One of the benefits that online innovations handed to people in business is e-commerce. It’s now easier to establish your brand, improve business recall, reach more potential customers, and make sales. However, it’s not a walk in the park.
Extending your business to the online world means you also need to elevate your effort to market your business. Suppose you are moving from the traditional ways to sell products and services. It might take you a while to familiarize yourself with the requirements of online marketing. And that will be extra harder if you are not tech-savvy.
Online marketing does not end when you launch your business website. It’s a continuous process. Here are the mistakes you might be making in marketing your business online:
1. You Don’t Have Social Media Pages
Even letting your friends know through word of mouth that you have a business won’t increase people’s awareness of your brand. Even with family and friends, they should see your business online. Send them links to your social media pages.
Sometimes, people don’t realize that they need something unless they see it. Or seeing something enough times over a period makes them feel like they need it. Somehow, through social media, you can fabricate a sense of necessity so capitalize on that.
When you use social media pages, utilize the existing business tools within those sites. For your Facebook business page, use targeted ads. When you use this, don’t sell it to everybody. If you sell shoes, it will help target the same people who follow and like similar businesses such as Adidas and Nike.
2. You DIY-ed Your Website
There are plenty of beginner-friendly website makers on the internet when you want to create your business website. However, do not skimp on something that could do the trick in raking in monthly sales. Websites are a basic necessity for online marketing. Leave it to the pros to create your business website.
Online marketing agencies offer web development. The most significant advantage of hiring an agency to work on your website is that you don’t have anything more to worry about. After consultations, you wait until they come up with a website that will satisfy your requirements as the owner and the needs of your potential customers.
Having a professionally engineered web design will improve your customer experience. They will also handle issues like whether or not your website will work on mobile devices or if the “add to cart” features are on display or hidden. Professional designers will do a much better job than you will, so don’t hesitate to ask for their help.
3. You Don’t Know SEO
Once you dive deep into the requirements to make your business stand out in a somewhat saturated environment, you will learn about SEO and other marketing strategies. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process that helps you land at the top of the Google search results page.
Think about what you do when you need something and don’t know where to get it. You look it up on the internet. And the next course of action will be clicking the first results that come up. You’ll want your business to be on the first page of results when someone googles a product or service that you offer.
There are many many steps in achieving this. The effect is not immediate, but it will be worth the investment. Like web development, some agencies provide SEO services. They handle content creation that will boost your ranking in results pages eventually.
4. You Don’t Have an Idea About Google Analytics
Google has a tool that lets you view in-depth statistics about your customers and their interests. You should be making data-backed decisions for your business if you don’t want to waste time doing aimless actions. With the help of Google Analytics, your choices will be based on data and not on instinct and guesses.
This feature is not automatically enabled when you sign up on an e-commerce platform. Installing this will need some time, but you can do it on your own. Once you have this, the first thing you can do is read on your customers’ demographics. You will learn whether a specific demographic makes more purchases than another.
Then you can also access information on customers’ behavior, like the number of returning visitors. You will also see how long they stay on your website. Base your subsequent decisions on this information. Maybe, you need to adjust the visuals or the arrangement of products to increase sales. Take your time to study them.
Do not be discouraged if you don’t understand codes; most people don’t. Performing well in e-commerce is not exclusive to those who are tech-savvy. You can always get help from businesses that offer solutions. Take your time, and you will get there.
