10 Proven Online Marketing Tactics to Grow Your Business

As a small business owner you know how essential it is to get the word out about your brand, products and services; and one of the best ways to compete for customers and to grow a profitable business is with online marketing.

But with so much information out there, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. The following tactics breaks down the basics that will help you to get started to develop a solid online marketing strategy for your small business.

1) Have a Good Website

The days of phone books are long gone. People turn to the web to search for businesses, products, services, reviews and more. If someone wants to search for something you offer or for your business name, you want to show up — and not just show up — but show up and make a good first impression.

In many cases, your website will be your first point of contact with potential customers. You want it to be clean, well-organized, easy to navigate and more importantly motivate visitors to do business with you.

Be functional and branded
Have clear and concise content
Publish trustworthy, useful content relevant to your target audience
Make it easy to contact your business on every page
Track website metrics to spot issues and opportunities

The key to converting website visitors into clients is having a focused call-to-action (CTA) for each page to prompt them to take a specific action such as signing up for a newsletter, requesting a quote, contacting you via phone or form, etc.

This doesn’t mean you have to shell out the big bucks for website design. Today there are many template website designs that are cost effective, search engine friendly and offer attractive designs for every target audience.

2) Define Your Target Market

Key to successful online marketing is to ensure you are reaching the right target markets for your business. At the start of developing a marketing strategy, identify the specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing message.

Targeting a specific market does not mean that you are excluding people who do not fit your criteria. Rather, by identifying a specific group that is more likely to buy your products or services, you can craft better communications, more effective brand messages and focused marketing dollars.

Look at your current customer base
Choose specific demographics to target
Consider the psychology of your target
Check out your competition
Analyze your product/service
Evaluate if the target makes sense and is practical

Don’t break down your target too far! Remember, you can have more than one niche market.

3) Set Attainable Goals

Start by setting attainable goals and determine whether they are realistic. Setting SMART (specific, measureable, achievable, relevant and timely) goals can help you stay focused and keep you on track to achieve them.

You’ll want to strike a balance. Set enough goals to make meaningful progress, but not so many that you feel overwhelmed. You can set 1-2 goals related to each of your main marketing initiatives or set goals based on priorities specific to your marketing strategy.

Success comes with good planning; create a blueprint, follow it, fine-tune it, update it, and go back to it again and again.

4) Establish a Clear Brand Identity

Every company needs a brand identity. It is important to note, though, brand identity isn’t the same as your brand. Your brand is the relationship between your business and your audience — the emotional connection a person has about your products, services and organization.

Your brand identity is the consistent, visible, tangible face of your brand that represents the ideas behind your brand — the logos, colors, typography, packaging, sounds, smells, touch and messaging. Brand identity complements and reinforces brand reputation to attract new customers and establish customer retention.

Because customers and prospective customers will want to identify with your brand, you’ll want to establish a clear brand identity that targets them.

5) Google My Business

Google My Business gives business owners control of what shows in search results for their company name. It is advantageous for any business to use this easy and free service which allows you to:

Index and display important business information
Engage with customers and potential customers
Manage online reviews and reputation
Post business photos and acquire user-generated photos and content
View customer insights regarding how they found your business in search
Add Google Posts to highlight and share useful information, which provides a valuable boost over your competitors.

6) Search Engine Optimization SEO

The goal of SEO is to get your website to show up on page 1 of search engine results for your products and services when potential customers are seeking them. Every business owner should invest in some search engine optimization strategy.

Did you know that organic search is the largest driver of traffic with 51%, compared to 10% of traffic from paid search, 5% from social, and 34% from all other sources.

When done right, SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies out there and can connect your business with the right customers. But a good SEO requires time, effort and know-how:

On-page SEO refers to activities on your website:

Learn what your customers are actually searching for
Research and choose your page’s opportunity keyword phrase
Analyze Google results for that keyword phrase to discover what’s working for those sites
Create pages optimized for search
Optimize content to align with users intent that answers the searcher’s query
Create share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification
Use to create a logical structure
Optimize metatags, H1 headers and descriptions
Use short, descriptive URLs
Internally link between relevant posts and pages
Make your page content look awesome

Technical SEO is how well search engines spiders can crawl, interpret and indexed your website’s content

Make sure your website is accessible to both search engines and people
Make sure your website loads fast
Test that your website is mobile‐friendly
Install an SSL certificate
Create a sitemap
Upload a robots.txt file

Off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside of your own website to impact search engine rankings

Build quality backlinks from other websites to you website
Social media marketing
Guest blogging
Linked and unlinked brand mentions
Influencer marketing

It’s important to point out SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it strategy, search engine algorithms are constantly fluctuating, competitor rankings can improve in search results, and your website backlinks numbers change all the time.

