Promoting your business is more important today than ever before. There are a huge number of things that you have to consider when you turn your business into something successful as you begin to promote your business,
First and foremost, you need to deeply understand your target customers – their needs, preferences, and behaviors. Additionally, ensuring seamless collaboration among your employees is vital for achieving your goals..
Then, you’ve got to make sure that your products are to the highest possible standard before you start promoting your business.
All of these things interact with each other and are serious challenges. But very few things take up as much time or energy in any business as marketing.
Table of Contents
Without Marketing
Let’s face it, even if you have an amazing company that produces incredible products that you know your customers are going to love, none of that is going to matter if no one has any idea that your business or your products actually exist.
Being able to effectively market your business is one of the most important things. However, the mistake that a lot of people tend to make is that they assume that as long as they are doing some kind of marketing, they’re going to be fine.
The truth is that marketing is one of the most variable parts of any business.
You’ve got to be able to try things that you might not otherwise think of in order to connect with potential customers. With that in mind, here are just some of the different marketing methods that you might want to try.
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of those things that’s still rather contentious among a lot of business owners. There’s no doubt that the internet is one of the most essential tools for marketing your business. But, that is often because most of us have come to terms with the internet as an integral part of life.
Social media is still just new enough that a lot of people don’t fully understand just how useful it can be. They look at it and assume that it’s little more than a fad that will fade away in time.
Well, it’s coming close to a decade and a half since the launches of both Facebook and Twitter. Neither of those is showing any signs of going anywhere anytime soon.
Social media is one of the best tools you have for connecting with your customers, particularly if your demographic skews a little younger.
It gives you a chance to connect directly with customers or offer support to them if they’re having issues. You can even just make jokes with them and build a sense of emotional connection.
2. A Blog For Promoting Your Business
Of course, social media isn’t the only thing that you can do online in order to connect with more customers. The websites of pretty much all businesses these days feature a blog section.
But the question is, how well are you actually using yours?
There are few things more disappointing than coming across a business’s blog and seeing that it’s little more than a place to dump updates about products or deals. The reality of a blog is that it gets to the heart of what modern customers really want: they want to connect with your business in a meaningful way.
Content is the only way to do that and a blog is a great way to offer engaging, interesting content. There are so many ways that you can use a blog in this way.
You can use blog posts about the behind-the-scenes goings-on in your business.
Thus allowing you to show the human side of it and prevent it from just looking like a faceless company. Or you could create interesting content that relates to your business to help give customers some insights that they might not have.
Whatever you write, it needs to be well written and engaging. Then, you need to make sure that you have a regular upload schedule.
Otherwise, your blog posts are going to get buried under all of the other updates on the internet. There are many apps out there to help you blog on the go.
3. Events Elevating Your Business
Of course, no matter how great the internet might be, there are very few things quite as effective as being able to look a potential customer in the eye and talk to them one-on-one. Social media is often an online attempt at doing something that businesses have been effectively doing in person for years.
Running any kind of business event, whether it’s the launch of a new product, being part of an existing trade show, or simply setting up an event to promote your business, is one of the absolute best ways to connect with the people you need to connect with.
With great displays, interesting content, and even entertainment, you can turn your business’s event into the kind of thing people will be itching to get tickets for.
The other great thing about using an event to elevate your business is that it also connects you with investors and not just customers. Meaning that you have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
4. Marketing and Promotion
One of the most important things that you need to understand is that you have to be somewhat selective when it comes to marketing and promoting your business.
An incredibly common mistake for those who are just starting out trying to run their own business is to assume that the maximum amount of marketing is always going to bring in the maximum number of customers.
However, that’s simply not the case. You need to understand who your demographics are if you want your marketing to be effective.
If you’re putting in a whole lot of time and money into marketing your business in a way that would only really reach people who aren’t interested in your business in the first place, then that time and money are going to be wasted.
Not only that but you need to think about how you plan on changing the style of your marketing when aiming towards specific demographics. It’s essential that you don’t just treat your marketing as one single monolithic entity.
There are many cost-effective ways you can market your business today.
5. SEO For Promoting Your Business
Last but not least is my favorite way: Using SEO to promote your business.
SEO helps potential customers find your business online. Optimize your website’s content with relevant keywords people search for. Create helpful blog posts answering common questions in your industry.
Build backlinks from reputable sites to boost search rankings. And do not forget about your internal links.
Use alt text on images and meta descriptions to provide context. Monitor analytics to see what’s working and adapt your strategy accordingly.
Conclusion: Ways of Promoting Your Business
What are your favorite ways to promote your business? I’d love to know in the comments below which of the above methods you are using.
(As you probably know I’m using SEO, social media, Twitter X ads and blogging on a regular basis here on Inspire To Thrive.)
