Top 15 Ways to Promote Your Business Online

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Figure out the best ways to promote your business to stand apart from your competitors

Promoting Your Business Online

With over 4.2 billion internet users worldwide, promoting your business online isn’t just important—it’s necessary. It’s the key to presenting crucial information to your target audience, increasing demand for your products or services, and generating leads and sales for your business.

However, successful online promotion isn’t as easy as sharing a few social media posts, writing a quick blog post, or simply sending an email. If you truly want your online promotion to be successful, you need to cast your net further and understand the core components of your marketing strategy, such as the who, what, where, why, and how.

If you’ve ever promoted your business online with the hope of generating more traffic and leads but had little to no success, you’re not alone. Up to 66% of businesses struggle to meet these goals, leaving them asking: what am I doing wrong?

Thankfully, there’s help on the horizon. Within this guide, you’ll learn about the most effective ways to market your business online and reap the incredible benefits that come with it.

Here are 15 ways to promote your business online

1. Develop a Strategy for Success (SWOT Analysis)

Before actively marketing your business online, you’ll need to develop a successful online strategy. The best way to do this is by performing a SWOT analysis, a widely used marketing technique for assessing four key aspects of your business: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Strengths and Weaknesses refer to the internal factors of your business, including its assets, processes, people, and anything else relating to the organization.

Opportunities and Threats, on the other hand, relate to external factors, such as those arising from your competition, market, and wider economy.

To perform your SWOT analysis, brainstorm and answer the following questions:

Strengths

  • What do you do well?
  • What unique resources can you draw on?
  • What do others see as your strengths?

Weaknesses

  • What could you improve?
  • Where do you have fewer resources than others?
  • What are others likely to see as a weakness?

Opportunities

  • What opportunities are open to you?
  • What trends could you take advantage of?
  • How can you turn your strengths into opportunities?

Threats

  • What threats could harm you?
  • What is your competition doing?
  • What threats do your weaknesses expose you to?

2. Define Your Marketing Goals

Have you heard the saying, “Begin with the end in mind?” When it comes to promoting your business online, this quote could not be more true. The first step to any successful online marketing campaign is to know your goal; in other words, specifically what you want to achieve through your online marketing endeavors. This also helps you establish which KPIs (key performance indicators) you must track to determine if the outcome was successful or not.

A good trick is to remember your goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

To help you define your ‘SMART goal,’ answer the following questions:

Specific

  • What is it I want to accomplish?
  • Why is this goal important for my business?
  • Who does this involve?
  • Where will this take place?
  • Which resources are involved?

Measurable

  • How much do we want to make (i.e. amount generated from sales, profit, etc.)?
  • How many do we want to achieve (i.e. number of subscriptions, sales, visitors to the website, etc.)?
  • How will I know when these figures have been achieved?

Achievable

  • How can this goal be accomplished?
  • How realistic is this goal when considering possible constraints, such as finances, resources, etc.?

Relevant

  • Does this match our other business efforts and needs?
  • Is it a worthwhile project?
  • Is the timing right, considering the current socio-economic environment?
  • Am I (or specific people within the business/outside assistance) the right person to achieve this goal?

Time-bound

  • When will we start and finish the promotion?
  • How long will it take to achieve our desired results?
  • What can I do today to work towards this goal? In 6 weeks? In 6 months?

3. Check How Your Top Competitors Are Doing

Studying your competitors before launching your marketing campaign can give your company a vital edge. It helps you determine any potential shortcuts to success (i.e., what’s worked well for them) while minimizing the risk of failure. Secondly, doing so can help you assess your company’s strengths and weaknesses in comparison to the competition.

When analyzing your online competitors, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What are your competitors’ unique selling points (USPs)?
  • What types of products or services are selling best, and at what price points?
  • What traffic sources (i.e., direct traffic, referral URLs, search engines, campaigns) are they using to acquire customers?
  • Are they using paid advertising? If so, what websites or social media platforms do they advertise on?
  • What search queries do they currently rank for (or are trying to rank for)?
  • How are their marketing funnels structured? How are they trying to capture leads and generate sales?

4. Identify Your Target Audience

If you don’t know exactly who you wish to promote your business to, then your marketing efforts won’t be as targeted as they should be, leading to disappointment and unsuccessful promotional campaigns.

Your target audience is a specific group of people most likely to buy your products or services, often sharing several characteristics (such as age, interests, etc.). The clearer you are about your target audience, the more successful you will be at understanding how and where to reach your best prospects.

To define your target audience, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is my perfect customer male or female?
  • What age group do they belong to?
  • Where do they live? (i.e., in a particular city, country, or hemisphere? In rural/urban areas?)
  • What industry do they work in? What position might they hold?
  • How much do they earn? Are they low, middle, or high-income earners?
  • What level of education do they have?
  • What are their interests or hobbies?
  • What is most important to them in life? What specific goals might they have?
  • What challenges do they face?
  • What influences them to buy a product or service? What objections must they overcome first?
  • Where does my target audience spend the most time online?
  • How would my target customer use my product/service? Would they buy it for themselves or as a gift for a loved one?

