saying,
“The Best Place to Hide a Dead Body is the Page Two of Google Search Result”
Having said that, 3.96 billion people are using social media worldwide. Most of them are active. It means your customers are there hanging out there on social media platforms. Other than reaching these people, a well-structured social media account will also instill trust and credibility.
Here are some suggestions that you should follow –
♦ Make your website clean, intuitive with a lot of breathing space. Use it to show off your brand, trigger pain points, and offer your solution.
♦ Make it easy for people to learn more about you, your offer. There should be minimal effort to engage with you and contact you personally.
♦ Research the keywords and optimize your layout and SEO accordingly
♦ Focus on your On-page SEO. Without it, your Off-page SEO will never improve.
♦ Use CTA(Call-to-action) to generate leads and grow your email list.
Create your Google My Business account.
Find out which social media sites your customers are active on based on your market research. Strategize your content marketing efforts for those mediums.
Put valuable micro contents on the selected social media platforms regularly.
Step 2: Produce as Much Content as You Can
Businesses have changed over the past 50 years. Now you have your social media account. You have your own website. These digital technologies have made it so easy to provide more and more value.
This value is mostly generated through contents – blogs, vlogs, infographics, podcasts, and so on. You can provide value, educate them, entertain them, grab attention and build your brand.
Contents are like the gateway to attract attention. So, draft the journey you want to give your customers and produce as much content as you can for every step of the journey. Quality and quantity – both are important.
The secret to producing a lot of contents is to be yourself. If you be yourself and don’t care about making up your online personality, it will be easier for you to produce more content in a short time. Narrow your focus, document the process, and build contents. Being yourself will also help you stand out from the crowd.
Step 3: Spend Your Money to Distribute the Contents
To give people value, you need to put your contents in front of them. You may think, “I am not selling or making any profit. So why would I spend all this money for zero ROI?”
Let me tell you, you are taking gold for pennies. Attention is gold. By getting their eyeball, their attention, you are creating unbelievable opportunities for your business.
Ok then, how to do it? There are a number of ways –
♦ Set up your Google AdWords and buy ads.
♦ Advertise on Facebook and Instagram.
♦ LinkedIn is still cheap. For B2Bs, LinkedIn is a great opportunity you should take advantage of.
♦ Make deals with influencers to help you get more reach.
Step 4: Practice Social Listening
So, you know already that you should provide value through your contents. How so? How would you know that you are providing values?
By social listening. As you put your contents out in the world, people will react. They will comment, send you direct messages, they will ask you questions in the comment sections. Analyzing the engagement will tell you if you are providing values. More importantly, you will understand what they need and want.
If you meet their need and provide what they want – you are providing value. As simple as that.
Step 5: Engage Yourself
By engaging yourself, I meant, commenting on social media channels, forums. Commenting on ongoing conversation increases your brand awareness. It can be your own post or any other post as long as it’s within your industry and expertise.
Why?
Simple. When you will comment, your name shows up. It establishes your authority to the people who already know you. And those, who don’t know you yet, will visit your profile out of curiosity. Don’t forget, all this visibility and attention-grabbing is absolutely free!
Step 6: Always be Improving
Be an “imperfectionist”. Nobody is ever going to be perfect. That’s the way marketing works. Without trying, you have nothing to test. Hence, what you need to do is, track and then measure your effort in order to build from there. Tinker and improve your content, strategy, offer, pricing – everything. Find out what’s not working or where there’s room for improvements.
More importantly, where you can provide more values. Spot the friction in the customer journey and continuously improve to reach your destination. You got this.
Conclusion
What if you follow the guideline and still not getting the expected engagement? It’s perfectly all right. Remember we said it takes time? It does. Building anything sustainable takes a long time. Your brand needs a foundation to stand on. It’s invisible but always existent. Thus, never give up even if the numbers ditch you. Keep executing – consistently provide value to the best of your ability.