These 4 simple steps will teach you how to reach more customers online and increase your event attendance.
Get More Visible Online in 4 Simple Steps
Author Credit: Merlin Torrey
Overlooking the need for online visibility is a big problem with small businesses. If you can see all your posts and search your business on Google, then how come no one else can seem to find you? Our search engines save our recent searches so that it can seem as though your business is easily findable when, actually, no other person can see it. Here is how you can get more visible online in four simple steps.
Step 1: Optimise Your Website
Use SEO to optimize your website so that you have keywords that help you level up through the ranks on popular search engines. Often you can go into your website’s settings and simply enter the keywords you want. Spend some time researching this as it is quite important that you get it right. Ensure that you spell the words correctly and use phrases too if the site allows. Consider the words that your target audience would use to search for you. Both the obvious and the slightly obscure. Remember that you can often do this for your homepages and for your product listings if you are running an e-Commerce shop. OD not just copy and paste the same keywords. Ensure they are accurate and pin-pointed towards the product you are trying to bring attention to.
Step 2: Join Google My Business
This is a free tool that will help you maximize your visibility online. When you join Google My Business they send a code to your business address so you must have one of these to apply. It is a brilliant way to get your business on the map – literally, as it adds your business website and contact information to Google Maps and Google Search. It is a brilliant way of increasing your visibility to potential customers and letting them know you are out there.
Step 3: Post Amazing Content Regularly
When you begin to post regular content, it makes your sites more active. This in turn will boost your growth in popularity and visibility on social media. Ensure that your content is useful, exciting and readable for your audience. Consider what kind of content you would like to see more of from your favourite brands and businesses and release it yourself. Think outside the box, get creative with it. When it comes to content on social media, new and different is almost always good. Keep an eye on what your target audience is interested in and remember – always optimise your content.
Step 4: Market Yourself Non-Digitally
A proactive way to gain customers is to let local people know about your business. You can do this by holding a local event or attending a business meet. Simply mentioning your business to people you meet when you are out and about can be a great way of increasing the number of people who know about your company. Create a business card that you can use to directly link people to your business, ensure that it has links to your website and contact information on it and hand them out to people. You could be surprised by the amount of traffic this drives to your site. Another use for cards is to add them into product packaging when you post out to customers or in goodie bags if you run an event. A lot of people might ignore the card but if you give them an incentive alongside this (like a money-off voucher) then you might just get a lot of people visiting your website.
Building on your online visibility is a great way to gain access to a wider market of potential customers and, therefore – hopefully, sales! When you start to think about your business from this perspective, it gives you more scope to build and grow from the bottom up instead of spending an extortionate amount of money on advertising when you will probably not be hitting the correct, or large enough target market.