5. Consult with a Marketing Strategist

Once you’ve clearly defined your goals for marketing your business online, it will be a lot easier to consult with a digital marketing specialist to find out when, where, and how these goals can be achieved.

The role of the marketing strategist is to define the best inbound marketing strategy for your business, as well as to put together a final and detailed digital marketing plan covering aspects of the promotion, such as:

  • Online channels
  • Sales funnel
  • Strategies
  • KPIs that will need to be measured to determine a successful outcome

6. Define Your Marketing Budget

Just as every business is different, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ figure when it comes to determining your marketing budget. Because of this, defining a budget is often considered the most difficult aspect of putting together an online marketing strategy plan, however, with the appropriate assistance and expertise, it doesn’t need to be.

Your marketing strategist will give you a clearer idea of how much you can expect to spend on these promotional methods, as well as how you should allocate your budget across different channels.

Research suggests total marketing budgets are commonly between 8 and 16% of a business’s total revenue, with the average business allocating 45% of its total marketing budget to online promotional methods.

7. Define the KPIs for Your Various Channels

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are used to measure the success of your campaigns. Here below we have listed the most common KPIs you should track across the various inbound channels.

Social Media Advertising

  • Number of clicks
  • Number of likes
  • Number of shares
  • Number of comments
  • Number of active (and new) followers

Mobile Advertising

  • CPA (cost per acquisition)
  • RR (Retention rate)
  • Sales revenue
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS)

PPC/SEM

  • CPA (cost-per-acquisition)
  • CTR (click-through-rate)
  • Conversion rate
  • CPC (cost per click)

SEO

  • Number of Pageviews
  • Keyword rankings (both increases or decreases)
  • Average session duration
  • Number of natural backlinks
  • Click-through-rate (CTR)

Email Marketing (Retargeting/Remarketing)

  • Total clicks
  • Click to conversion (CTC) rate
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • Total conversions
  • Click-through rate (CTR)

Affiliate Marketing

  • Number of new affiliates
  • Number of new customers
  • Average order value
  • Average earnings per click
  • Click Traffic

8. Start a Blog

Having a well-designed, professional website is essential for directing potential customers to your business. Additionally, a blog filled with insightful and engaging posts will keep visitors on your site longer and encourage repeat visits.

Statistics show that companies with blogs generate 55% more web traffic and 67% more leads than those without. A blog provides valuable, shareable content that can establish your business as an authority in your industry. Moreover, blogging can boost your site’s visibility in Google search results, making it easier for prospective customers to find you.

Tip: Keep comments enabled on your blog. This invites interaction and helps build trust and long-term relationships with your audience.

9. Leverage the Power of Social Media

With 55% of buyers conducting research via social media before making a purchase, it’s crucial to promote your business on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others. Identify which platforms your target audience frequents most and tailor your promotion strategies to each one, potentially with the help of a social media marketing expert.

10. Launch Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing remains one of the most effective online promotional tools, with 91% of shoppers wanting to hear from companies they do business with through email. Emails serve as a powerful CRM tool, allowing brands to reach their audience through targeted campaigns, regular newsletters, and other promotional methods like sales and giveaways.

11. Promote Your Business Through Videos

Video marketing, when executed well, is a highly effective strategy. Videos often attract an engaged, passionate audience, making a strong impression that can establish your business as an authority in your field, thereby attracting and converting leads into customers.

12. Answer Questions, Give Solutions

Engage with sites like Quora and Reddit, where you can answer questions and provide solutions. High-quality, authoritative answers can drive users to follow outbound links to your webpage, where they can find more useful content and learn about your products or services.

Platforms, like Help a Reporter Out (HARO), connect journalists with expert sources. Respond to relevant HARO requests to establish yourself as an industry leader and promote your unique offerings.

13. Optimize Your Website for SEO

Your website is your online storefront, and almost half of buyers visit a company’s website before making a purchase decision. Ensure your site is professional, visually appealing, and free of errors.

SEO is essential for your site to be found by search engines. Consider hiring a professional SEO expert to identify key keywords and strategically implement them in your site’s meta tags and content to improve search engine rankings.

14. Grow Your Traffic with Forum Marketing

Participating in niche forums can be an effective online strategy. These forums often have passionate, engaged audiences. Making a positive impression can establish your business as an authority, attracting leads and converting them into customers.

Look for forums with at least 1,000 members and 10,000 posts that receive new contributions daily and are not spam-filled.

15. Monitor and Analyze Your KPIs

The final step in your online marketing campaign is to monitor and analyze your results by tracking KPIs. This will help you determine the campaign’s success.

Ask yourself:

  • Did we meet our KPIs?
  • Did we achieve our specific goals?
  • What was the ROI?
  • What did we do well?
  • What could we have done better?
  • Was the campaign successful overall? Why or why not?

Conclusion

There are numerous ways to market your business online, all sharing the goal of effectively reaching your target audience, increasing demand for your products or services, and generating leads and sales.

Remember, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach to online promotion. Your strategies should be tailored to your business’s goals, target audience, and budget to meet your KPIs and achieve a great ROI.

While online marketing can seem daunting, numerous experts are available to assist you. With this comprehensive guide to online business promotion, you’re well on your way to success.

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