These days, there are plenty of ways to promote your business online. The rise of digital marketing has made it easier than ever to bring more clicks and cash to your company, while the latest innovations in web design can help your business stand out from the online crowd.
But where do you even start? Well, it’s right here. Right now.
To make things a whole lot easier, we’ve carried out plenty of research and listed eight effective, actionable tips on how to promote your business online in 2022. We’ve also reached out to some other industry experts, in order to give you the most useful advice possible.
If you’d already like to get started on your company’s rise to the top, but don’t have the time to do everything yourself, we can match your business with the UK’s leading digital marketing agencies who’ll take care of all the legwork for you.
Sound interesting? All you have to do is fill in this quick form to get started, and we’ll then match your business with the agency that best suits your needs. Best of all, our service is quick, easy, and free to use. For everyone else, though, let’s have a quick look at our eight tips…
How to promote your business online:
- 01 | Refresh your website
- 02 | Supercharge your SEO
- 03 | Get on Google My Business
- 04 | Energise your emails
- 05 | Go social
- 06 | Vamp up your videos
- 07 | Press release your news
- 08 | PPC your business to the T-O-P
Ready to get started? Let’s get some promotion in motion…
1. Refresh your website
A website is like a window into your business. Much like window shopping, your visitors will first browse your business, products, or brand before clicking any further. Also, just like a real pane of glass, your website needs to be kept sparkling clean in order to entice new visitors.
Your website might be good already – but is it getting the clicks and sales your business deserves? In other words, could your website be even better? Great news! We have some wonderful tips on the latest web design trends to get you started.
When refreshing your website, there are some key areas to consider:
Design – does it look cool?
You should refresh your website every couple of years at least. If you’re using a website builder like Wix or Weebly, you can simply drag and drop images around, splash some colour on your homepage, or add a brand new section to your website. If you don’t have the time or effort to do all that, you can hire a professional web designer to spruce up your website for you.
UX (User Experience) – is the navigation a breeze?
Think of UX like a theme park ride. If the ride is enjoyable, you’ll want to revisit that rollercoaster again and again. The same goes for websites. Just think – if you’re browsing a website that’s confusing or hard to navigate, you’re not likely to return to that page.
Conversion rate – do users want to click your buttons?
This is the ratio of total website visitors to those who follow a desired action, such as clicking a ‘sign up’ button, or filling in a form. Web designers can encourage website visitors to ‘convert’ with various design techniques, in a process known as Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO).
Don’t have the time to rejig your website yourself? No worries – we can match you with trustworthy web designers from around the country. Simply fill in this form with your requirements, and you’ll receive tailored quotes – it only takes a minute!
2. Supercharge your SEO
Is your business optimised for search engines? In other words, is your business easy to find on Google? By implementing some simple SEO techniques, you can improve the visibility of your business on the SERPs (search engine results pages), at no cost.
But hang on – why is SEO important? Well, around 90% of the world’s population only look at the first page of Google’s results. As you can see, soaring up the SERPs is something all business owners should aspire to, and we’ve got some simple, effective tips on how to get climbing!
Keyword research – find popular words or phrases – using tools like SEMrush – and implement them into your website’s content to increase the chances of people finding your business via a Google search
Create killer content – produce accurate, relevant content which will be appreciated by users and Google alike
Optimise images – save images as a .jpeg rather than .png to reduce the file size which will help your website to load quicker, and can improve your website’s ranking position on Google
Blog – write blogs to answer internet users’ queries with high quality content, which is excellent for SEO
3. Get on Google My Business
This feature can help to put your business on the map – literally. Google My Business (GMB) provides a profile for your business, with star ratings, directions, your address, and other useful information (see the image below). If you’re still unsure, just think of all the times you’ve searched – and found – a business, restaurant, or cafe ‘near me’ on Google. That’s Google My Business in action.
By registering your business with Google’s location services, it can be found easily from a quick search. According to Google, each month there are 5 billion searches for restaurants, 3 billion for hotels, and 5 million for coffee shops. All of those searches could be customers, and all you have to do is sign up.
Google trends tells you what people are searching for, letting you customise your GMB profile more effectively
“The more you add to your GMB profile, and the more reviews you manage to generate, the more likely it is your GMB profile will show above your competitors’. Don’t forget to respond to reviews as well – Google likes to see interactivity.
Treat your GMB profile as a second website. If you’re running a local business, I’d advise prioritising more time to work on it than your actual website. For example, consider that Google’s latest research shows that GMB profiles with photos get 30% more calls – and 42% more direction requests – than those without.”
4. Energise your emails
Reaching out to prospective or current customers via email is one of the most effective ways to promote your business. How do we know? Well, a 2019 study by OptinMonster found that 99% of consumers check their emails every day, while some of those consumers check them up to 20 times per day.
Don’t have enough customer emails to start a campaign? Using lead magnets is one of the best ways to grow that list of users. What’s a lead? It’s a potential customer. What does the magnet refer to? It involves incentivising leads to exchange their email address for things like quizzes, eBooks, videos, contests, and other cool types of content.
