Marketing tips for businesses

Marketing is important if you are wanting to take your business to the next level.

Whether you are a blogger or a large business – don’t underestimate the importance of marketing yourself to increase your online presence.

Anyone can get be online these days, it’s simple to set up a Twitter account, get your business on LinkedIn and start a website. But many people fail to do the research or don’t hire experts to help them. Though it might seem as simple as sending out a few Tweets, you need to gain an understanding of marketing and social media to get the most out of it.

Here are some tips.

Twitter.

Know your goals when it comes to Twitter. You might be keen to jump on in and start getting followers, but you need to know what your goals are. They could be:

• Making sales
• Website traffic
• Use as a customer service tool
• Email sign-ups

These are all goals that can be measured. You want your goals to be something that is realistic and that you can track.

When following people on Twitter or interacting with them, ensure that they are relevant to your niche. There is no point in following a bunch of people interested in books when you sell stationery to businesses. Having thousands of followers means nothing if they aren’t interested in your product or service.

A great thing I’ve seen many businesses to on Twitter is to share information. Now only does this give value to your followers but it shows you are an expert in your field. https://northernmat.ca/ is a business that’s fantastic at doing that. It uses Twitter in the following ways:

• to share their message and mission statement
• to inspire and motivate others
• share project progress
• posts relevant things at relevant times (for example, remembrance day tweets)
• shares valuable content to others

This helps the company to be seen as knowledgeable, caring and a type of business you might want to work with.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is especially important for B2B companies. LinkedIn generates more leads to B2B companies than Twitter, Facebook or blogging. If your company does not have a LinkedIn profile – it’s time to set one up.

Once you have filled in your company profile, it’s time to start using it. Like Twitter, you want to post useful content to LinkedIn daily. When sharing blog posts, make sure you share a brief snippet in the post before the link to get your audience hooked. Share links, images and videos.

LinkedIn has over 100k articles published every week, so to stand out you need to make sure you are sharing quality articles.

Advertise on LinkedIn to get your business in front of the eyes of potential customers. You can create sponsored content, regular text ads, or even send targeted messages with a sponsored InMail.

You can also use LinkedIn groups to network with likeminded people in your industry. If there are no groups in your industry – then start your own!

If you’re willing to pay, LinkedIn Sales Solutions allows you to search, research and engage with new prospects! It’s said this tool gives a 20% higher conversion rate.

Visual branding

Whether you want to go for a colour scheme like https://heatline.com/retro-line or take it a bit further with consistent fonts, graphics and image styles – you need to be consistent.

If you don’t have much experience with branding, start small with something like a colour scheme and see how it develops.

Ensure you are consistent across all platforms with any branding so you are instantly recognisable.

SEO

If SEO seems complicated, outsource your SEO needs with a company like Ignite Digital. This ensures that you show up in search when someone is looking for a product or service you supply.

It is possible to learn yourself by doing a bit of research, or you can read my post on 2019 SEO tips for more information.