Business Promotion On The Internet

“If you are not on the Internet, then you are not in business” is a quote from Bill Gates and today it hits right on the spot. Sales in modern business are increasingly "moving" to the Internet. According to Rosstat, in 2020, e-commerce accounted for 3.9% of all sales in Russia. To understand the dynamics of growth, a year earlier this figure was 2%. That is, online sales almost doubled in 1 year.

You can't get behind this trend. An online presence is becoming a prerequisite for healthy brand development. However, and this is not all, one presence is not enough, you need to know how to properly develop influence in this market.

This article is your guide to the important points of promoting a company on the Internet. We will talk about trends in the online market, show you how to develop and what to do to get sales from online channels of communication with the audience.

How to promote your business online: 15 tools

There are many tools that allow you not only to make yourself known on the Internet, but to sell goods and establish constant communication with the audience.

First, the main thing - we need a platform for communication. In the standard understanding of business, a platform for communication would be a point in the market, a boutique, a store or an office. On the Internet, the main tool for communication with the audience is the website. If you don't already have a website, you will need to develop one. It will become a springboard and starting point for using all business promotion tools, it will be your face in the Internet environment.

If you already have a website ready, you need to know all the tools with which you can promote it, and this will be discussed further. Here are the top 15 ways to promote your business online.

1. Create a blog and post quality content regularly

Blogging is a long-term promotional tool. In one night, a week, or even a month, it will not bring a tangible increase in sales, but the prospects for such a promotion are colossal.

The logic here is simple. Every page on a blog is a potential source of traffic to a website, and every source of traffic to a website has sales potential. It works like this:

The user searches for information of interest to him → finds your page with useful content → receives an answer to his question → sees your expertise in the issue → orders a service.

We looked at a typical blog sales funnel. Now imagine that your blog has a hundred pages with useful content, each of which receives at least 50 users per month (maybe 500 or 5000 or 50,000). If 50, then 50 visits x 100 pages = 5000 visitors interested in your topic. Each of 5000 can order your service. The percentage of conversion to a client from a blog reader can be different: 0.5-20%. This means, in this scenario, from a blog you will get from 25 to 1000 customers with hundreds of written articles. This is a good increase in sales, especially considering that you will receive so many customers every month.

How to write blog content:

• Thematic match. Write articles on your topic. "How to choose a CMS" for an Internet marketing blog, development is good. How to build a house for 2 salaries for the same blog - bad, even if you really have such experience
• Compliance with demand. If the topic that you are going to write about is not interesting to your audience, you will not receive a single visit. You can check the demand using the Yandex Wordstat service. Just write a query in the search bar and you will see if your audience is interested.

Checking demand with examples:

How to choose a CMS:

The topic is good and if you write a good article, it will collect a large number of visits. To learn how to write the right content for good rankings, read our article → SEO copywriting: what it is + examples .

• Show expertise, give links to order. Usually the main purpose of blog articles is not just to collect visits, but to get customers. To get sales from your blog, it is important to lead the user to the right place.

You can do this in different ways. For example, give links to products that solve customer problems. Just an example of how this is done:

The link leads to the product card in the store. The user came to the blog → read the article → along the way saw that the product was good → went to the card and placed an order.

Blogging is good for more than just sales. It also increases your expertise and market power. Due to the fact that users find the information they need on your site, they know that they will receive qualified help from you. Even if the visitor leaves without placing an order this time, he will remember that he received an answer to his question on your site and will return in the future to solve the problem again. The influence and recognition of your company is growing, as is the potential for ordering.

2. Promote your site in search engines (SEO)

Search promotion is a powerful tool for developing a company's presence on the Internet. It takes time, but the prospects for such a promotion channel are very high. Often, novice entrepreneurs choose one promotion channel, for example, contextual advertising, because it brings quick results, and they hit one spot. Context is a good tool, but it costs a lot in the long run: you have to constantly pay to place an ad. SEO is a less budget-demanding channel in the long run. Yes, at first you need to invest, but in the future, the growth of positions in organic issuance bears fruit in the form of constant requests. What is SEO, how does this tool work and how to promote sites in organic, read in our other article here .

3. Place a publication in online media

We continue to develop the theme of interaction with the audience through the text. Online media is a powerful tool to attract an audience to your site. There are many major portals that provide guest posting on their blogs. Here is some of them:

• VC.ru
• Spark
• cossa
• Rusability

This is far from a closed list of sites where you can publish your expert article. Search and you will definitely find a platform that will be interested in your content. The site gets new readers, you are PR, links to your site (for SEO), additional transitions of an interested audience.