You’ve now got your email database, but what makes an engaging marketing message? We spoke with Christine Telyan, CEO and Co-Founder of London-based tech company UENI, who knows exactly how to create an enticing email…
“You have to give people a reason to buy from you, and buy from you now. It’s all about finding a way to incentivise the final sale, and creating a sense of buying urgency. Whether it’s through flash sales, loyalty programs, shipping discounts, or promotional discounts, they’re all great hooks to land those important sales.
If you’re not an ecommerce business, then think about offering customers something to get them through your doors in the first place, such as free consultations or discounted services. Getting this right also has implications for customer retention – according to Salesforce, when it comes to loyalty, 65% of consumers are influenced by personalised offers and discounts.”
5. Go social
This one doesn’t need much of an introduction. 42% of the world’s population uses social media, so it’s literally a worldwide platform that’s free to use. You can even pay to bolster your social media posts, helping these posts to reach an even wider audience. But what’s the best way to go social?
Firstly, you need to pick the right platform for the content you’d like to create. Viral videos? Then rack up the ‘likes’ on Facebook. Conversations with consumers? Get Tweeting. Fun photo contests? Instagram and Pinterest are best.
Also, social media listening tools can help you see what internet users are talking about online, helping to keep your business ahead of the trends, and ultimately ahead of your competitors.
Read more: 7 Essential Steps To SEO For E-Commerce Website In 2022
Whichever platform you choose, your content needs to be engaging. Research your followers, figure out what they’d be likely to respond to, and provide them with valuable content. Just think: a group of 50–60 year olds aren’t likely to find value in a competition to win a free Xbox, are they?
6. Vamp up your videos
In 2019, Google found that six out of ten people would rather watch online videos than television. In the same year, marketing consultancy firm Insivia revealed that mobile video consumption rises by 100% each year. And according to the the graph below – from the Ooyala Global Video Index – video marketing consumption has increased rapidly over the past few years…
Statistics like these highlight how video marketing is a great opportunity to promote your business online. Put simply, people love videos – but what should your content include?
The type of video you should be producing will depend on the products you sell, or the services you provide. For example, you could bring customer testimonials to life, create an in-depth ‘how to’ video guide, or produce an engaging product description – the list goes on.
Videos are an engaging way to promote your business. It’s simple to create videos these days, and there are now different video platforms to choose from: YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia all spring to mind. And don’t forget that smartphones now rival the very best single-function cameras on the market, meaning it’s never been easier to get your video campaigns up and running.
7. Press release your news
Why should you use press releases? Firstly, journalists love them. A 2019 survey from 10 Yetis Digital found that 100% of journalists said press releases were their number one way of finding stories, and that 25% of those journalists have to write seven stories a day. That’s a lot of news coverage, and your business could feature in one of those seven articles. So get releasing!
8. PPC to the T-O-P
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is similar to SEO, in that it lies in the realm of the SERPs. Rather than using organic (non-paid) methods, you can pay money to search engines to have your business appear higher for certain search terms.
Think of the process like an auction – Google’s the person banging the hammer, and a keyword is the prize object. If you pay more than your competitors, then your business will appear higher in the SERPs for that keyword or phrase. You then pay Google every time someone clicks on your link – it’s as simple as A,B,C.
PPC does involve spending money, which is something most business owners are understandably reluctant to do at the early stages of business growth. That’s why we reached out to Simon Paine, co-founder and CEO of Popup Business School, for some advice on PPC spending…
“The risk with PPC is that the customer doesn’t buy anything on your website, leaving you with no return. With PPC, you’re paying only for the traffic to arrive at your site; it’s then up to your web pages to convert that click into a sale.
The best advice I could give is to make some money first – don’t start with PPC to promote your small business. Once you’ve made some cash and you’ve learned a bit more about your audience, experiment with it! Test it, try different versions, send your customers to different pages! PPC can be hugely beneficial, but don’t spend the cash until you’ve made some first.”
This is why we’ve put PPC last in our list. It’s still equally important as the rest, but it is perhaps best used after you’ve implemented the other eight steps, and made some cash first.
Expert verdict
These days, there are all sorts of ways to promote your business online. But we’ve picked the eight easiest and most effective tips to really get your business booming. Let’s quickly recap our list..
How to promote your business online:
- Refresh your website
- Supercharge your SEO
- Get on Google My Business
- Energise your emails
- Go social
- Vamp up your videos
- Press release your news
- PPC to the T-O-P
Of course, different businesses will require different promotion strategies. For instance, you may just need to refresh your website and introduce a blog, or you may benefit from a brand new PPC advertising campaign – it all depends on the direction you’d like your business to go.
In a perfect world, you’d carry out all the eight tips above at once, and your business would blossom. But that’s just not realistic when you’ve got tasks and invoices coming out of your ears, is it? Unless you’re superhuman.
That’s why we’d really recommend delegating your digital marketing tasks, such as PPC, email marketing, SEO, and social media campaigns, to a professional agency. This could save you heaps of time and effort, letting you focus on other important jobs. If you think your business could benefit from this, simply fill in this quick form, and you’ll get free quotes from the UK’s leading digital marketing agencies.
Let’s get your business out there!