by Robert Kormoczi, founder of Times International
Many online businesses are trying to build a self-serving system through digital marketing tactics to generate traffic and passive revenue over the long haul. But the online market is rife with competition and new businesses enter the ring on a daily basis to fight for new customers.
Building and growing a business online usually depends on leveraging various digital marketing tactics to outperform your competition and scaling up your outreach.
Target Marketing instead of Mass marketing.
It can quite often be tempting to display all the awesome features of your new product or service. But one must always keep their focus on the benefits of a single product and make it stand out from the crowd.
One should dive deeply into the benefits of your business, and start building new contents and campaigns around them. Make sure to keep it simple. Your intended customers need a reason to green-light the purchase of your product by understanding its uniqueness and value.
By doing this, you can get a foothold in your industry and grow through positive reviews, case studies and even word-of-mouth. The aim is to become the big fish in the small pond. If you can build customer trust and earn your first cash flow it’s time to drive marketing efforts to bigger projects. Until that time should come, you should use your creative ideas for a narrow market with only one product or service that lets you stand out.
The Importance of Giving.
When it comes to online marketing, retention of customer trust is the ultimate key to success.
Marketing to any customer means that you want to provide value with content that enriches their experience. In many cases, SEO or PPC campaigns are great for getting your first traffic to your website. But it does not guarantee a higher loyalty or higher return rates.
That’s why SEO or PPC are only the first steps in the sales journey. You can take the second step through nurturing relationships by giving out free offers or value. As an example, the most interesting online companies that I keep visiting, as a digital marketing enthusiast, are HubSpot, Ahref, or Mozbar since they have entire programs dedicated to engaging and educating their audience for free.
Assuming that you are the founder or a manager of an SaaS company, there could be several ways to promote a freemium plan or service to your page visitors. These freemium plans or services can include 30-day trial accounts, free memberships, or free limited offers before transferring a client to a paid service.
Providing a freemium experience to page visitors on a level that’s fully functional but not all-inclusive of available features and functions is a great way to introduce your brand.
However, let’s assume that you are not part of a massive SaaS service like Shopify or Cloudflare, but rather a small agency or a simple blogger like me, there are several ways to increase your website’s return rate. I personally focus on providing some value through free ebooks, free email courses and free informative content.
Content Marketing is Key for Page Growth.
A majority of customers prefer getting to know a company through genuine articles over paid ads. When you chisel your content, your focus must not only be SEO best practices, but targeting a specific group of people you’d like to target through a variety of channels. In nearly every B2B or B2C company I’ve ever worked with, developing quality-content has been a primary contributor for their growth.
However, it is not as simple as writing a couple of well-research articles that will get people to your website. Your website will require multiple formats like articles, reviews, infographics, case studies and comparisons.
It’s important that you only publish the very best content possible and remain consistent, as well as evaluate the performance of your articles using analytics and other data-driven approaches.
Final Remarks.
Judging by most online businesses, you don’t need an IPO to get investors flocking at your doorstep. If you were to look behind the scenes of websites like Cloudflare, Shopify or Convertkit, you would realize one thing in common.
They have managed to scale up their performance using the right online marketing metrics. Their focus was to attract page visitors who would follow a logical progression in their sales funnel. Having the right channels helps you move your first steps faster towards building up your online presence, finding the right acquisition channels and getting your first customers.
Robert Kormoczi is the founder of Times International, a tech and business magazine. He is a digital marketing consultant focusing on online business development, content marketing and lecturing through Tedx conferences on all things digital.
