Your business website is the first impression customers get of your company. No matter where they find out about your business, most people these days check you out on the Web first. Your website needs to reflect your brand and stand out from the competition so that customers can find you easily. If you’re not yet using Google Analytics or other digital marketing tools to analyze traffic to your site, read on to help you understand where potential visitors are coming from, what they’re searching for, and why they’re not finding what they’re seeking.
Many businesses believe that just having a website is enough to promote their brand online. After all, who would click on an uninvited or poorly designed webpage? However, if you don’t implement a few additional strategies, your business could end up losing potential leads and customers because most people won’t even know about you unless someone tells them about you specifically. Here are some of the best ways to promote your local business website.
Create Content That People Want to Read
To build traffic to your site, potential visitors will have to find you, and creating content they want to read is the first step to doing that. To boost your site’s search engine traffic, you must make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for by making helpful, quality content that is easy to read. While writing an article isn’t terribly difficult, producing it can be time-consuming and tedious. If you’re busy running an entire business, you probably won’t take the time to produce content that people would like to read and that answers their questions or provides the information they value. To make your job easier, hire a freelance writer to draft your articles for you.
Another way to make your content easier to read is to take advantage of social media. Let’s say your business sells high-end handbags. You could post a picture of your bags on social media and write a few sentences about yourself and your company. If you’re aiming for a high level of engagement, you could ask people to comment on your photos and posts. Not only will this give you insights into your target market, but it will also allow you to respond to customer questions and praise easily.
Use Social Media to Build Awareness
Social media has become an important marketing channel, but many business owners don’t use it to its full potential. If you have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other popular platforms, create posts that are relevant to your products and industry. Write posts that are simple, catchy, and helpful to your customers. Let people know what you do and why they should choose your business over the others. Post pictures of your products and engage with your followers so that they’ll follow you back, leaving comments and clicking the “like” button.
You’re trying to build awareness, and one of the easiest ways to do this is by using social media to build buzz about your brand. When you’re posting about your brand, weave in some of your competitors’ names to draw some attention to them as well. You want to collect as much attention and buzz as you can, so post as often as possible, and make sure each post is as memorable as possible. And above all else, link to your website from every post on social media.
Use Analytics Data to Improve Your Site and Create Repeat Visitors
Google Analytics is the big player, but there are other analytics resources, many provided by the website hosts. The data represents a deep dive into the traffic to your site, where the visitors go once they get there, the pages where they enter the site, and the pages where they leave. Also, any links they click on while on your site can provide valuable information.
One bit of information some analytics provide is the time spent on individual pages and on the site total. How long a visitor stays on a page is valuable information. If they arrived at a page, there was a reason. If they “bounce” right off it, leaving quickly, they didn’t find what they wanted. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the information wasn’t there but could just mean that it wasn’t easy to see on the page.
The key to using analytics data is to try to interpret it to improve your site. Bounces should have you checking pages to see if the content matches the title that got them there. Also, do you have subtitles in bold to help them scan and find what they want. As you improve the site based on analytics data, you should see an improvement in repeat traffic and business.
Immerse Yourself in the Community
You’ve probably heard countless times that it’s important to “meet your customers where they are.” When it comes to marketing your local business online, this tip is absolutely true. The best way to do this is by immersing yourself in the community. In other words, get to know your potential customers better. Take the time to find out what they do, where they go, and what they like and don’t like. You want to know as much about your customers as possible because this will allow you to tailor your products and services to better suit their needs.
You can also use customer research tools like NPS (Net Promoter Score) and Zoom to get a better understanding of your customers. Once you know your customers, you’ll have a much better understanding of what they want and need. With this information, you can create new products and services to generate more revenue and bring more customers to your business.
Find Every Way You Can to be Found Online
There are lots of ways to promote your business, but the most important one is traffic. Without it, your business is just flat lining without much growth potential. To gain more traffic to your site, you must have a unique way to get found online. The best way to do this is by utilizing every online channel you’ve got. For example, you can use YouTube videos for your brand and product reviews on social media to boost traffic to your site. You can also add links to your website on your blog posts, guest posts, and product reviews in return for a review.
You can add your website to your social media posts as well. You can also add your business to directories, add it to your email marketing campaigns, and add it to your email signature. Each of these steps can help you gain more traffic to your site, and you can add them to your emails, blog posts, tweets, and other social media posts.
Find Every Way You Can to be Found Offline
All the pre-internet marketing media are still of value. If you can fit other media into your budget, use it to drive traffic to your website. From newspaper classifieds to local business directories to chamber of commerce print materials, use whatever you can. The one key strategy is to always have your website domain prominently visible on all marketing media. This includes business cards as well.
While your competition is spending time and money trying to get on the first page of the search engines amid immense competition, you can be accomplishing more in other ways. Work every media source and other avenue to your site possible. And make sure that when a visitor arrives, they find what they want or need. They’ll then do business with you.
