You’ve got into your own business?
Got a neat professional website?
Have your own short – term and long – term goals in terms of sales and revenue?
Gained enough resources for developing your small business?
Framed a small budget for marketing and promotional purposes?
If your answer is a big ‘YES’ for all these questions, come on and jump into marketing your product worldwide to start making money out of it. There are lots of marketing ideas that you can do manually in your own area to make people come to know about you. But, your goal is to reach all over the globe man!!! But how? Here’s the answer to that too – “Online Marketing”.
Did you know that 61% of global internet users research products online?
Did you know that almost 40% of the world’s population (3 billion people) are using the internet?
Did you know that 71% of internet users are more likely to purchase a brand that they are following in a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook?
All these facts prove the importance of online marketing for your product to get visible worldwide, thereby getting your potential customers.
Hey, but you don’t need to worry about how to start marketing your business online at the start. With the little number of bucks you have and the least amount of resources or even by yourself, you can make your business online marketing like a cake-walk.
Here are ten perfect ideas to start marketing your business online. Have a keen read on these tips and start using it for your marketing giving a brand image for your business worldwide.
1.Build Your Own Blog
It’s important to have your own blog in your web page and you gotta add posts on a daily basis to reach your target audience effectively. Saying it more clearly, let your blog posts directly or indirectly speak about yourselves and your product to get sold. People always look for useful info that might influence their purchases. So write up posts that would induce your potential customers to buy your products and keep them coming back to your page.
Go through these simple tips about what kind of content you can have in your blog posts.
- Collect statistical lists related to your business that might be interesting and make it into a post and share it.
- Curate content from other sources and add your own taste of unique content to it, giving due credits to the sources..
- Teach your readers by providing ‘how to’ and ‘top10’ kind of lists posts.
- Check out your Analytics account every now and then and see which posts have gained more visibility and popularity among visitors, and rewrite or write posts related to such topics.
- Be keen on writing catchy titles because only if your headline is attractive, one will have the urge to look into it.
- Make good use of templates, infographics, graphs, and charts in your blog posts as people always go for visually appealing content rather than plain-text ones.
So, the key points to keep in mind for promoting your business through the blog are churning out quality content, inviting bloggers/influencers who might be interested in your business and share it over the web platform to reach worldwide.
2.Brand Your Business
What’s branding in marketing?
Assigning a name or a symbol or a design unique to your business can be called as a brand.
A logo is the principal branding identity that provides a distinct image for your business. You want to make your product reach over the globe and the first thing you have to do is to design a special logo.
Just think about some branded companies like Apple, Nike, Reebok,…….All that pops up in your mind is that logo right?
Logos are the face of your business. So, be careful while designing it. The way your logo is designed greatly impacts your customers coming forward to buy it.
Some reminders before designing a logo for your business:
- Your logo should be tempting to your target audience.
- Let your logo be a unique and special one.
- Your logo should be classic lasting with time.
- Setup your logo with a trend and not copying from others.
- Your logo should be simple conveying its own special message.
- Your logo design should support your brand.
- Use colors, fonts, white spaces and shapes correctly such that it reinforces your product.
- Your logo should be flexible for big screens/mobile screens and its print in black/white color.
Examples of some best Logos
3. Get On Some Stylish Business Cards
The best marketing tool that is handy for your business is a business card. Having an attractive set of business cards in your pocket and handing it over to ever people with each handshake, doesn’t it sound good?
Design your business card with a benefit-driven headline always. It should be like:
“Benefit + How”
For example, “We provide the best home-based food for you by adding organic ingredients” can be the headline for a home-based food style restaurant.
Another point to be kept in mind is, always provide your business card to the other with a specific call to action.
For example, render some firsthand offer for them to download from your website by collecting their email address.
Give a handshake…Slip on your business card into their hands…Let them take a glance into your card and that’s more than enough buddy!
4. Get Your Business Listed On Business Directories
Do you know that nowadays people search on the internet for businesses? It’s necessary that you list your business in some of the main business directory websites so that people can come to know about your business.
Some of the common popular online business directories where you can list out your business are Craiglist, Yelp, Yellowpages, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Angie’s list, Manta, Foursquare, MerchantCircle, LinkedIn, The Business Journal and so on.
