How do you ensure that your business stands out from the crowd? No matter how much time you have spent perfecting your product or service, no matter how good your real or virtual store is, you will not be making any money if you do not have customers. You need to get the tills ringing to make your business a success. What you need to do is to attract quality traffic. It is essential to define your target audience. Otherwise, you could spend a lot of energy getting visits from the wrong people. It is not good enough to simply open the doors, whether virtual or real and expect potential buyers to come.
Social Media
If you have done your market research, you will have a good idea of who you want to appeal to. You will be aware of who will be interested in your product, and you will tailor your promotion and brand to appeal to the right people. Even your choice of social media platform is important as they have pretty different broad demographics. For example, Facebook might have been the first notable social media success, but it is not necessarily the place to find younger shoppers. For a more youthful audience, Instagram is probably the place to get noticed, and TikTok is also an important place to be seen. Business-to-business organisations might consider LinkedIn or Twitter as more suitable platforms. Also, do not forget that YouTube is still highly influential.
Influencers
Talking of influential, you might want to think about working with social media influencers. While not everyone can get a superstar brand ambassador onside, we can all find people to help promote our goods and services. If you are a smaller company or a new start-up, looking for someone you would like to cross-promote is a good idea. For example, if you are doing an exciting launch, you could offer to show off someone else’s brand in return for them doing the same for you. Reciprocal links between websites will also help to build traffic to both sites. Hopefully, an influencer will tell their followers just how great your brand is, and you might want to offer tailored promotions to their devotees.
Promotions
Promotions take on many shapes and forms. They can be as simple as money-off coupons and as complex as digital schemes like Tesco’s Clubcard. What you are looking to do is to incentivise your customers to spend their money with you. It is worth trying to avoid giving them money off if they are going to shop anyway. However, this is not always possible. Sometimes it is enough to get people to come and try out what you have on offer. For example, if you have a food or cosmetics brand, this could be a free sample. Other sectors offer bonuses to engage people. The online gambling industry, for example, has a list of best casino bonuses that includes 50 wager-free spins and 100% bonus of up to to £100 to encourage players to try new games and sites.
Reviews
Reviews are another great way to get your business noticed. Do not be afraid to ask people what they think about your brand and to publish these reviews on your social media pages and websites. When people buy from you, collect their email addresses and send a link to them asking for feedback. Make sure you have complied with GDPR rules when collecting data. You can either use a review section on your website or one of the existing review sites like Google, Trip Advisor, or Trust Pilot. The advantage of using external review sites is that new, potential customers will be able to see what your existing customers think. If you keep everything within your website, you risk talking to an echo chamber.
Whenever you get good feedback, remember to blow your own trumpet. Create interesting social media posts with details of the reviews. Some of the best marketing tools are organic and considerably less expensive than paid-for media.