How to publish a guest article

Placements can be paid and free. Read the terms of posting articles on sites. For example, here are the conditions for publishing on Kossa.

What to post

Write about your experience. Make a case and tell the blog audience about it. It is interesting and has a high potential for appealing to you.

Make expert content on your topic. Tell us about the features of your business. If the niche is new, the format will be of interest to a wide range of people

Help solve some problem. It is also possible in the case format, an example is “How we connected CRM to an online store and helped save 100,000 rubles”

4. Create communities in social networks

Social networks are such a developed business tool that they can easily replace a full-fledged website. Some companies only do business on social media. This channel works well in the areas of sale of consumer goods, for expensive goods with a long cycle of selection and purchase, the channel is not very suitable.

Which social network to choose

It is better to work with several at once, but such dispersion of attention requires large budgets for promotion. Therefore, at the start of SMM promotion, you need to focus on one social network. Parameters for selection: audience, product, sales methods.

Here is a brief description of popular social networks:

• Instagram → for the sale of products designed for a young audience: up to 34 years old. It is possible for more age groups, but the topics are narrowed. The best formats for advertising messages - photo + short description, story
• Odnoklassniki → a social network with a large audience. Age groups from 25 to 55 years. It is best sold products designed for an age audience, but you can sell almost anything. The best format for advertising messages is small posts up to 200 characters long + product photo
• VK → another "commodity social network". Anything is also sold here, and the social network is well adapted for these purposes. The audience is quite young, but there are people 40+ years old. Almost all advertising formats work here: long posts up to 1000 characters (storytelling is good), small posts with photos, recent and stories
• Facebook → for a commodity business, the social network is weak. But this does not mean that it should be immediately swept aside. FB works best for building networking. Finding useful people, business contacts, partners is about Facbook. Also, people with high incomes live here, which means that you can sell goods with high checks.
• LinkedInn → another channel for building business connections. It's even better than Facebook because it's focused specifically on business relationships. Here you can find a good employee or employee for any business area

5. Be active on social media

If in the previous paragraph we talked about creating and developing representation in social networks: communities and accounts, then here we will reduce the focus to more trivial things. Communication in communities is a tool with which you can show your expertise and, possibly, attract visitors to your site.

What to do

Communicate on topics related to the specifics of your business. Keep in touch with people from your field. This helps to establish business contacts and attract an interested audience.

Answer questions. The same expertise. If a question is asked in the profile group, do not hesitate to answer it. This will show your experience and draw attention. If you are developing not a personal brand, but an organization, communicate on behalf of the company.

Share links to your site. Remember, we talked about the blog at the beginning of the article? It can become an inexhaustible source of knowledge. And this knowledge can be useful to your audience. If you see a question related to a blog article, link to it. In the same way, you can promote the company directly. If a person needs to resolve an issue related to the scope of your company, give a direct link to the service page.

It is desirable that the links in the comments of social networks be native. Therefore, before linking to the site, create a live communication. So the user will trust you more.

6. Be placed in Yandex.Maps, Google Maps, 2GIS directories, etc.

Registration in directories and search engine maps is a great way to promote for several reasons:

• Impressions in maps, including geo-referenced – “toy store nearby, bookstore nearby”
• It is easier for the user to find you
• Additional source of traffic to the site

To get the most out of the maps, add a few photos of the object, specify the work schedule, attach a link to the site, respond to comments and user reviews.

7. Negotiate barter with bloggers

Influence marketing is trending right now. This tool is popular because blogger advertising attracts a hot audience, those who are definitely interested in your product and who are ready to order it.

How to act

If the business is in the initial stage of development, you are unlikely to get through to a millionaire blogger: there is a high demand for advertising and, as a result, high rates for placement. Therefore, it is better to apply for PR to a not so popular and promoted influencer, but for a smaller fee. If you work in a certain region, look for a person who maintains a profile from there. So your ad will be closer to the user. Offer a barter to a blogger: a product for free for a review and PR. When using this promotion method, remember that the review may not be entirely positive. Influencers also value their reputation and the opinion of the audience, so they will not advertise a bad product in a positive way.

1. Use contextual advertising

This is an easy way to quickly get to the top of search results. Set up advertising, make a budget and launch, advertising is immediately shown at the top of the search engine results. However, unlike SEO, the effect is not long-term. If the budget runs out, ads will immediately stop showing.

