How can you advertise your business online? Through social media, of course! Social media marketing has been rising in popularity over the last few years and with good reason; it’s an inexpensive way to promote your business, reach potential customers and connect with them. Here are seven ways to promote your business online through social media that you can start using today.
How to Advertise Online: Brand Awareness
If you want your business to be successful, you need customers. Therefore, you must promote yourself and your brand so that customers can find you and become aware of your company and what you offer. One of the best ways to do so is through brand awareness efforts like traditional advertising campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), social media promotion, and more. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way for companies or brands to have their business be found by online consumers via search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. It’s typically very inexpensive yet has a high return on investment compared with other forms of advertising.
Ways to Promote Your Business Online: Get Noticed
If you’re starting a business and want to know of ways to promote your business online, it’s likely that you don’t have a lot of resources—money or time. When you have limited resources, it’s important to use them wisely. Many businesses can benefit from online advertising if they know-how. For example, if your business operates locally, Facebook Ads could be a great way to promote your services.
How to Advertise Online: Target Local Audiences
The key to advertising online is picking your audiences. If you’re opening a physical retail store, identifying potential customers within driving distance is fairly easy—you can use Google Maps and other geo-targeting apps. When you’re promoting your business online, however, it isn’t quite as straightforward. If you want to attract local customers, do some research into which geo-locations and demographics are most likely to be interested in your product or service. For example, if you own a restaurant that caters heavily toward families with young children and your area has an abundance of young parents living within five miles of downtown in family housing complexes, these are good places to start looking for potential customers online.
How to Advertise Online: Boost Engagement
If you own a local business and have customers who live in your area, online advertising is an effective way to reach them. Ads can run on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, and these ads are designed for maximum impact: They don’t interrupt users’ browsing experience, they look almost exactly like organic posts and they appear in news feeds where you’re most likely to get clicks. Social networks also allow businesses access to demographic information that can be used for ad targeting. One of their best features? They’re relatively inexpensive. Targeted messaging typically costs pennies per impression (views) or click (clicks). If your product is relevant, that price makes it very easy for people to see your offer—and make a purchase if it interests them.
How to Advertise Online: Segment Data
It’s important that you understand who your target market is when advertising online. Once you know your niche, it’s time to do some segmenting. It’s generally easier to get a good return on your investment when you focus on one specific group of people with similar buying habits and preferences rather than trying to cover everyone. When figuring out how and where you want to advertise online, determine how much it costs per click for each platform you plan on using, as well as what is considered a good return for each respective platform before deciding which ones are worth investing in.
How to Advertise Online: Start a Blog
Promoting your business online can seem a little intimidating. There are so many different ways you can advertise online and it’s often hard to know where to start. To make it easier for you, we suggest starting a small business website (if you don’t already have one). Having a website of your own gives you greater control over your digital presence, provides an affordable way for customers and potential investors alike to contact you, and allows you more freedom when promoting your products or services.
How to Advertise Online: Offer a Free Product or Service to Prospects
A great way to get your new business in front of people is by offering a free trial of a product or service. This gives your potential customers a reason to try out your business for free, and it shows that you’re confident enough in what you offer that you’re willing to give away your best goods for free—right off the bat. Keep in mind that, when trying out a new marketing tool like Google AdWords, how much and how often you promote might influence how effective it is. In other words, if you blast full-page ads all over Google, people might have already clicked on them or seen them somewhere else online before they even see them on Google. So test around with these kinds of promotions and see what works best for you!
