About 64% of small businesses have a website. 51% of those businesses increased the number of online interactions they had with clients in 2020. The reason for the sudden increase was the pandemic.
As everyone was forced inside, they fled to the internet, and online businesses soared, and that trend isn’t expected to go anywhere. In fact, by 2022, e-retail revenue is expected to hit $6.54 trillion, up from $3.53 trillion in 2019.
That means that as a small business, your website is more important now than ever. If you want to grow and succeed as business shifts even farther into the virtual world, you need to start promoting your website in new and exciting ways.
To get you started, here are six tips for promoting your small business’s site.
1. Join Local Listing Services
Local listing services are sites that have information about businesses in your area. Usually, this information includes the business name, description, address, and contact information.
These services benefit you by getting your website info seen by people in your area. That will increase your number of potential clients, especially if you only operate locally.
Some of the top local listing services you can join include Google Local Places, Yelp, Bing Business, and Merchant Circle.
2. Invest In Guest Posts
Guest posting, also sometimes called guest blogging, is when you write content for another company’s website or they write content for yours. It helps drive traffic by creating a link between your site and someone else’s.
This is usually done with sites that have a similar audience to yours. For example, if you sell solar panels, it might be a good investment to guest post on a website about green living. That way, the readers are people who are interested in products like yours and might end up buying something.
Tactics like getting guest posts put on popular websites are at the heart of SEO marketing because they allow you to draw in an audience without making them search for you directly.
Guest posting also increases the number of links to your site that exist on the internet, which helps get you higher in search results. Having a company create guest posts for you is a great way to boost your site visits without having to carve out more time to craft content yourself (although make sure that you follow Google’s posting guidelines, otherwise you could be penalised and damage your traffic.)
3. Create A Unique Social Media Strategy
The main way to use social media to boost your website, and make money, is by posting engaging content that isn’t directly selling to the audience. Just be wary of the hashtags you use, as certain ones can land you in jail.
45% of people say they’ll unfollow brands that are too promotional, and 20% say they’ll unfollow repetitive brands. They don’t want their feed flooded with “look at me” content or the same post 20 times. That’s understandable, but it probably leaves you wondering what exactly you should post.
The top three things consumers say they want from brands are engagement with followers, new content, and on-brand content. That means, that you need to post original content that fits your brand but isn’t just “buy this” content.
The easiest way to do this is to share content that fits with your overall message.
Let’s go back to the solar panel company from earlier. If you were running that company, it would make sense to post about other environmental issues besides solar power. That way, the content is relevant to your audience, but not about you.
Over time these tactics draw a following to your social media account, giving you a larger platform to promote your site and services.
4. Start A Blog
Businesses that have a blog on their site bring in 55% more traffic than businesses that don’t, according to marketing experts. That makes starting a blog an easy way to bring in more traffic, especially if you add guest posts to it.
When choosing or writing content for your blog, ensure that it’s relevant, interesting, factual, and will be meaningful to your audience.
5. Create Compelling Content For Video-Based Sites
Consumers rate video as their favorite form of advertising to see on social media. This makes sense, given that 89% of video marketers say they see a good return on investment from video content.
What that means for you is that if you want to drive traffic to your website, you need compelling video content. This content should be on your site, and also on your social media. That way, people who come across you on another platform have a reason to click over and see what you’ve got going on.
So how do you create compelling video content?
You start by considering what will bring value to your audience. What can you teach them, show them, or help them with? People are more likely to watch content they get something from, so consider what you can create that gives back to your audience.
Once you know what it is you’re making, you have to make it good. Most people will click away if the video or audio quality is bad, so you need to focus on quality as well as the content.
Finally, focus on length. The optimal length for video content is about two minutes. If you go too far past that, people will lose interest.
6. Buy Ads On Complementary Sites
Buying ads have always been a great way to drive traffic to your business, and online ads are no exception. That being said, you have to approach them in a very specific way.
They need to be interesting enough to convince someone to click, a hard sell when 79% of internet users say they won’t click on an ad. Out of those who do click, 55% say they need your ad to have a relevant message, and 89% say they want the ad to lead directly to a product.
That means that to get the best bang for your buck you need ads that are interesting, directly about your service or product, and take the consumer right to the “buy” page.
As a bonus tip, keep in mind that 82% of people say they’ll close a webpage that has unskippable or autoplay ads. The trick is to let people check out your product because they want to, otherwise, they just get annoyed.
These six tips can help you attract traffic, increase revenue, and take your site promotion to the next level.
Read More Source
