It’s important that all website owners are aware that the boffins at Google are always changing and upgrading what is known as the “search algorithm”.

They cannot always be relied upon to keep your website exactly where you have worked so hard to position it. And when these changes are updated to the web, the new algorithm can have a drastic effect on search rankings for some sites. Over the past couple of years, the “Panda” and “Penguin” updates have sent thousands of websites crashing down the rankings and some of these were well-built sites with relevant content and solid SEO (search engine optimisation) behind them.

What does that information mean for you – the site owner?

It means do not rely purely on Google for the marketing and distribution of your website and brand. There are a variety of methods to garner support and clientele for your site without even using the “Gods of Google.”

To get your site started on the “google-less” path, here are some quite simple methods that can be quickly and easily used for your website:-

1. Traffic From YouTube

This may not work for everyone however if you have a product that lends itself to video (reviews, demonstrations, etc), get out your i-phone, create a couple of videos and get yourself a YouTube channel today. With the right type of engaging video, this is a terrific way to drive traffic to your website.

Example: BlendTec – http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

2. Traffic From an Email List

Easy step-by-step process for this one:-

• Create an e-book about a topic that you and your target audience are enthusiastic about. For me, this would be about “Website Marketing.”
• Add a form to your website that allows people to receive / download your e-book in exchange for an email address. You must indicate what will be received via this email address i.e., monthly newsletters, sales offers, updates, etc.
• Create a newsletter (or similar) and keep your customers posted on new developments on your site, prompting them to return to the website to check them out.

You’ll need to be careful with this – unsolicited emails can land you in serious spam trouble however if you have a “record of consent” and a clearly marked unsubscribe button, you should have no issues. Google “Spam Laws” for more information.

3. Traffic from Facebook

As regular followers of my blogs know, I believe that Facebook, when used effectively, can be a terrific way to get traffic across to your website. Content for Facebook needs to be interesting, valid, and worthwhile to your visitors. Find a balance of these and you will see immediate benefits.

4. Traffic From Forum Posts

If you maintain an active participant on a relevant forum, this can be one of the most successful methods of getting traffic to your site. Traffic from your forum posts will be already attuned to your ways of thinking and keen to do business with you. Given the right impression, you will be already seen as a “Key Person of Influence” giving you great credence among your target audience.

Key to this strategy – you must find a forum that your clients are accessing for information or help. For example, Whirlpool would be great for anyone in the telecommunications industry as many people seek help here for a range of technological issues. You can sign up as an expert and offer help to the hundreds of “lost souls” seeking your assistance. Be careful though, Whirlpool and other forums are not keen on the hard-sell so leave the marketing hat at the door and watch people follow you anyway!

5. Traffic from Blog Commenting

Similar to leaving posts on a forum, you can also gain traffic from your comments on other industry/business blogs. Make sure that your comments add to the discussion and are not made purely to draw attention or to inflame a situation. Always use courteous and polite language – remember that if someone tries to incite a derogatory comment from you, you always have the options of responding or leaving.

These are just a few of the ways that you, as a site owner, can drive potential customers to your website without any input from Google searches. Please don’t see this as a complete replacement to optimising your site for Google, which would be madness, however as a site owner, it is particularly important to cover all the bases when it comes to getting visitors to your website.

As a web developer, I use technical terms every day in my business that are now second nature to me.

Once I have collaborated with a client for a few months, I notice that some of those words become second nature to them as well. However, in the initial period of contact, some website newbies (a newcomer inexperienced in a particular activity) are completely bamboozled by the language of the internet and I find myself explaining what those words actually mean.

In this week’s blog,  I will try to explain some essential terms that every website owner needs to know in order to effectively market their sites.

What is a CMS?

If you have a website that you can log into and update yourself, chances are that you have a CMS enabled website. CMS stands for Content Management System. This is a piece of software installed on a web server that allows quick and easy changes to the site without the need to understand complicated code.

My CMS of choice is WordPress, and it is estimated the 22% of all new websites are created with a WordPress background. My clients can create new pages, add content, insert images, and change the navigation menus without any more knowledge than you need to create a Word document. Some of the buttons are even the same.

From a marketing viewpoint, a CMS allows the site owner to keep the content fresh (not stale – see the next question) and, if you are using WordPress, you can optimise each page for search engines as you create. Fresh content means return visitors and more interest from the search engines (such as Google –they love it!)

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is quite complex field if you really want to delve into it. In general terms, it refers the way you set up your website in order for search engines such as Google and Bing to catalogue and prioritize it for results when people come looking via their portals.

There is a whole market out there of SEO specialists whose primary job is to look at a client’s website and optimise it. It can be quite expensive depending on the level you want to delve to but fortunately there a number of things that you as the website owner can do yourself.