Briefly about what needs to be done

• Choose a system for advertising. Yandex.Direct and Google Ads are popular in RuNet
• Select keywords to promote your site
• Write ads for requests in Yandex or Google advertising cabinets

Users will find you in the search results for the words that you specify in the advertising campaign.

9. Motivate buyers to write about you on review sites

Reviews are the engine to raise your company's online reputation. In 60% of cases, users read reviews about a company and its product before buying a product or using a service. That's why it's so important to get that feedback.

How to motivate to leave a review

• Just ask your user for it. Most often, buyers do not leave positive reviews about the product. But negative write very often. The reputation of the company suffers from this. You can leave a request for positive feedback in the form of a thank you for your purchase or in a payment message.
• Submit your request by email. Using the CRM system, you can set up automatic sending of emails with such content to all users who have made a purchase. The best option is delayed shipping, 5-7 days after the purchase. So the buyer will have time to try out the product, and the request will be unobtrusive
• Offer a reward. As a reward, you can use discounts, bonuses, cashbacks, any benefits for the user

1. Use targeted advertising

Targeted advertising is a tool to reach those people who may be potentially interested in your product, but they do not have a direct desire to buy now. Social networks work for a wide coverage, that is, the user comes to these sites for relaxation, and your advertising catches up with him in accordance with his interests.

The audience in this channel of attraction is cold, which means that it is more difficult to interest them and you need to apply techniques that form interest.

How to act here

There are two scenarios for attracting customers:

• Sell ​​through the site: advertising leads to your site, where the user places an order
• Sell ​​within the social network: attract to your community, stir up interest and sell Selling through the site is a little easier. You attract a user to a platform adapted for sales. Through the community, the cycle is longer: attract → warm up → lead to the product → motivate to buy.

11. Speak at events as a speaker

Speaking at events is a good way to get more attention for your company. Here it is important to show your expertise in its highest manifestation.

How to proceed:

• Keep track of speaking events related to your topic
• Prepare a well-thought-out speech. The best thing for this case is stories about some cases, about the application of solutions that helped your client. Such topics can be found in any field: from marketing to agriculture.
• Advertise your business. It is better to do it natively, just mention the name of the company during the speech, if there is a presentation, place a logo in it

12. Meet partners at fairs and exhibitions

Even if you do not have the opportunity to speak as a speaker, this does not mean that you should not go to such an event. The exhibition is a place where you can make useful contacts, make yourself known, study the market and competitors' offers. Participation in the fair, even as a simple passerby, can bring many benefits, do not miss this opportunity.

13. Post helpful video tutorials on YouTube

Video hosting is a good source of new audience and a good channel for brand reputation development. Just like in social networks and a blog, here you can help users solve their problems.

What to post

• video reviews of products - a product in all its details, will help the user decide when choosing a product
• presentations of new products, if you produce them yourself - inform the user that something new has appeared
• instructions: for installation, use - develop brand
• loyalty life hacks: how to use something with maximum benefit or do something at the lowest cost using your product - you can “hide” ads for specific products in them
• image rollers. Tell us what your company does and what you can offer. The purpose of such content is to increase awareness of the company.

Video hosting will work to attract users, develop loyalty, provide additional entry points and link weight for the site.

14. Build relationships with customers through email marketing

Newsletters are a powerful customer retention tool. Gather a database of addresses from users who have placed an order, simply offer to subscribe to company news, provide an advantage to subscribers.

What to write in the newsletter

You can use different formats, entertaining and selling interspersed:

• news
• life
• hacks
• tips
• product tops: weeks, months, customer selection

Do not load the user with additional information about the company, give the information that will help solve the client's problem. Satisfy the desire to get the best product or save.

15. Advertising in telegram channels

This method of promotion appeared relatively recently and is now actively developing. Here everything works just like when interacting with bloggers, only a channel is used instead of an account. You can negotiate with the owner of the channel directly or use one of the advertising exchanges in the telegram. Services are needed so as not to manually search for thematic channels. They show all channels in the subject, engagement and the number of active audiences in them. Also, using these services it is easier to determine advertising budgets.

Summing up

We have listed 15 online promotion tools. If you use any one of them, it will be difficult to achieve a significant result, but if you use them in combination, you will get a powerful influx of customers.

For example, using a bunch of SEO + content marketing (blog) + contextual advertising + media publications, you will immediately receive many traffic sources and many hits. The context will generate quick hits, SEO will give the progressive growth of the project, blogging will play for better promotion in organic issuance and the flow of potential customers, and publications in the media will work for the company's image.

Use different channels of communication with the audience, your site will develop and bring constant profit.