The term ‘online marketing’ can strike fear into the savviest of online business owners. With thousands of other websites and businesses all competing in the same space, it’s essential that you stand out from the competition, but many business owners are faced with dwindling marketing budgets and massive time restraints.

However, there are steps that you can take in order to ensure that you are seen by your potential customers and they don’t have to cost the earth.

Know Your Audience

You’ve likely heard this before, but in the online arena knowing your audience is more important than ever. Spend a bit of time researching the type of demographics you are trying to attract. Are your customers students? Or perhaps you are going after the silver surfers. Knowing which websites that your demographic frequent — and what they are looking for — is essential in order to provide them with exactly what they want.

Communicate with your customers. Ask what they think of you or your product, and rather than taking negative feedback personally, harness that knowledge to identify your weaknesses and further improve your product or service.

Get Your Website Working Harder for Your Business

Of course, there are several ways of optimising your website and you should familiarise yourself with all of them.

Your website needs to be clear and concise, free of clutter and with a punchy message that the visitor can grasp within 15 seconds. You also need an irresistible call to action, whether it’s a ‘Buy Now’ button or a download link, think what you ultimately want your visitor to do and make it happen.

Most internet users will have multiple tabs open, so consider using a favicon generator to ensure your tab stands out from the crowd on your customer’s desktop. Here, Oberlo lists the 10 best favicon generators to help you save time and money.

Content is Critical

You should be creating fresh, unique content that is interesting and targeted to your audience, and updating that content on a regular basis. This can present a challenge to many website owners, which in turn results in stale, dated websites that have little chance of converting visitors into customers. Blogs, videos, articles, and references are all vital for keeping your website current, informative and interesting.

Consider SEO

Google remains one of the biggest tools for driving potential customers to your website. Without that traffic, you can hardly hope to succeed. Search engine optimization is a complicated but vital part of your success. Potential customers will rarely click on search results that are not on the first page of Google so that’s the spot you need to aim for. Employing an SEO specialist or agency can help you achieve the results you want, in less time.

Have a Solid Social Media Strategy

Build a strong online presence with a business page on one of the big social media platforms, and build an engaged audience there with frequent, relevant posts that your target audience can relate to. You can link this to your website in order to create excellent cross-selling opportunities.