Marketing View on SEO – It is obviously important to get your site ranked highly in Google so here are a few tips that you can try:

• If you are running WordPress as your CMS (all my CMS clients are), install the plug-in “All in One SEO.” This allows you to individually optimise each page on your site.
• Look at your competitor’s sites if they are higher ranked in Google. Look for keywords that you should be using on your site and scatter throughout your text (sensibly of course so that everything still is grammatically correct).
• Keep your content fresh (have I mentioned that before?)

What is Social Media?

You might be surprised but when I mention the term “social media” to some of my clients, they don’t know what I am talking about. However, if I use the words Facebook and Twitter, they automatically understand me. Social Media is defined in Wikipedia as “the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities.”

Put simply Social Media is a form of online interaction between people.

From a marketer’s viewpoint, Social Media is essential to any business that wants to grow. It allows interaction between the business and its clients including the passing of information, problem solving, product testing and all varieties of community-based communication. It has the ability to change a client from a customer to a fan. Social Media can also be a means of driving visitors to your official website through the release of various information.

What are Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a service from Google that automatically generates detailed stats about a particular website’s traffic. It measures conversions / sales via that site so that owners can determine the success of various campaigns that are running.

Just like SEO, Google Analytics has a variety of levels depending on how far you wish to “dive” into it. At its most basic level, marketers can use it to measure page visits and geographical location of visitors. Individual pages can also be analysed to check the effectiveness of the page and how long a visitor spends looking at content. Whilst not directly telling you how to fix the problem, Google Analytics can tell you where the problems lie.

Still need help cutting through the jargon? Give me a call on 0488 406 050 and we can have a chat about how these strange terms (and working with us) can get your business some well deserved attention on the internet.

Starting at the very basics, a “Call to Action” is a highly visible prompt that encourages your website visitors to engage in further interaction with your business.

This action can take many forms: a “Click Me” button, a newsletter sign-up, a Shopping Cart or a Free Quote enquiry form.

These are just a few options that are available to the site operator – there are many more. Anything that can generate that all important sales lead can be used as a “Call to Action”.

Why should I have a “Call to Action”?

This question can only be answered by you as the site owner. What is the whole purpose of the site? Is it there to boost or promote your business or organisation? Does the site play an important part in generating your source of income? Do you want it to push visitors towards other aspects of your business?

Maybe you just want more details about the site visitor to initiate further interaction with them.

If your site is designed to interact in any way with its visitors, you need to have a distinct and easy to use “Call to Action.”

Where should I put my Call to Action?

Wherever you decide to put it, your “Call to Action” must be highly visible whenever a visitor comes to your site. This usually means that it needs to be seen straight away after the page loads, “above the fold” or visible without any scrolling. On your site, this might mean placing a large Call to Action at the top of the front page allowing instant access to contact information. On another site, it could float along the right edge of the screen, accessible at any stage.

The idea is to make the interaction between yourself and your potential customers as easy as possible. Despite their level of interest, most people are impatient and will not search through your site looking for a way to contact you. If they can’t see the “Call to Action” immediately or in the first 10 seconds (at most), you risk losing them to another site. And if that happens, your website loses its effectiveness as a marketing tool for your business.

Take a quick look at your site and pretend to be a potential customer – Does your site have a “Call to Action?”

Building a website for your small business should not be an impulsive decision.

And yet, as a website developer, I often meet new clients who have decided to build a website for their business, but they haven’t yet considered how that site is going to improve their business.

Some still view a website as an online business card and, as I’ve covered in my blog posts before, a website can be so much more if it is planned and implemented correctly. The key to this effectiveness is carefully-considered planning – at every stage along the line.

Before picking up the phone or emailing a web designer for the first time, there are a few key questions that need your attention to ensure that the website development stages are quick, and the final website is more effective when it is launched.

#1 What is the Key Objective of the Website?

Very simply, in as fewer words as possible (one sentence if possible), write down a measurable objective for your business website. This single sentence will guide everything else that happens along the way to development your site. The measurement is usually written as a percentage.

i.e., Increase the Monthly Sales of XYZ company by 20%

#2 Who is the target audience?

With point #1 clearly in mind, now look at what kind of site visitor is going to make that measurable objective possible.

Who will be looking for your products/services? Where are they? How old are they? What gender?

Be as specific as you can – this information will help your designer plan and style your site.

i.e., 18 to 60-year-old men interested in recreational fishing around the North QLD area.

#3 What kind of content will your audience be seeking at your site?

After identifying the audience that you want to attract to your site, grab a pencil and paper to map out the type of content that these potential customers will respond do. Will they want to read text blogs like this, or would they respond better to video or imagery? Maybe a mixture would work best?

What kinds of information / products / services will they be seeking from you and, most importantly, what information do you want them to have about you and your business?

i.e., Information about the latest estuarine fishing equipment, videos on how it is used, fact sheets on where the fishing are biting….

#4 What are your competitors doing online?

