50 ways to market your online business

The idea for 50 Ways To Market Your Online Business came from an infographic which was created by Raelyn Tan. We loved the infographic so we decided to expand on each tip to help increase understanding. The original infographic is attached below. Enjoy!

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SEO optimise your content

SEO optimising your content makes it easier for potential clients or customers to find your business online. When someone searches a query on the internet, Google’s aim is to provide answers as quick as possible. If your content is optimised to what the client is asking for, it enables you to rank the highest on Google or any other search engine.

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Create an attractive website

Creating an attractive website makes it a lot easier to catch the audience’s eye. No-one wants to look at a boring website as it makes browsing very tedious. Adding colour, a unique pattern, plenty of content and images gives you a higher chance of attracting an audience who will want to spend time on your website.

Create Social Media Profiles

In the past few years alone, social media has become of the main platforms for almost everything. Billions of people are active every day, so creating social media profiles for your business increases your chances of you being seen by a lot of potential clients. Getting involved will help to build your following, it may not be a lot at first but we all start somewhere!

Build an email list

Email marketing is one of the ways that companies get across bits of information, such as an update with content or a service they’re providing. Having a list of potential/current clients and businesses helps you send your commercial message which helps businesses and consumers stay connected.

Connect your personal Facebook profile

I’m not quite sure what they mean here, but from experience, you should create a business Facebook page which requires using your own personal profile.

Live streaming (FB live/Periscope)

Live streaming gives you better interaction with your audience. It allows you to reach people and interact on the spot, and also helps educate the audience on your business and what you do.

Conduct a webinar

By conducting a webinar, you can provide value by teaching people things you know. You can introduce yourself to the industry and showcase your business as a leader within the industry. Expenses are also kept low because all you need is just internet and a camera so you won’t have to worry about costs.

Hold a viral giveaway

Giveaways are a great tool for building your fan base and the less tedious the rules are to entering and applying, the more people you will have following your company. They enable you to engage with your audience whilst gaining a rich source of data, which helps you understand who your followers consist of. Having someone win your product/service, will increase likelihood of them spreading the word and your name.

Put up a recorded video about your offering

Some people engage more with multimedia content and videos than they do with written content. Posting videos about your business and what services/products you are offering might attract more of an audience than posting written content will.

Create an infographic and share it

Touching up on the previous post, a lot of people engage and respond more to visual posts rather than written. Creating an infographic provides information for people and if it's well designed so it stands out then you’ll have a higher chance of people actually reading it and or sharing it with their audience.

Join Facebook/LinkedIn groups

Joining groups on social media helps you to connect with the community. You can connect with like-minded people which enables collaborations and also creates a potential avenue for leads.

Share on Google+ communities

As stated in point 12, you can connect with similar people and helps you to connect with the community. Sharing on Google+ enables you to share content with people within your circles, and you can post anywhere on the platform.

Get on Twitter and start talking to people

Being on social media shouldn't be all about the numbers of likes and followers you accumulate. It should be all about engaging. Using social media allows you to talk to a wide variety of people and by actually engaging with them, this is a good way to get involved in the community.

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Initiate joint ventures with peers in the same niche

Initiating joint ventures are good tactics as you are building a relationship with another company. For instance, say that you specialise in web development, you can collaborate with another company that specialises in content writing. You can work alongside, getting them to provide content that you can use to develop the website. The benefits from this are that you will both provide a great service, and if the relationship is strong enough they can ask for a joint venture from you, vice versa.

Join someone’s program and become their star student

If there is a program you join revolving around the genre of your business and you become the star student, people will be extremely interested to know who you are and will talk about you as an example. This increases your profile which could often follow up to potential leads.

Don’t hesitate to praise your competitors

There is nothing wrong with praising your competitors, it gives clients a positive impression about you. Clients won’t want to work with anyone who they don’t feel good about, so showing your positive traits makes them feel ‘safe’ by choosing you.

Be a guest teacher in someone else’s program

Being a guest teacher means you are passing on your industry knowledge to other people. You have a chance of reaching a different audience who aren’t necessarily your audience which means you can gain more of an interest and gain a new following.

Have social sharing plugins on your site

By having the functionality for social sharing on your site, you open your website up to countless possibilities. For example, on this blog post there are some social share buttons to the left of the page. After reading this post, if you liked it enough you could instantly share it with your social audience which would help get more eyes on this post.

Create freebies and request for people to share

Just like hosting a giveaway, if you are giving away freebies via a competition, the requirements for people entering will be to like the post and tag friends or share it for their community of friends online to see. Doing this gives you a bit of an advantage when it comes to getting your business’ name out there.

Conduct a free challenge

By conducting a challenge, you can drive and increase engagement, thus promoting your brand.

Offer free spots to your course/free calls

Offering free spots to your course can attract potential clients as you’re giving them an opportunity to basically see what you are all about. Some accountants might charge you every time you call them, but if they were to offer free calls it could attract more potential clients as they get to "try before buying".

Leverage on holidays to boost sales

Not sure what they are talking about here, but on holidays such as Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, Easter etc. You can leverage these seasonal periods by creating promotions to boost sales.

Get on directories like Yelp and Google Places

Getting your business on directories improves your local visibility, clients nearby who are in need of your service or product can see your location which helps connect you with your target audience. It also helps you to get discovered more. Read more about that here.

Paid social media traffic

Paying for advertisements is one way to increase traffic. By running targeted social media campaigns you can get your content in front of the right audience which will increase engagement and potential revenue.

Other paid ads

Running pay per click campaigns can help boost traffic to your website even though it can be quite expensive (depending on your keywords). Google will get you to the top of the search results for your paid keywords, and every time someone clicks on your website, you pay Google.

Create your own affiliate program

An affiliate program is an arrangement in which an online merchant website pays an affiliate website commission to send them traffic or sales conversion. If you are selling a product, you can ask someone or a company with a large following to advertise, and if they convert they can earn commission. It’s just a great way to build and increase traffic as well as making more sales.

Guest post on larger sites

Guest posting means writing and publishing an article on someone else’s website or blog. It’s a great way to connect with new readers and get your name out there. Companies can charge different amounts for you to guest post, though some offer it for free or for a minimal fee.

Send press releases to get coverage

Writing a press release lets the media know about your business, it helps to promote your business’ appearance on the internet via. Blogs, websites, social networks and newspaper publications.

Create a content round-up, email these influencers

Creating a content round-up would be beneficial for you, as it attracts traffic, boosts your authority and helps to build relationships with influencers. It’s a blog or post which you gather industry expert’s opinions and insight for and it then features their contributions.

Have a great launch party when there’s something new

A launch party or event is a celebration of the business’ or company’s hard work towards a new product or service. It’s a way to formally announce the product to a particular group of people so your target audience. It keeps them updated and interested.

Republish your content on Medium

Republishing your content on Medium creates real engagement and helps you reach a new audience, as people who wouldn’t typically read your posts could stumble across them on here. You can be discovered and also gain new social media followings.

Use Wisestamp and update your email signature

Having an email signature is great because you can advertise yourself and your business on emails, using Wisestamp or similar signature generators you can set yourself a bar by having a professional email signature.