Online Promotion Strategies to Grow Your Business
Creating a successful online promotion strategy for your Melbourne business involves more than just developing a website, writing the occasional blog post and sharing information on social media. It requires being vigilant, strategic, and learning how to analyse your activities to ascertain what is working and what isn’t.
An online marketing strategy is essentially the same as any other marketing strategy, in that it requires researching your target market, knowing their purchasing habits, needs and preferences, knowing who your competitors are, and understanding your position in the market. Where it differs is in the method.
Elements of online promotion strategies
Website SEO:
When people do searches on the internet, the search engine brings up a Search Engine Results Page or SERP. Naturally, site owners all want their site to get top ranking so it appears at the top of the list, as people tend to click on the top link that comes up.
This requires knowing how SEO works. There are various ways to optimise your site for search engines – such as using popular search terms and words in your content, and guest blogging. However these methods, while useful, have often been overused. Search engines are now onto it, and are demoting sites that are considered to be gaming the system. So these days, while these methods still have their place, the emphasis is more on providing site content that is unique, high-quality, well-written, and useful and relevant to your audience.
A good way to do this is to add regular fresh content to your site through blog posts, articles, and / or videos. You may need to consult with a SEO or content marketing professional to guide you in optimising your site, and consider outsourcing your content writing to a web writing company.
You might also want to consider paid online ads, even if only on a temporary basis, to give your site a bit of a promotion boost.
Social media:
Social media is fast gaining traction as a marketing tool. It can be used to share your web content, post videos, post links to marketing campaigns, specials, and competitions, and to engage with your existing or potential customers.
Research also indicates that using social networks is one of the best methods of engaging millennials (18 to 36-year-olds), as this group tends to value the opinion of trusted people and friends over advertising.
Choosing the social platforms to use will depend on your business and your audience. It’s usually a good idea to use several – with LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter all providing value for businesses.
Email campaigns:
Tools such as MailChimp and ConstantContact provide platforms for email marketing campaigns, which include templates, reporting and analytics software.
Influencer marketing:
These days, people are becoming less trusting of marketing hype, and more trusting of the opinions of people, especially those they know. This is where influencer marketing comes in. This can come in the form of people sharing information with their friends on social networks, blog outreach where popular bloggers try out and review products, customer testimonials on websites, and online reviews.
Mobile websites:
Finally, it’s also important to optimise for mobile, and use analytics so you can hone and refine your campaigns, and measure your return on investment. But most importantly – online marketing and promotion is all about building up trust and engaging with your audience, and providing them with the best in all that you do.
