10 ways to promote your business effectively
Here are 10 ways you can promote whatever business, product or service you have, whether it’s offline or online.
1. Create a website
Setting up a website is relatively easy. Making sure it’s attractive, functional, accessible and mobile-friendly can make your business look professional. There are many affordable website services to get your business online fast and with little cost. These services offer ready-made website templates with lead-generation features, free logos etc. Additionally, before marketing your website through any online channels, make sure your metadata is accurate and follows Google Webmaster guidelines.
2. Search engine optimisation
Your website will be of little use if nobody can find it with search engines. Simply optimising your website at the start is not enough. To get good coverage on search engines, you will need to work on your website regularly, monitoring your statistics closely and refining your website accordingly. You will also need to update your site frequently with keyword rich content and work on building quality backlinks to your site.
3. Create an app
An effective online promotion involves more than just a mobile-friendly website. Firms with a mobile app are ahead of the game when it comes to taking their marketing to the next level. Just to say, mobile apps increase visibility of your business to customers at all times, improve customer engagement, and turns them into the loyal lover of your product and/or service!
4. Ask for reviews
Most local and national sites and directories allow customer reviews. Encourage your customers to write reviews about your products or services. Whether good or bad, reviews make your business more credible to future customers, and can be lessons learned for you.
5. Set up a blog
Setting up your own blog costs little and, so long as it is easily maintained, is an excellent way to engage with your customers (both existing and prospective ones), provide them with updates and create content that is useful for your search engine presence. Interviewing other experts from your field is always useful and can help you build trust with your audience and create good content that can be shared. If you need free editorial images for your blog, check out our free stock photos post.
6. Advertising
Sending out press releases about your business or advertising in local or national newspapers, magazines and radio stations gets you the best reach. If you’re just starting out, your local newspaper may have a section in the paper just for that. Also, try printing out the URL of your website on your business cards or letterhead as they play a major role in business advertisement.
7. Offer a free consultation
Offering non-obligational consultation to people you think could use your services is useful because it gives you the opportunity to offer some practical suggestions and ideas to the client, and possibly encourage them to request your services to implement those ideas.
8. Offer to speak at a local event or meeting
This is much like the “Teach classes in your community” section but requires much less time and commitment. Not only does it showcase your knowledge and skills, but it can also be an invaluable place to network with people that may not generally attend actual “networking events”.
9. Corporate social responsibility
Make sure your business has a corporate social responsibility strategy integrated into your business model. Publicise your activities internally as well as externally to all stakeholders and encourage them to join you in your efforts.
10. Google AdWords
Google’s paid advertising program is a very effective way to get your website listed on search engines for your desired search terms. It can be very useful particularly in the short term while you work on improving your organic rank in the free listings. Due to increasing competition, the cost per click can be high, but you can set a maximum monthly budget to keep your costs under control. You can also try free advertising vouchers and get some advertising for your business for free.