With the changing dynamics of the world in the second decade of the 21st Century, businesses are not hesitating to go digital with their ventures in the least. In fact, e-commerce platforms are giving local, established businesses a run for their money with their large customer reach and innovative ideas to create and personalise the experience of their target audience.

According to Shopify Plus, worldwide e-commerce sales will reach a record high of $4.5 trillion by the year 2021. So, the question thereby arises, how do these e-commerce giants reach their target audience and deliver the perfect experience? If you are curious, then read on to find out more about the best marketing tips for a successful business online.

1. 1.    ORIGINAL CONTENT

Using original content is one of the most important aspects of marketing your business online. You must ensure that you have data backing up all the claims that you make in your content. It is important to be truthful to your customers.

Apart from this, there are various separate portals like LinkedIn and Freelance Mantra, where you can start a business handle and connect with more people. These platforms have a huge following and if used wisely, they can widen your reach exponentially. Ensure that you are regular and active on these platforms and make an effort to reach out to industry experts who can help you build your network and broaden it further. These platforms differ significantly from other social media sites as you can connect with industry leaders and professionals directly on LinkedIn. So ensure that your content is rich enough for these people to give it a read and share it with their large following.

It is also extremely important to ensure that your content is rich in SEO keywords and uses the right tags and hashtags to reach a larger audience that is like-minded. Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important aspects of online marketing and can make or break a business. So make sure that you invest smartly in ensuring that your website is SEO friendly and ranks high on search engines. Typically, you should aim to be one of the first five results of a search as most people are likely to stop at the first five results.

• 2.    USE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS EFFECTIVELY

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter have a huge number of users on a daily basis. Almost 4 billion people use these platforms and are active in these platforms, collectively. One can only imagine their reach if they can get to the right people using social media.

Instagram alone offers a huge amount of features and tools that every business must be using. When creating an Instagram profile, it is important to remember to categorise it as a business profile to get free access to all these tools. In Pinterest too, you should create a business profile for your organization. Facebook works differently and you must create a page here.

The tools and features that have been mentioned above include options to check the number of people who have visited your page/account, the demographics of your visitors including their location, age, interests and gender. You can use this information effectively to customize your products to meet the likes and dislikes of your audience. Also, you can work towards building advertising campaigns that your customers can easily relate to and thereby find compelling.

These platforms also let you run advertisements for your posts and updates. These ads are usually very reasonably priced and have a huge reach. They can also help you connect your external sites with your social media pages.

Since a large number of celebrities and influencers also use social media you can get in touch with them and make them advertise your products in their handles. They usually have a large loyal fan following that you can gain exposure to.

• 3.    PROMOTION OF CUSTOMER REVIEWS

You must always remember that while running a business, keeping the customer happy is the ultimate goal. A happy and satisfied customer is also the key to a successful business venture. It is important to promote customer reviews and incorporate them within your marketing strategies. You must encourage your customers to give feedback on your products and your social media presence, regardless of it’s positive or negative nature. This way, the customer feels important and realises that he is actually a part of the decision making process. One happy customer will automatically imply that there are going to be more people.

Social media is something that has brought the world extremely closer. Thereby you should also make necessary arrangements to interact with your audience via Instagram, Facebook and YouTube live sessions. This helps you have candid conversations with people who are directly buying and using your products and services. The best part about these initiatives is that the customer will be able to put their trust in you completely when they see your genuineness.

You can also use the story features of these platforms to give your followers and subscribers little previews of your next idea. This will build up a sense of curiosity in them.

• 4.    AUTOMATIC EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to compel and convince your customer regarding your business. Around 3.9 billion people use emails, that is almost half the world’s population. It has also been reported that around 73% of millenials want to be contacted over emails by businesses. In the United States alone, approximately 50% of respondents check their emails more than 10 times in a day and prefer to be alerted by businesses in their emails. Also, more people are expected to buy a product that they have already saved in their cart after receiving about 2 email updates about emptying their cart. The fantastic statistics of email marketing can easily help you realise that this is one of the most effective yet underrated forms of online marketing.

• 5.    MAKE SURE THAT THE WEBSITE IS USER-FRIENDLY AND VISUALLY APPEALING

Another extremely important aspect of online marketing is ensuring your website is user friendly and gives your audience a wonderful experience while navigating through it. Also, ensure that your website is device friendly and can be easily accessed on a mobile phone. It is likely that most people will visit it using a phone.

Visual appearance is also extremely important and compels a visitor to go through the other categories and sections within your website. It is important to do proper research about the kind of colours and designs that are popular among customers. Usually people are more likely to prefer a business whose website is aesthetic in nature, uses minimalistic designs and a light colour palette, over a website with images and colours that are difficult for the eyes to adjust to. Moreover, the simplicity in minimalism is usually a crowd pleasure and you should design your website keeping this mantra in mind.

As you can see above, running an online business is quite tough. There are a huge amount of thoughts and strategies that go into planning the marketing schemes and systems properly in order to ensure that the content reaches the right audience and receives the right amount of attention. According to ‘The Entrepreneur’, the online business sector is growing 3 times faster than the offline sector in the United States. While it is certainly a drawback that businesses do not get to meet and interact with their customers in person, but if resources are harnessed properly and the best possible use is made out of them, online marketing can turn out to be the biggest turning point in the future course a business takes.

Author Bio: Abhyank Srinet is a passionate digital entrepreneur and CEO of  Digital Strategos,  who holds a Masters in Management degree from ESCP Europe and has an experience of 7 years in the Marketing Field. He started his first company while he was still studying at ESCP, and managed to scale it up by 400% in just 2 years.