Online marketing is one of the most important marketing strategies.
Technology is constantly improving and the Internet is available to nearly everyone; successful businesses use that to their advantage, promoting their products or services to the greatest number of people by going online.
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| Social Media Websites and Online Marketing |
According to numerous studies, many people use the Internet as their primary source of information about some products or services.
Benefits of Online Marketing
Convenience – it is easier for your customers to find information about your service or product online than to buy newspapers to see the ads, or to track down and read flyers. It is also convenient for you because you can promote your business even when you are home.
Reach – the Internet has no boundaries – you are able to promote your products or services to a great number of people, even those who do not live in your area. This provides better odds for success and helps you expand your business faster. The more people you reach, the more products you sell. You don’t even have to open local outlets to sell the products; you can do all that online.
– Cost – promoting products online saves money you would spend promoting them elsewhere.
– Personalization – online marketing enables you to personalize offers to customers and make targeted offers to specific groups of people.
– Relationship – the Internet is a great way to establish a good relationship with your customers. You can interact, communicate frequently, and provide them with easy access to all the information they need.
– Social – online marketing’s popularity increased with the rise of social media. More and more companies rely on social media websites to promote their products or services. The most widely used social media websites for marketing purposes are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Social Media Websites and Marketing
– Create Facebook offers to capture customers’ attention – everyone loves a good offer. You should create at least one deal exclusively for fans of your Facebook page
– Contest – create a contest on your Facebook page requiring participants to like your page and post their photos or share a photo you posted with the “public” privacy setting
– Include a call to action
– Be interactive and communicate with the people
– Facebook comes with advanced targeting options; you can target your posts to specific locations, age groups, workplaces, genders, language, education levels, etc.
– Publish your fans’ photos or ideas to show them how you appreciate them
– Update your profile and cover photo according to seasons and special events
– Use hashtags to make posts visible to a greater number of people
– Include questions in your posts to make customers reply and increase the traffic of the post
Dos and don’ts for Facebook marketing:
– Use Twitter search to find other related businesses or people who are related to your business, follow them, and communicate with them. Also, you add other people in your area.
– Tweet regularly – Twitter is active; posts keep changing on people’s timelines, and you have to keep up. Make sure you tweet several times per day, and that you post in the morning, during the day, and at night.
– Don’t be afraid to ask for retweet – ask your followers to retweet your offers
– Contest – yes, you can hold a contest on Twitter as well. You can ask people to reply and retweet your question in return for a chance at a prize.
– Reply promptly – always check your mentions and make sure you reply to them in a timely manner
– Retweet – you should retweet when you see something interesting in order to bond with people who follow you
– Hashtags – use hashtags to make your tweets visible to more people.
– Share blog posts from your website
– Follow back your followers
Everybody loves Instagram. This application can be a great marketing tool as well. This is how you should promote your business on Instagram:
– Include hashtags – hashtags can attract a lot of instagram likes, attention and potential buyers
– When you upload a photo, you have the ability to share the same photo on other social media websites – do it
– Just like with Twitter, follow back your followers
– Be creative – find the beauty in everything, regardless of the service you provide and show that on Instagram
– Interact, talk, and like others’ messages
– Include a business bio and make sure it includes a link to your website. Also, include your Twitter username if you have one.
Additional Social Media Marketing Tips
– Reward your followers from time to time
– Use the same profile photo on all business-related accounts
– Use the same usernames on all business-related accounts