Welcome back to The Velvet Runway and this post about How to grow your business online.
As time goes on, there are more and more platforms where businesses can promote themselves and grow their audience, and online has a great many of them.
Your online presence is very important, as it’s going to be the place where you get a huge chunk of your customers. It’s even better if your services are extended to online customers, but it might be more difficult for smaller businesses with no means of distribution.
Your online presence can serve you in many ways, be it marketing, growing your audience, or even just communicating with your customers. It’s a great way to improve your business all around, especially since a lot of people are spending more of their time online during the recent lockdowns.
No matter where you are right now, this is the perfect time to grow your business online, and here are our key tips.
How to grow your business online
Establish your brand identity
People buy from people they know, like and trust, and establishing your brand identity is key; as its states who you are, what you do and why you do it!
Your brand identity is the unique feature (the USP – Unique Selling Proposition) of your business that sets you apart from every other online business in your niche.
Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon
It’s worth investing time in establishing your brand identity (your niche, your target market and your story), and ensuring that your brand design reflects this.
All visual aspects of your business, including your logo, your website, your social media accounts, your business cards, e-mail design etc. should consistently reflect your brand identity.
Pay attention to your website
If you’re going to use the internet as a means of promoting your business, then your website needs to be set up properly. The design, responsiveness, and ease of navigation are all vital parts of your website’s success.
Consider that your site is going to be the first thing a customer sees when they find your business, and it’s going to be where they get their first impression. If the first thing your potential customers are seeing is a poorly made website, then it’s not going to look good for you. Cheaply-made or low-effort websites can be a sign of scams or fraud, not something you’ll want to be associated with.
Responsiveness is also something you need to consider. How does it feel to use the website? Is it slow to use? If your website can’t keep up with the number of people viewing it at one time, it may cause people to give up trying to navigate and look elsewhere instead. You’ll have to be prepared and ensure that your website can handle high amounts of traffic if you’re aiming to attract it.
Then there’s navigation. A fancy and responsive website is one thing, but if it’s hard to navigate, it could be seen as a wasted effort. Your customers need to be able to find their way around the website if they’re going to get what they want from it. You don’t want people giving up on your services just because they weren’t able to find the products or services they were looking for.
Building your community
A great part of growing an online presence for your business means you can have easier access to your community. You can communicate with them, ask and answer questions, receive feedback over things that you’ve sold or the services you’ve provided. It’s a great way to get better in touch with the people who are interested in what you’re selling.
Grow your social media presence
Being consistent with social media is an important factor when growing your business online, and the more you connect and engage with your target audience, the higher your chances of success!
However, it can be difficult and time-consuming to maintain a consistent social media presence, and the constant changes in the algorithms can be difficult to keep up with so you might also want to consider other ways to build a community.
Create an online community platform
There are multiple platforms you can use to grow that community, be it social media, or through software you can use to create an online community platform. It’s essential that you keep your audience close, as it allows you to do so much with them.
Trust is so important as a company, as it’s what allows you to build your reputation as a business. If the public can see you openly interacting with your community, it will tell them all they need to know about the quality of your products and services.
Develop your e-mail marketing
E-mail marketing has the advantage of being able to target specific customer segments and communicate with potential leads, as well as current and past customers directly into their inbox at a time that is convenient for them.
If you have someone’s e-mail address, it means they are already interested enough in your brand to sign up, so now you want to maintain their interest with timely and interesting e-mails!
This doesn’t mean spamming them with twenty emails a day, unless you want them to unsubscribe, but provide useful tips and helpful information.
Remember that growing an online business is about building trust so make sure that not all your emails are about selling!
I especially like the advice to build a community! A community is so so important because those are the people you owe everything to. Without them, even the biggest influencer wouldn’t be anything. If they lost their community, they’d stop being an influencer that very second.
Lots of love,
Krissi of the marquise diamond
https://www.themarquisediamond.de/
I’m trying to grow my tea business, so this is super useful! Thank you!
I’m so glad you found it useful! xo
These are all wonderful tips! Thanks for sharing!
So glad you liked them xo
These are great tips for anyone starting an online business!
Glad you think so Rach x
Great tips
Thank you Christine x
Good tips for those wanting to grow their business. Have a great day.
Glad you liked the tips Nancy! Have a great day too x
These are wonderful tips Julia! Thanks for sharing. Social media is an important one that drives me crazy sometimes.
https://www.kathrineeldridge.com
I totally agree Kathrine! Social media drives me crazy too!
Thank you for sharing the tips!
Glad you liked them x