How to Digitally Promote Your Business

The world is now digitalized, with affordable smartphones and seemingly low-priced data services, it’s easier to access a lot of your potential clients digitally. Don’t rule out traditional media, it is still a major player in the marketing industry.

Promoting your business is very critical to its success, whether its word-of-mouth referrals, family and friends, WhatsApp group or broadcast; the number of ways are so many that you start wondering if you are using the right platform to accomplish your goal.

Plan your campaign

Above all is a plan on how you want to promote your business, your target market, and means to reach this target. No matter the level of your business, some form of promotion is very important to keep it running.

You’ll also need a goal – from introducing your business which is always the first step, showing your services and its benefits to their life or business, making sales, take an action. There so many tactics out there and everyday a new one is introduced.

The plan to promote your business will always change, affected by new trends, deals, quick success, minimal cost, minimal risks. It takes a lot, market research, patience, and so many trial-and-errors. Outline what you want to achieve, your expectations and how to get there… a plan is the first step, the right step.

Here are the Key points that always form the basis of any promotion plan:

Objective: you want to achieve a goal, campaign success looks like this (number of sales, downloads, likes, comments, shares, awareness, registrations, etc.)

Opportunity: why this campaign, a new trend, a new service, a new deal, a partner link up, need new sales to cover a bill, how will this support the other promotional activities (have a promotional plan for the year and see how it fits in).

Audience/Target demographics: target age group, type of work, type of behavior affects the plans because your target audience will be the ones to take the action if well executed.

The Message:  the primary key to any successful promotion, what message will connect with your target audience, will it make them react or just scroll pass – how will it be delivered – image, video, FAQs, Coupon code, what must be in the message for it to succeed.

Duration:  how long will it run to achieve the desired goal? throughout the year or during a trend?  seasonal promotion etc. This affects your budget which must be planned and accounted for.

Human Support: Many companies run promotions without involving the team members who are directly or indirectly involved.  Right from the security staff, the front desk and all staff must have full knowledge of the promotion, its plan and who to direct to if more questions need answering.

The success of the campaign can affect for example your IT team members, creative team, stock of the products, logistics team; meaning more work, weekends are off, etc.  Preparation by everyone is very important.

Measurement: It must be measurable, your promotion – the data that you need to determine its success rate and how it will guide the company to a higher success rate of the next campaign.

Numbers, graphs, reports will help you plan and reduce your trial-and-errors, fund wasting, etc.

How to reach potential clients and customers

Once you are ready with your plan – it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s now time to reach your potential clients and customers digitally.  We will use a line here and give a shout out to traditional advertising, shouldn’t be ignored and still very expensive.

The beauty about promoting your business digitally is the wealth of options to choose from: paid and free, broadcasting, one-on-one. Start with what you know and then mix it up, using a different type of content that will attract them. Learn and adjust until you have the winning plan.

Below are common ways to promote your business digitally:

Social media Platforms

This is free, all you need do is create your business pages and then ask people to follow or like and then publish your message on the pages, well it is a start but most of us have been here and stuck, few likes, few followers, you begin to doubt the process. In comes the marketing section of the platforms where for a fee, you can get more followers, likes, and clicks. It takes a lot to grow a large number of followers but always worth it.

Social media marketing

The most used or easiest to run digital Ads, just from your social media page. The social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. make it so easy to run an Ad any day any time but it takes a lot more than that, you need to plan properly and in-depth. We can always help you with your social media marketing.

Sales especially brand awareness is a major use of social media marketing which encourages followers to share your branded content thereby getting more followers, shares, and likes leading to more sales, downloads, etc.

Influencers

The rise of social media influencers is at the peak, becoming full-time jobs and the pay is good if their content remains superb and willingness to keep evolving.

They seriously have an impact on sales and awareness of any promotion if creatively executed else it’s just another post. The right Influencer and right delivery strategy will take your business to a whole new level.

Top visited Blogs and sites

The Linda Ikeji Blog, Bella Naija, Instablog, NairaLand, Punch Newspaper etc. are amongst the top blogs currently in Nigeria and that’s because of “wanted” content and number of visits to their blog or site.

What does your campaign need?  eyes, visits, clicks and these top sites can give you that for a fee. You can place adverts or post on them and wait for the calls or numbers to go up. This again is a trial-and-error situation where you learn and get the best form of message, delivery and also the right blog or site as not all will work for your type of business.

A new trend and now becoming the norm, creating engaging clips and short skit have proven to engage the audience a lot and every top social media platform have embraced it and prioritize it above image or word Ads.

This is a form that should be considered when trying to deliver your campaign message, contact us to help you deliver an engaging video skirt.

Email Marketing

Very old and still relevant, a means to engage your current clients, stay in touch with them, update them on new deals, products and sales. It shouldn’t be ignored. We can create awesome templates for your official emails to clients.

Search engine marketing

Yahoo, Bing with Google standing at the top of the search engine have become the number 1 place to go to when you looking for something. It’s a very good place to place adverts especially when you have a target keyword, key phrase, industry, and a plan.  It’s expensive but the results are worth it.

PR(Public relations)

Most small companies and start-up don’t know the importance of PR and always seem to misunderstand their value. Public relations (PR) is about building relationships and maintaining a good reputation, this is very important for a brand and should be considered a long-term investment.

Look for something, a location that resonates with your brand’s vision and mission, invest in it as a brand and it will begin to pave the way to yours been amongst the top brands in the world.

Content marketing

Content marketing has been in the play for a while now, it is a big shift in how businesses promote themselves. Information is key to life and using it to attract customers, earn their trust in your brand as a key player in your field/industry, providing valuable information which redirects them back to a service or product you offer is the core of content marketing.

Talk about a problem and show your professionalism in solving it is a major boost for your business.  This is free if you have a blog on your website and you constantly update it and post links to it on digital platforms you control to increase views and comments. You can also post this on top sites for a fee.

Others SMS, WhatsApp, etc.

SMS has been in play for a long time just like email, its new form – Direct Messaging used in various social media platform like Facebook Messenger, yahoo messenger, Instagram DM and now the most favorite and used – WhatsApp still have a major role and are used to keep InTouch with existing customers and clients. It’s quick and with links and images, can be more interactive; delivering your message professionally.

CONCLUSION 

The digital world is forever growing, changing and it takes a lot to keep up with. As a business willing to grow and stand the test of time, you have to keep promoting and adjusting to the new trends to stay relevant and successful. The competition is always looking for ways to take a bite from your share of the business.

There are so many other ways to promote digitally, please share below in the comments your means of promoting your business and how successful (or not) it has been for you.  Please also share on the ways of promoting businesses that we have missed out on.