There are also so many business directories specific for your business and you can also list yourself in those niche-specific websites.
Guess you don’t have to think over this as it’s completely free!
5.Promote And Advertise Your Product
There are various ways by which you can promote and advertise your product online, thereby gaining potential customers for your business.
Go through these simple ideas that are put forward for promotion and advertisement of your business.
- You can implement to cross-sell your product by establishing a joint venture with other business owners who sell products that would complement yours. By this marketing practice, you can easily make your customers buy your product.
- Begin a customer referral program by offering your existing customer a free month of service, a free product, or some other profitable reward for referring new customers.
- Providing giveaways/free stuff/ sweepstakes for your target audience can again promote your business. This technique is easy and also you can ask for a free email subscription with the submission form.
- Make up a Press Release (PR) that’s newsworthy and interesting about your business based upon your data and share it widely.
- You can also offer free work or pay a little amount for your website visitors.
6. Send Cold Mails And Make Cold Calls
The next way to trigger up your sales is to send cold emails and make cold calls to potential customers all over the globe.
The main hints for sending a successful cold mail that would generate a good number of leads for your business are subject lines, and then the body of the mail. Subject lines should be always targeted towards the customer focusing on what benefit they would reap out of your product.
Making cold calls is always executed by business owners all over the world to make common people know about their product. This technique has also been successful in generating sales for businesses as people talk over phones and convince customers to buy their product.
7.Adopt Social Media Marketing
Social media has been the recent trend in online marketing and the one which gets you good business online. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest and the like have taken millions of small business owners to great heights.
Continue reading below to know how to create a brand image for your business via social media marketing.
- Make use of your blogger profile for commenting on other peoples’ blog posts so that you’ll be visible on their platform. You could provide useful information to their blog visitors, and automatically people would check your public profile and website.
- Setup a Facebook page for your business and start posting updates.
- Setup a Google+ page for your business and be active in it.
- Setup the LinkedIn Company page and let people know about your business.
- Setup Company page on Pinterest and start sharing images and infographics.
- Setup Twitter profile for your business and tweet on an everyday basis.
- Sign up a Youtube account and start posting videos about your product, teach the viewers and address their common questions too.
8.Gear Up On Email Marketing
Email marketing is taking its grand place in promoting your business online to potential customers. It helps to retain current/previous customers and also gain new customers. Let’s see how it works.
- First of all, make sure that you’ve implemented Opt-in for your marketing emails which mean that you obtain prior permission from the customer or recipient of the mail for allowing you to send more emails. This would surely increase your credibility with the customer.
- Start an e-mail newsletter and make your new website visitors subscribe to it by offering any bonus content price for subscribing. Then you can slowly grow your subscriber’s list and transform them into paying customers by sending quality emails about your offers and promotions.
- Build a candid e-mail signature and add a link to your giveaway content and auto subscribe the person who downloads that.
You can start and continue your email marketing campaigns using free services like MailChimp.
A Sample Simple Newsletter Subscription Form
9. Be A Part Of Networking
Networking plays a vital role in connecting with people doing businesses similar to yours and to other potential customers all around the world. If you have started your business, and just sitting with a cup of drink on your desk, you’re not going to succeed in it. The success of your business lies in how much you get connected with prospective buyers through various networking groups and events.
- You can make yourself as a part of local events in your area by either sponsoring food or any giveaways (like custom balloons printed with your business name). The trade show or event that you’re participating should be related to your business so that you can visit and talk about your product to the visitors.
- Join Mastermind Groups related to your business so that you can meet partners over there.
- You can also get good contacts by joining Membership groups on LinkedIn and Facebook and other forums.
- Host your own free webinar.
Finally, don’t forget to send out gifts and handwritten Thank you cards to your customers via post.
10.Publish Great Content
Content Marketing is becoming the backbone of so many businesses and it yields good returns in turn for the owners.
Just grasp these key points on how to publish good content which will, in turn, yield good revenue for you.
- Focus on your audience
- Add visual elements (infographics, videos and slides)
- Interview experts in your industry and publish it in your blog
- Let your titles focus on Top 10 lists which attracts people to read
- Write e-books, whitepapers, guides and publish it in your website
Don’t just stop with framing up with good content. Get on with publishing and sharing it on top social networks and your email subscribers and then you get to see its results soon.