Starting a business can be tough. The relief of getting a business off the ground can quickly lead to complacency. However, this is not the time to take your foot off the gas. Once your business is established, these five tips on how to grow your business online can help you continue to reach more potential customers and grow your business exponentially.
1. Build a Fast and Modern Website
Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. If your website is outdated or slow, it can lead customers to believe your business may be the same. In a fast-paced economy, people are impatient. With the world at their fingertips, they may be quick to click to a competitor’s site if yours is unappealing or slow.
Fortunately, there are several ways you can improve the customer experience on your website:
- Well-designed navigation. Navigating your website should be fast and allow the customer to find all of the information they are seeking without digging for it. Easy-to-understand and straightforward navigation keeps customers engaged and encouraged to learn more.
- Quick page speed is non-negotiable for today’s business websites. With short attention spans, seconds lost to decreased page speed equals customers lost.
- Device consideration. Websites are viewed from a variety of devices. Whether your website is visited from a desktop, smartphone, or tablet, the experience should be the same. Your website design should take into consideration all of the ways your website may be viewed and how they differ in order to provide cohesiveness across all devices.
- Quality content. While design is essential to prevent immediate disengagement, quality content is the purpose of your potential customer’s search. It doesn’t matter how modern the design or quick the speed of your website is if the visitor can’t find the content they came for. Your content is an extension of your brand and should carry the same message and voice.
Creating a fast and modern website is the first step in learning how to grow a business online.
2. Utilize Social Media
To deliver your message to as many people as possible, you must be where most of the people are. Social media platforms are an incredible outreach tool for businesses, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind when utilizing social media for your business.
Know your target audience
Both the platforms you choose and the social media messages you convey should be reflective of the audience you are trying to reach.
While each platform has a different demographic, many social media platforms overlap and appeal to a wide variety of demographics. Even then, the message on the platform should be tailored to your target audience and the style of the platform. Knowing your target audience and how they interact with various social media platforms will enhance your social media efforts.
Determine social media objectives
What are you trying to achieve through your social media efforts? Objectives can be anything from product and services awareness to relationship building. Knowing your objectives will help target your actions.
Create a social media calendar
Consistency is key with social media. A social media calendar helps provide consistent social media content that doesn’t overlap and that provides a cohesive message.
Engage with your social media audience
This is where the social part comes in for social media. Engaging with your audience creates an intimacy that relays trust and commitment. When you engage with your audience, you create a bond that lasts beyond the next click.
Use social media tools
Each social media platform has unique tools, such as Instagram Stories. Participating in all of the tools available to you will help you and your business stand out against your competitors.
Consider social media ads
Social media ads can be very specifically targeted for the audience you are trying to reach. Test various types of social media ads and see what works for you. One type of message may work very well on one platform and not at all on another.
3. Increase Your YouTube Presence
When considering how to grow a business online, creating a YouTube presence or increasing an existing one must be high on the list. Your business’s YouTube presence gives you an opportunity to express the personality of your business while relaying its message in a much more personal manner.
YouTube has an advantage over other forms of social media in that your visitors have the choice to listen while they are engaged in other activities. Optimizing your YouTube content with strong titles, attractive thumbnails, and keyword-rich descriptions will attract more viewers, while YouTube advertising offers another way to grow your channel and your business.
4. Improve SEO for Your Website
One of the most important things you can do to grow your business online is to effectively utilize search engine optimization (SEO). All of your online efforts are futile if no one knows you are there.
SEO simply means designing all of the aspects of your website and other online business content in a way that allows it to show up through online search engine results. When someone is searching for a particular word or topic related to your business, you want to be at the top of that results list.
Both on-site and off-site factors can influence your search engine rankings. On-site is related to your content and how fresh and relevant it is to a particular topic. Off-site means your website is linked to other places on the web. Examples include your content being shared on social media or other websites linking to your content within theirs.
Your website’s SEO is crucial to the success of your online presence and, therefore, your business. There are a myriad of ways to improve your SEO. The best way is to utilize a results-driven SEO agency that inspires industry-specific engagement by driving relevant traffic that converts into real-life customers by triggering action on an optimized website.
5. Evolve Your Brand Online
Everything your business does, both online and offline, contributes to the brand identity of your business. When your brand is cohesive across all platforms, you ensure your brand is cemented in the minds of your potential customers.
Creating an emotional attachment to your brand will help it to be recalled at a later time and result in more testimonials and greater longevity in the customer relationship. When considering how to grow your business online, keep your business’s brand at the forefront of your strategy.
Help Growing Your Business Online
Creating an online business presence that stands apart takes strategic planning and implementation. SEO is an integral part of your plan. Increasing the online traffic from organic search to your business is pivotal to the development of your business’s online growth. We can help. Miromind specializes in delivering professional SEO & content marketing services to companies from across the globe. Contact us for more information on how we can help grow your business online.