Online Marketing Essentials If Your Goal Is to Increase Sales

If your goal isn't to increase your sales potential, you can stop reading here.

As a business owner, marketer, or sales professional, you know that “build it and they will come” isn’t how it works anymore.

The digital world has empowered businesses by making it simple to set up shop anywhere without a brick-and-mortar solution. The result is an incredible amount of competition in almost every industry. This is great for consumers, but also great for businesses— the ones with the strongest product and drive to succeed thrive. Here’s the big “But”: If no one knows that your products or services are strong, they won’t show interest or buy.

Seems obvious, right?

Yes, but many businesses out there still aren’t investing in the right marketing strategies for them.

Building a presence online has the potential to grab the attention of every possible customer.

So, where to start? There’s a box of tools that every business should be using to optimize their presence online. There are many approaches to attracting the right attention, and best practice changes constantly, but this is your basic list of marketing actions that will round off any business strategy to increase the potential for sales.

Website Design: Make It Pretty!

On the surface, your website helps you make a good first impression. It reflects your values, pride in your work and business, shows what you stand for, and is a resource for visitors, telling (preferably, showing) them how the benefits of your services solve all their problems—or at least the ones they came there to fix. Website design can be simple and sleek, or creative and inspirational. It all depends on what the goal for your website is for your business.

Website Optimization: And Make It Work

There are so many things you can do with content on your website, but it needs to be optimized so that people actually find it. Visitors in different stages of the Buyer’s Journey want to see different kinds of content, so you’ll need to place it carefully. You’ll need a path for them to follow, so CTA’s are crafted, navigation should be intuitive and helpful, and then there’s SEO. There’s a lot to think about in the SEO space, both technical and content-related. Is your site optimized for mobile? What about voice search? 60% of people started using voice search already in 2016, and stats show that if your mobile download speed is over 3 seconds visitors drop off and go elsewhere. We want people to stick around. Optimization is how we do it.

Brand Awareness: …Who Are You?

Brand awareness can be achieved with any combination of overlapping strategies, including design (Does your logo appeal to your audience? What about the colors and names you use?), and community engagement and outreach (content, ads, and outreach like social media engagement). Sharing articles that interest you as well as your own insights establish your industry authority, helping to garner trust with prospects…and potential backlinks to your website or social accounts. The trick is to experiment. Engaging in the right online communities with the right voice will get you in front of the audience that you want to be a part of your business journey.

Paid Ads: Pay to Play

Inbound marketing techniques are proven to get the most traction with prospects, but paid ads and PPC can boost awareness and visits if you’re still working on ranking for your ideal search topics and if you’re just starting out. It’s also a great way to promote new products, events, or a new spin on features. Beyond paid search terms, social posts can be sponsored or promoted, and social ads can get your brand in front of a larger audience if your reach is limited.

Contact Nurturing: Care to Share

Nurturing overlaps with content; it doesn’t just service to bring in prospects, but it works to show someone from any stage of the Buyer’s Journey that you care about them beyond a sales. Continue to email subscribers with helpful follow-up information or tips and tricks or offers that your data shows would interest them. Your customers can turn into your biggest ambassadors, but nurturing efforts also open up opportunities for return business.

Look at it this way: Everything you do online supports what you do in the real world. Customers can still go to the library or grab the analog Yellow Pages to look up the information you need, but it is sorely limited compared to the scope of the internet (and, honestly, when was the last time Google Search wasn’t your first go-to or even the decision-maker in your life from where to go for lunch to how to start marketing your business? …What, too on the nose?)

Few are using all of the opportunities out there to grab attention. And that’s okay! Not all of them are right for everybody. It takes a collaborative partnership to figure out where your audience is, what your specific goals are, to build a 360-degree strategy that covers the relevant bases. It takes a team effort, but the Return on Effort will be worth it.

What are your business goals? We’re here for you to help figure out the best strategy to reach them. Shoot us an email or let’s get on the phone!