How to Promote your Business Online

Promote your Business Online

If you are still not taking advantage of the power of the internet to promote your business, you are missing a huge potential to expand your business in a local as well as global arena. The internet has emerged as a strong medium to spread the message about your products and services across the world. It gets you access to the markets previously considered unthinkable.

When you prepare your marketing plan, consider promoting your business online as it is more cost effective than other traditional methods. Moreover, you can easily measure the success of your promotional campaign as you can collect the data on all the responses. So what are you waiting for? Start your marketing efforts today to promote your business online.

Local Reach

Though in general, the idea is so well-known and simple enough that it does not warrant much explanation, local sales can give you better returns if you increase your level of contact in a particular geographical area. Traditionally people make an effort to stop customers at their businesses by using signboards, banners or waving advertisements at passersby and more.

What about combining that with the latest technology and increasing your reach in your immediate area? To bring the local clients and customers to your business, you can use the GPS tracking feature of smart phones along with applications like Foursquare or Loopt.

Also list your business in the local-business sites as listed below

Sites/Tools that help: Yelp, Google Local & Yahoo! Local, Craigslist, etc.

Social media marketing

If you are ignoring social networking or assuming it’s just a chat-room for youngsters, you are wrong. In fact, social networking tools are great way to network with like-minded people.

These tools help you create a buzz about your products and services (and that is what marketing all about). Popular social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace offer a free, easy and effective way to reach existing and potential customers.

You can use these websites to create thousands of followers across the world by connecting with them in an informal environment. This is the great method to promote your business without apparently promoting it.

Sites/Tools that help: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube (free video streaming service), Flickr (free upload for pictures about your business and its fun activities) and Google plus (much like Facebook and MySpace).

Email regularly to stay in front of your customers

Sending regular email newsletters to your existing and potential customers can boost your business more than you may expect. You can attract people to join your mailing list by offering some incentives like discounts or gifts. However, when they do join your mailing list, do not pester them to buy your products.

Rather use this medium to provide them with some useful information about the products and services you are providing. Of course, you should combine this information in such a manner that the customers get tempted to come to your doorstep and buy your product. You can register with some excellent websites engaged in sending mass emails.

Sites/Tools that help: aWeber, Vertical Response, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp.

Blogs and News-feeds

You can update your old and new customers by providing news-feeds. Simply set up a blog about your business where you can post useful and interesting information. On your website, give a link to the RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication) of your blog.

Interested customers can then subscribe to this RSS feed using software like Outlook, Firefox, Safari or Google Reader, and they will be automatically informed of any new posting on your blog. This is an excellent method to automatically inform your customers.

Sites/Tools that help: For Blog Sites (WordPress, Blogger).  For RSS feeds (Google Reader, etc)

Conclusion

Using these easily available online tools, you can take your business to the next level. These tools can help you promote your business online in a fraction of the cost that you would spend on other traditional methods. Spend a bit of time to acquaint yourself with these online tools.

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About the Author

Vandana Singhal writes extensively on science, technology, health, and travel. Vandana has a degree in science and is artistic in nature.

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