Scaling a small business online can be a chaotic task that feels like building a plane while it is in the air. This online growth of a small business is possible with the right tools, good content, and a lot of effort and dedication, but it often feels like climbing a never-ending mountain.
Late at night when the dashboard was quiet, and everything seemed to be going OK, I would wonder if anyone had actually seen what we had been posting. It was a lonely feeling.
Ever wondered why a bunch of promising online businesses seem to get stuck behind a glass ceiling for growth?
Online presence expansion is not about doing everything at once. Most of the growth methods available today require a great deal of effort at the beginning and then produce a great deal of additional work. One of the most important aspects of sustainable growth is developing a deliberate strategy that builds on your company’s strengths. In this article, I present you with a solid roadmap for growth of your online presence.
Solidify your core brand identity
Before trying to get more traffic to your existing online presence (e.g., in order to get more traffic to your website), first you need to solidify your core brand identity (so that everybody immediately knows who you are, what problems you are trying to solve for your customers, and why you are even better than your competitors in the first place).
Clarity must always come before reach.
The core message of your brand needs to be very clear. If it is unclear, then sending more traffic to your platform will be a waste of resources. Everything about your brand online needs to be defined so that when potential customers visit your website or social media pages, they immediately understand who you are, what problem you are solving, and why you are better than the rest.
Optimize your digital storefront
Your website is the central component of your online strategy. Every campaign, advertisement, and every post on social media channels must lead users back to your website. It is the one location that you have total control over.
The main things to note when looking at the user experience of your website are: the speed at which your website loads; how easy your website is to use; how easily your customers can complete the required action on your website. This means keeping your menu simple, clearly displaying your contact details, and minimizing the number of steps your customers have to go through to complete the required action on your website.
Next, optimize your website for search engines, or search engine optimization (SEO) for short. Like I said already, search engine optimization is the most reliable online marketing method for sustainable, long-term online traffic. The best way to get search engine optimization is to create content on your website that answers the questions your ideal customer is searching for online. By answering the online questions of your target audience for free, you become the authority in the niche market you serve, and you attract the perfect online customers who are already searching for the solutions you provide.
Nurture customer relationships through direct channels
There’s too much risk of losing customers and suffering losses if you rely only on social media to reach your target audience. The rules governing use of various platforms change quickly, and the levels of reach granted by algorithms are unpredictable. What’s more, they can fall at any time. You need to set up your own communication channels that allow direct contact with customers.
Are you using far too many of your marketing dollars to generate leads on platforms that you have no control over?
Email marketing is one of the most effective tools to generate repeat business and to create customer loyalty. Instead of sending standard ads and promotions, try adding value by writing articles, sharing photos and videos of your daily life, and offering special deals and offers your customers can’t get anywhere else.
Check out proven email examples, including email marketing campaigns, to see how successful companies structure messages and balance email text with graphics. In addition, look at examples of effective email calls to action to learn how to write your own email campaign. Using a well-crafted marketing message and offering individualized recommendations, you can turn a single purchase customer into a customer for life.
Automate and streamline internal operations
As your company grows and demand for your products and/or services increases, you’ll start to notice that the time it takes to complete certain tasks can grow exponentially. What used to take you 2 minutes to respond to a customer service question, for example, can now take up to 30 minutes or more. This is because, as a growing company, you are inevitably taking on more and more tasks. Therefore, you must put systems in place in order to automate as much of your work as possible.
There are many routine tasks that entrepreneurs perform every day. Customer service, tracking of orders, scheduling of appointments, and posting on social media networks are just a few examples. However, there are many automation tools on the market today that can manage these tasks and allow business owners to focus on their core business.
Automation doesn’t have to mean losing the special something that makes your small business special.
So rather than taking away the personal touch of a small business, it actually enables it and frees up time and mental space for you to build relationships with customers and to better your products and services.
Make decisions based on data
And then there’s the data to back up your intuition for the growth of your online business. So monitor the customer acquisition costs as well as the conversion rates. Also check customer lifetime value and the website’s bounce rate.
What if the campaign you feel most attached to is actually your least profitable one?
Customer acquisition cost, conversion rate, customer lifetime value, and website bounce rate are all indicators for online growth. While tracking them is not always easy, it will expose structures and patterns in your online marketing. This, in return, will help you to launch the right online marketing campaigns and to reallocate your online marketing budget, for example if one campaign is performing better than another while you had hoped for the opposite.
Build strategic online partnerships
Partnering with businesses in your industry will aid your scaling. You can look for non-competing businesses that have a similar target market to you and potentially co-host webinars, launch joint promotions, or even create collaborative content for each other’s audiences.
Cross-promotion with non-competing businesses, or even creators within the same industry, can quickly and effectively enhance online exposure for the business’s products or services to an existing and highly esteemed audience.
Online growth is a gradual process. If you have strengthened your message, are optimizing your website, and are building direct customer relationships, then you are well on your way to building a successful, growing online business.
This content is provided for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. AFP editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.
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