7) Google Ads / Paid Per Click (PPC)

Placing targeted ads directly in front of your ideal customers when they are searching for what you have to offer is a surefire way to maximize your marketing dollars. On average, businesses make $3 in revenue for every $1.60 spent on Google Ads and PPC visitors are 50% more likely to buy than organic visitors.

A Google Ads campaign can be a cost-effective marketing tactic; you only pay when someone clicks or calls from your ad and you can set a cap on your daily spending and total budget.

But creating an effective campaign in Google Ads takes skill, planning, and time. You need a strategy, keyword targets, ad groups, landing pages, choosing the right type of ad and even perfecting your call-to-actions to see a return on your investment.

PPC ads appear at the top of results and according to Google can boost brand awareness by as much as 80%. Google Ads can provide an immediate visibility boost to help drive traffic, leads and sales until you start seeing results from your SEO efforts.

Social media marketing helps your business to engage with your customers where they are already spending their time, create sources of traffic, and grow through branding. Or, it can be a time-stuck that leaves you feeling drained on resources and time, resulting in a social media presence your customers don’t care or know about.

Tips for better results:

Set goals and define the outcomes and how to measure them
Research and identify your ideal customer
Choose which social networks are best to dedicate your time and what you’ll use them for
Write better social media posts – be authentic, interesting and provide value
Pay attention to insights for ideal posting frequency
Make sure to optimize and/or verify your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn profiles and content to get visible results
Develop a social media content sharing calendar
And remember, social media is networking not sales

9) Email Marketing

Trends come and go, but email is here to stay. And if you need to market your small business on a tight budget, email marketing has long been a simple, cost-effective way to drive revenue when every dollar counts.

There is plenty of data to back up the benefits of email marketing campaigns too: the average return for every dollar you spent on email marketing is an impressive $38, email marketing can leverage customer retention by 29%, and boost engagement by 22%.

Best of all, managing an email campaign is a lot easier than your think. There are many free and low-cost software options available with easy to use templates, signup forms and social media integration, plus it can help you manage subscribers, segment customer lists and track results.

A few basic steps to get started with an email marketing plan:

Determine your audience
Set your goals
Choose your content
Set your send frequency

But you need to also make it work for your business. Add value to your newsletters by making it:

Personal – humanize your brand, find your unique voice and maintain it. Segment your lists and send out newsletters with content topics that match what your subscribers are interested in.
Informative – provide newsworthy and interesting content. Can be about your business, industry, community or likeminded issues.
Useful – your customers are busy too. Send only essential information that matters.
Interactive – surveys, quizzes, contests, events or webinars that subscribers will want to engage with.
Tempting – special offers, discounts and coupons that will get your customers excited.

Reaching out regularly through email ensures that your business is top of mind, helps to grow your customer base, and builds your reputation.

10) Content Marketing

The term content marketing is relatively new, but the practice has been around for a quite a while now. Content marketing is a strategic approach to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content for a clearly-defined audience to:

Attract attention and generate leads
Expand your customer base
Generate or increase online sales
Increase brand awareness or credibility
Engage an online community of users

There are many tactics for building a successful content marketing strategy. But at its core, your content marketing strategy should answer the question why you are creating content, who you are helping, and how you will help them in a way no one else can.

Think about what your users want and how they want to see it. Different types of content you can create are:

Posts on Google, Social Media and Blogs
Videos
Podcasts
Whitepapers and Case studies
Infographics
Webinars
Press releases
Articles

But great content takes time, commitment and consistent execution. If you don’t have the resources to devote to content marketing, focus on “evergreen” content that does not become dated and requires less upkeep. A good example of evergreen content is this article; some of the details may change overtime, but overall these are time proven marketing tactics that aren’t going anywhere soon.