Are you a business owner who wants to grow your business but doesn’t know much about marketing? Do you want to attract more customers to your business? Do you want a quick checklist of things you can do to grow your business?
This post is the third installment in the 10 part series which takes you through the basics of small business marketing. In the first post, we took you through the small business branding basics.
Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide Overview
The 10 part guide is divided into the following sections:
In this post, we help you understand the basics of online marketing. It’s possible that you already have tried and tested some of these ideas. Please skip through those sections and apply the ones that you find most relevant for your business.
People spend 1 out of 7 days of online browsing and consuming new content (Source). Creating a business website will build your credibility and provide you with a platform to talk to your potential customers about your business.
Setting up a website is quite easy these days. You don’t need to have a technical background to create your website. You can simply use pre-designed themes and additional information about your business. If you’re new to website creation, here are 25 important features you should include in your business website.
Website analytics provide you with insights into what your customers do when they visit your website. Google Analytics is a free tool which allows you to analyze this behavior by simply adding a small piece of auto-generated code to your website home page.
When you understand what customers are doing, you can modify your website to create an easy navigation experience. The analytics data will also tell you which type of content is most read and shared on your website. And you can use this data to focus on creating similar content in the future.
Keywords are ideas and topics which define what your content is about. What use is a website when no one visits it? Adding relevant keywords to your website content can increase your visibility over the internet.
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If you’re not sure where to start, you can use some of these free keyword research tools to get keyword suggestions for your website. Viewing the keyword along with their search volume can also help you understand what type of content your customers may be looking for.
Search engine optimization, commonly referred to as SEO is the process of getting traffic from search results on all search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo. When you create online assets for your business like the website, you need more people to be able to locate your website and find out more about your business. When you include relevant keywords in the content, then you make your business easily discoverable.
You can conduct a free SEO audit for your website to find out which areas you can modify on your website to reach a wider audience. Small steps like adding relevant image tags, meta tags or title tags on your website can help your SEO efforts.
A/B testing is the technical term for testing two or more variations for the same page, ad text, headline, call to action text or any element on your webpage. Setting up the test for the first time may require some technical understanding, but once you understand how to set up the test it’s easy to reiterate it.
With A/B testing the system will automatically display two variations of your page to your visitors. After certain days, you can see which of the variation attracts more attention and gives you better conversion.
Advantages of A/B testing include improved content engagement, reduced bounce rates, increased conversions and sales for your business.
Track your online reputation
You should be aware when people are talking about your business online. You can thank them for leaving you a good review and solve their issues if they have complaints, but how do you track what people are saying about you? You can use free tools like :
- Google alerts can be customized to send you a notification when any new content is added for the keywords you specify. You can also use this to monitor your competitors.
- Yext is a great tool if you’re a physical retail business. It allows you to manage your online listing on review sites to ensure that your information on these websites is up to date.
- Another great tool is Go Fish Digital, which allows you to track any negative experiences with your website.
Your website traffic can help you in building your online credibility, and monitoring your statistics will help you in understanding consumer behavior. Watch statistics like the number of pages per visitor, average time spent on your website and on each page, bounce rate, sources from where your visitors found you and your most popular landing pages. Understanding these statistics can help you improve your website content, and hence attract more traffic to your website.
This post was originally published on Just Creative.