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
- Will Twitter Remove Like Button Counts That Were Easy To Use? - November 21, 2024
- 8 Best YouTube Alternatives For Video Hosting To Explore - November 20, 2024
- 8 Podcast Marketing Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore - November 19, 2024
Thanks for the tips Lisa! I’ve been marketing through a few different sources like forums. but haven’t properly given focus to social media. Everyone keep saying how much traffic they get there and how easy it is to engage with your audience but finding the time to manage sites and sit on there is a bit hectic with 3 kids and my BOSS aka wife.
Hi Mozie, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. You are SO right! It takes either TIME or MONEY, you can’t do it all without either of these. It’s NOT easy to engage your audience, it takes time or money! I can’t imagine doing what I do with 3 kids, mine are all grown now. Thank you for coming by and have a great day Mozie.
Blogging has definitely helped to bring in more visitors to my website. Also at the same time, I was able to use variations of keywords that weren’t earlier used on my website. Lisa, your tips really kind of worked for me. Thanks!
Hi Sunderbharathi, welcome to Inspire To Thrive. Oh yes, blogging really can do that. Not only are blog posts informational but they greatly help your SEO efforts along the way as well. You are most welcome.
Well said, Lisa.
This reminds me of my first event. It was after organizing that event that I began to experience radical growth in my digital marketing company.
The event though very affordable didn’t get as much turn-up like I had anticipated but majority of them that came had gone on to spend more money with our company.
Yes, social media is also a great platform for bringing in a flood of new customers.
Thanks for sharing.
Emenike
Hi Emenike, What type of event was it? I’ve been to a few and spoke at a few. Speaking really has helped with my business here. Social media does help to get them to the events and now FB offers many event groups you can post to as well. You are most welcome and have a great day.
Hi Lisa,
there are so many ways to promote a blog that if you try to do it all- you’ll get stuck and won’t know what to do next.
I think the solution is to start slow, just with one thing. And once you rack up some results, then you can expand.
For me, it’s SEO, then social media.
Hi Nikola, yes SLOW down is a great suggestion. Blogging can be so intense and you feel like a rat on the wheel at times! It’s a job that is never done like social media and SEO. Thanks for your input and have a great weekend Nikola.
Hi Lisa,
Promotion is an important part of business marketing. These days businesses are more focused on creating a powerpack social media presence and for this they are spending thousands of dollars every month on different campaigns.
I strongly believe that as long as you are investing in the right way on marketing, your business will never go down.
Hi Gaurav, promotion certainly is important today! Even for blogging they say we should spend 80% of time of promoting the blog and 20% on generation new content, crazy, isn’t it? Thanks for coming by on this one and have a wonderful weekend Gaurav.
Hi Lisa,
I believe I do all these things. The events I hold are my blog parties and linky parties.
Regarding demographics, my population seems to be mixed as far as gender, so I don’t consider that too often when blogging.
Janice
Thanks Lisa, when running an online business, I believe that the major role is played by online marketing but as suggested to complete the marketing mix offline marketing is also essential. Events and offline branding can have a deep impact in sales volume.
Lisa: You are right about this. It is all about the marketing mix of traditional marketing, offline marketing, PR, giveaways, direct marketing, referral marketing, guerrilla marketing, and my favorite: new media marketing, including social media activities.
Hi Martin, yes, you have to try to be everywhere your audience or target market is. And not beyond that or you will be wiped out before you get started! Thanks for coming by and have a great day Martin.
Thanks Lisa!
Hi Martin,
What is New Media Marketing?
Janice
Janice:
Thanks for your question!
It is a fancy word for social media! It is to contrast it with old media, i.e., mainstream media.
All the Best,
Martin
Lisa: I’m glad that you mentioned these three main areas for promotion. Events really bring it home for me. What do you think the ROI is of sponsoring events for other organizations? For example, the local Chamber of Commerce? I don’t see a good ROI from it for most companies because the marketing is so general. How can a business best present itself in an event format?
Hi Hamilton, thank you. It really depends on the event, how much promotion is done prior, during and after. I joined a local Chamber here and have attended a few events and obtained a client through it. Like anything else, it depends on what you put into it Hamilton. Both in time and money. Having your logo imprinted on everything – I just ordered some more shirts to do when I go to events and make videos for my Facebook page. I may be ordering hats next too. Have you tried any?
? Having a blog for your business that is promoted via social media is a great promotional strategy.
Hi Renard, yes, I believe it does help a lot! Are you back on Twitter these days, speaking of social media? Thanks for coming by and have a great day.
? No, Lisa. I am not back on Twitter.
However, I am making the best of Pinterest!
Cool, I use that one too, will have to follow you there if I’m not already.
Hi Renard,
Is there a reason you left Twitter?
Janice
? I left Twitter because I was shadowbanned three times.
May I ask why? I never heard of shadowbanning on Twitter, only on Instagram. I don’t mean to pry but this way I can avoid getting shadowbanned on Twitter. Thanks very much for answering my questions.
Janice
? Honestly, Twitter never tells the user who has been shadowbanned the reason why.
I am making an educated guess that they did not like a particular Tweet.
Hi Renard, did they suspend your account? Many have been having that happen and not getting them back like they used it. Curious!