HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS TO YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

As the world becomes increasingly digitized, it’s more important than ever for your businesses to have a strong online presence.

Growing your business online can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be.

With a little bit of effort and these tips on how to attract customers to your online business, you can get your local business growing online in no time.

Attracting new customers might seem a bit difficult especially right after creating a business in a world of ever-growing competition but don’t let it intimidate you. Here are how to attract customers to your online business to help you gain new customers online!

1. Have an attractive website

Having a beautiful website that is optimized and easy to navigate is crucial. Along with recommendations from friends and family, internet search is how most customers will find you.

By searching keywords related to your business, new customers will come across your website. There, they will be able to read a summary of your business, see the pictures and descriptions of your products and services, as well as find any information they will need in order to contact you.

Make sure that important information is easy to find and that it includes everything your customers might need (location, phone number, email, opening hours).

Aside from beautiful websites, blogs are of almost equal importance. They provide an opportunity to write content that your customers can read and comment on. The comments provide valuable insight, and you can also respond to them and build a good relationship with your customers.

2. Optimize your website for mobile devices

Mobile optimization is about making your business website easy to use on mobile devices. It is especially important for local businesses because it helps improve their search engine rankings, which is crucial since search is by far the main driver of traffic to business websites.

The following are some of the reasons local businesses should focus on mobile optimization:

– Google penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.
– There is an increase in the number of people searching for local
businesses on their mobile devices.
– Optimizing for mobile provides a better user experience for your
customers.

2. Create social media accounts

According to a study, 80% of people on Instagram follow at least one business and more people on social media follow brands that they follow celebrities.

Having social media helps to increase brand awareness, as almost half the world’s population has social media accounts. It also allows you to interact with your customers and shows that there is a person behind your brand. Ask them for their opinions, help them should they need help, share content they might enjoy, and find relatable. This is how you form a bond with your customers and humanize your brand.

social media – youtube
Social media also provides a good opportunity to gain traffic without paying anything. By having an attractive Instagram profile, people will instantly be more interested in clicking the link to the website you provided in your description.

3. Free offers and contests

Social media can also be used for free offers and competitions. They present an excellent way to gain new customers and exposure and are advantageous for both your business and the customers.

Use your social media accounts to offer free samples of your product or even free shipping. The people that follow you will share your posts with other people, providing you exposure and maybe even new loyal customers.

Contests can be found on all social media, are fun for your followers, and can potentially attract new ones as well. Make sure that the prize you offer is related to your brand because that’s the main reason people follow you. There’s different kinds of contests: photo contests, caption contests, contests where a random person who comments or likes wins, voting contests, and many more.

4. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Have you created a website for your brand but are getting no clicks? This means you need search engine optimization or SEO, which consists of multiple techniques and strategies that aim to improve your position in search engines.

By having a website with quality headings and links, optimized and unique content, and no grammatical errors, search engines will recognize your website as ‘legit’ in the sea of fake websites.

There are two kinds of search engine optimization: on-page and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO includes the right use of keywords, titles, tags, URL,s and such.

Off-page SEO is concerned with links both on and off your website. This includes having links on your website from other websites, but also the other way around.

5. Customer reviews

As previously mentioned, interaction with your customers is of significant importance. Respond to people on your blog, check your email regularly, be in the comments of your social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).

Not only does it build trust, but it also motivates them to leave good reviews that other people can read and maybe even decide to give your business a shot.

GMB, or Google My Business, is a free service where you can provide information about your business, but also where customers can leave reviews. But an even better source of reviews and recommendations is social media.

Encourage customers to use hashtags and to tag your brand after they receive your product or try your service. This way, when people search for your brand on those social media websites, they will see all these satisfied customers who might even provide pictures and videos of them using your brand. Nothing says ‘this business is to be trusted’ like good reviews.

6. Customer testimonials

Another way on how to attract customers to your online business is via your customer testimonials. They are basically good reviews that you can feature almost everywhere. Just claiming that you’re the best and that you have tons of satisfied customers means nothing if no one can confirm it.

If a customer is hesitant to give your business a try, a good experience and a sincere recommendation from a customer will show that your business is reliable. If their testimonial features emotion or a story, it is even more likely to convince a new customer to try your product. A testimonial from another business displays credibility, that you’re willing to partner up and that you work well with others.

Getting testimonials is quite easy: just talk to a loyal customer or a business you’ve worked with and ask them if they would be willing to write a few sentences about their experience with your brand. You can put a testimonial on the front page of your website, the product page, a dedicated testimonial page, your blog, and even brochures.

7. Marketing campaigns

Especially effective when used on social media, marketing campaigns are guaranteed to attract new customers if done right.

Before starting a marketing campaign, make sure you know who your customers are and what their interests are, identify keywords that are related to your business that people are looking up, and which social media your target audience uses the most.

Why is social media the best place to advertise, you may wonder. That’s because they target audiences through demographic information so potential customers can see your brand in their feeds. When people use the internet and visit websites, they generate data that includes their gender, race, age, purchases, and websites they frequently visit. So, when you decide to buy ads on a social media site, they will show them to people who have similar interests.

8. Email marketing

Email marketing presents a super effective way to connect with customers. Even if people don’t have social media accounts, they have emails. And by using email, you can reach a large number of people for the cost of almost nothing. Email marketing campaigns can be used to notify your customers about special deals, sales, and new products.

Email marketing requires no revenue being spent on printing flyers and brochures and provides all important information that your customers need: a link to your website, a phone number, address, and also another means of communication.

But maybe the best perk of email marketing is that you can customize each email that you send and address people by their name. According to research, emails are 26% more likely to be opened if they contain the name of the recipient.

9. Partnerships

Remember when we mentioned that it is beneficial to have testimonials from other businesses and to have your links on other websites? Partnerships are what makes these possible.

By working with other businesses, you can learn about new techniques and methods, have access to new resources, capture the interest of new customers and reach new markets.

Partnerships are beneficial for both sides: the business you’re working with can reach your audience and vice versa. It also helps build brand awareness and credibility, as you will be featured on their website. The number of services you offer will expand, as well, so it is good to partner up with a business that offers a product similar to yours.

10. Be active and attract new customers online!

Having a website, a blog and social media isn’t worth anything if you are not online. Make sure to regularly check all your accounts and especially places where people can leave reviews and comments. Interact with people, respond to both their good and bad reviews, and help whoever needs help.

Update your blog as frequently as you can and follow the newest trends in the design world to keep your website updated, as well.

Social media marketing campaigns also provide valuable analytics, which you should be checking out daily. These analytics show you how successful your marketing campaigns are by showing you the number of clicks you’re receiving, how long people are staying on your website, the number of new followers, their age and location, and many more statistics.

Conclusion

Local businesses can use a variety of strategies to grow their business online.

The most important thing is to have a strong online presence. This can be accomplished by creating a website and optimizing your business listing on Google My Business to help your business rank on search engines.

Additionally, businesses should focus on providing quality products and services, as well as creating a good customer experience to get positive reviews from customers

As you can see, there is a large number of ways on how to attract customers to your online business.

Credit