How to do online marketing of my business ? An answer for small businesses

Business, a word we all admire as it brings money and freedom. But on the other hand, we are aware about the roller coaster ride every business makes us experience. No doubt, the digital boon has opened the doors of plethora of sectors which were non-existent earlier but the struggle to have successful business online is real. Not you, but many of us have googled

• how to do online marketing of my business?
• where can I advertise my business online?
• how do I market my business online

If you have one of the above as your query then you might have tried one to two things already on digital like creating Instgram page, Facebook page, youtube channel, whatsapp broadcasting and many more. But I guess the problem could be the time and effort you invest is not proportional to the result you expect. I have listed few points to decide before exploring for answer to how to do online marketing of my business

• Where are you headed? Decide your Goal

• Who is your audience? Know the audience who will pay for your product/service

• Look for your competitors! Be updated of what others in your segment are doing. Even if you follow the same path never copy. Create your own value for customers. If you are new in your category you are already ahead but to ace be consistent in providing great service and in your digital promotion. Read about some interesting strategy here

• If you have decided promoting your business as a goal with a selling then you fall below branding category as a goal, If you just want to sell your product/service then you fall in Sales category. Read details below

Branding

Let’s begin with an example – You have a fitness center in XYZ city specially for women. You started your center with a motivation to help housewives in focusing on their health and fitness. You have one group of 10 women already whom you teach yoga now you want to scale up your business and would like to have 4-5 such batches but beside that you want to aware housewives about need to exercise and stay fit. You will fall under the category of branding.

Steps to follow

Next step is to decide your audience. Your audience are women from age 30-55 so the best medium will be Facebook. Create Facebook page and ask ladies to join the page. Start from known but take it to other acquaintances. Create value for the followers. Not just selling but teach them healthy habits. Causes of issue like knee pain, disturbed menstrual cycle and how exercise can cure these. In between the sharing information, share how you helped your members and then offer the help.

Note: Instagram might entice you but remember your target audience is on Facebook & whatsapp so be there first especially when time is limited. Make use of the best available resource to the fullest.

Few points to remember:

• Word of mouth is the best marketing tool for small businesses. Quality service you offer will always help you in getting more customers. Ask your current clients to give feedback, reviews to their acquaintances and also share the same on Facebook.
• Facebook ads can help you in getting more customer by spending small amount on the tool. Will talk about this in separate posts. True for sellers as well so will write one dedicated post about this.
• Be consistent and believe in yourself.

Sales

if you just want to sell your products and product is not audience specific then you are not limited to particular medium. You can use Instagram stories, whatsapp broadcast/ stories, Facebook everything. The most important thing while selling is standing out from the competitors.

Steps to follow

1. Before promoting on these mediums tell something about your brand and your USPs. Some examples of USPs are

• We sell at the lowest prices.
• 1,000 + happy customers till date.
• Serving customers for years
• Best quality products in the lowest price
• Easily refundable
• Doorstep Delivery

2. Discuss your clients’ problem and refer to those in your stories.

3.Create pages on different channels and keep adding products.

4. Focus on increasing the follower base so that new product can directly reach to maximum people.

Above are simple non-paid tips for how to do online marketing for your business but when it comes to selling to audience, paid marketing on mediums like Facebook and Instagram can help a lot in driving sales. Will be discussing about this in another posts so stay tuned.

To know more about the online marketing for your category business do comment. Will be happy to help

Every Sunday a new blog post is published on ahead with digital. I write about the digital strategies which new businesses(small/medium) can adopt on digital mediums to scale up the business. Get answers to all your queries through my blog posts(Know details on About us). Do subscribe to stay connected. Happy Reading!