Business Marketing Website Promotion

8 Practical Tips for Small Businesses to Grow

Image courtesy of Unsplash

Optimize Your Website

If you don’t have a website yet, please create one for your business. Before you create your business website, please list down all the relevant information so that it will be a smooth process instead of a frustrating one.

If you are not sure what information is required to create a business website, here’s a quick checklist :

  • Company information (mission, vision, about us, contact us)
  • Product information (product name, price, description, images, weight, stock count, options if any)
  • Payment gateway
  • Shipping configuration (by weight or using real-time courier integration)
  • Social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.)
  • Domain (pick an easy to remember domain)
  • Business email accounts

If you already have a business website, please make sure that it is optimized for search engines and it loads fast for users to access on any device. You can check by using the following:

If your site is taking a long time to load, it could be due to heavy images. That may be product images or website images. Use a free image conversion service like TinyPNG to optimize your images which will not compromise their quality but will make your images lighter in terms of file size.

Ensure you have your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) sorted out. This means making sure that all your website titles, keywords, descriptions are correctly done based on the type of product or service you offer.

Create a Google Analytics account and add in tracking code to all your pages. This will give you some insight on how your website is performing.

Make Sure Your Website Looks Good

You do not have to spend a ton of money to have a beautiful website but neither should you just settle for an ugly looking website.

Your website needs to look good to impress visitors when they land there. It needs to entice them to check out your range of products and have a good user experience for them to make a purchase without any distractions.

Your site also needs to pass the 15 seconds test, meaning any visitor landing on your main page should be able to figure out what you are selling or what your business is all about in that time frame.

Otherwise, they will leave as quickly as they can.

Another reason why visitors may leave quickly is the fact that your site took too long to load on their device.

Do not forget that you are dealing with an impatient crowd of online visitors these days who have a very short attention span and even less patience.

Define Your Target Market

Not everyone is going to be your customer so you will need to do a bit of homework to define who your target customers would be.

Are you targeting millenials? Or generation Z? Because they make up the bulk of the online shopping and mobile browsing crowd.

Then you will need to plan out your marketing strategy on how to reach your target market.

A combination of both SEO and social media marketing works best because you want to be found by the search engines as well as social media users.

Be More Visible on Social Media

Schedule weekly postings on your social media accounts. At minimum, you should have a Facebook presence.

Social media is one of the ways to help get the word out about your company’s products and services. You may also want to put related posts on your social media accounts that are share-worthy or interesting.

If you are planning to place some Facebook ads, please add Facebook’s pixel code to your website so that you can track how your Facebook campaigns are going.

Sell on Marketplaces

Putting your products on marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, etc. is a good way to get some product exposure since marketplaces generally get a lot of traffic.

However, it may be difficult for customers to find your product unless they are looking for it specifically.

Bear in mind that you should have a link for customers to go back to your main site.

And, you will also have to factor in the commission rates that marketplaces charge for using them.

Create a Blog on Your Website

This is totally up to you and it depends on what kind of products and services your business sells.

In terms of SEO, it will help as you build up your content to show your area of expertise based on what you are selling.

It can also be a guide to teach customers who buy from you on how to wear or use your product properly.

Showcase Your Products at Events

Join conferences, events and shopping mall pop-up stores to promote your product physically there.

This gives visitors a chance to see your product physically and you can also get some feedback from them as well.

Offer a good discount at these venues by collecting customers’ email addresses and phone numbers so that you can market to them later on new product launches and releases.

Offer Your Product to Well Known Sites for Curation

Many popular review sites would be more than happy to feature your product if it is unique.

This is because most people are constantly looking for ideas and suggestions on what to buy.

The sites that curate products have a lot of traffic and will link back to your own business website.

Summary

Small businesses need to ensure that their business websites are optimized for search engines and are able to load quickly on any mobile device to cater to the current generation of mobile users.

Your business website needs to look good to capture the attention of visitors. Anyone landing on your website should be able to tell what your business is all about quickly so there is no confusion.

Define your target market so that you can craft your marketing strategy to reach them.

Offer your products on online marketplaces to reach more customers.

Create a blog to offer advice, tips and how-to steps for customers to use your product effectively or efficiently.

Showcase your products at physical locations during events, conferences and trade shows to reach targeted traffic.

Offer your products to sites that specialize in curating specific products based on target market.

About the author

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Lisa Tan

Lisa Tan is an ecommerce specialist and internet marketer at InstanteStore who enjoys helping businesses get online and grow. She also believes that design plays an important role in marketing and works with Logo Design Studio to create great user experience to delight customers with their design services.