Get this information in conjunction with point #1 – Get online and see what your competitors are doing with their websites. Google all relevant information regarding your target audience. Your top competitors will be at the head of the list – What kinds of content are they using? What appeals to you on their sites? What doesn’t?

Although your web developer should do this research as well, it will be highly beneficial to you as your website takes shape and you know what you are aiming for.

#5 What timeframe do you have to complete the site?

Armed with the knowledge that designers work better when given a timeframe (I know I do), when you want to launch your site to the world? Keep in mind, you must be able to “hold up” your end of the bargain and ensure that you can provide the content that the site requires for launch. Even the most experienced developer will baulk at a proposed launch date if they don’t have the content for the site.

Conclusion

By having the above planning completed/documented before contacting a designer, you will also be able to brief them clearly and then ascertain whether they can do the job at hand.

Don’t leave your small business’ website goals up to the designer. Remember that no-one knows your business better than you.

Have you got all the above planning done and are ready to go ahead and contact a designer?
Get in touch with Tropical Coast Web Design on 0488 406 050 and we will collaborate with you all the way (and even beyond) to a great, customer converting website for your small business.

One of the main problems with reading a constant stream of business books is that each comes multitude of different ideas and strategies.

Obviously, it is impossible to take every idea and implement them into your business – no small business owner has the time or capacity to do so.

Instead, I have experimented with various strategies over time to see what will work for me (and what doesn’t). Through this experimentation, I’ve found that each of my favourite books has a key learning that I use in my everyday business life. In this blog, I’ll share those learnings with you…

“The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy

The main premise of Hardy’s book is common sense when you stop and think about it. Each day, we constantly make small, inconspicuous decisions that shape the outcomes that we achieve in our lives. By making incremental changes to these decisions, we can achieve any goal that we set for ourselves – in health, family, or business.

For example, if we consciously plan to add one extra social media marketing post into our daily business routine, we will reap the benefits down the track as our online footprint will be much larger than it is today – all because of the compounding effect of that minor change we made.

“18 Minutes” by Peter Bregman

The key take-away point that I found in “18 Minutes” is to devote a small amount of time each day ensuring that the focus of your daily tasks is aligned with your overall objectives.

The “18 minutes” is used when you devote:

Five minutes at the start of business to clarify that all planned work is aligned with your overall objectives.

One minute at the start of each business hour double-checking that focus is adhered to.

Five minutes at the close of business determining the following day’s outline and plan.

“The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael E. Gerber

Gerber, through an engaging narrative style, encourages his readers to establish their businesses in a franchise-style – just like McDonalds – regardless of their size or employee numbers. He believes that through the creation and use of Operations Manuals, a business can provide quality and consistent service at all times, regardless of the employee delivering that service.

One thing that makes this book stand out to me is the multitude of real-life examples that Gerber uses throughout to illustrate his ideas and teachings. The book is amazingly easy to read (almost in one sitting) and it makes you want to “spring into action” after you close the final page.

“Getting Things Done” by David Allen

Known as GTD, the process outlined in this book is gospel to some people. Once implemented, GTD helps shape the way you organise and complete tasks, anywhere in your life. It is so popular in fact that several software apps have been specifically designed to cater for devotees of the GTD method.

However, the GTD process wasn’t the main take-away for me. I was engaged by the phrase – “Your mind is for having ideas – not storing them.” Every day, so many things pass through our brains, it is impossible to mentally store each one away for further contemplation or action later. Rather than lose any ideas, I now keep a constant supply of Post-It notes close by and record anything and everything. The notes are then stuck to my computer screen for later processing.

In conclusion, please remember that these books have far more to offer than just the learnings that I have outlined above, and I heartily encourage all small business owners to read each book. Take notes as you do – on post-it notes of course.

The internet has evolved in leaps and bounds over the past two decades and there is no sign of slowing down any time soon.

Social Media, online technology, broadband speeds, and ecommerce shopping among other advances have changed the way people live day-to-day. A commercial website that doesn’t keep up with these changes is in danger of driving away potential customers by conveying the image of an out-of-date business brand that fails to innovate.

So, the question needs to be asked – when was the last time you gave your website a full makeover?

There are some blatantly obvious signs that your site needs some form of makeover and others that are a little more subtle. Here are five of the most important signs that your site needs some serious makeover love:

1. Your site looks and feels like a vintage website from the late 90’s

Maybe it’s not that old. However, if your site is over five years old, it is definitely time for an update. You may be still using your original website, or one created with integrated Flash content (which is now discontinued) or even worse, a site designed by an employee using Microsoft Word – yes, that Microsoft Word! (I have actually seen this)

Regardless of how old your site is, what’s on it or how it was created, if it doesn’t feel like it belongs alongside the current crop of sites from your competitors, get an upgrade.

2. The site is not mobile responsive

Everyone knows that mobile internet access has dramatically increased over the past couple of years but how’s this for a statistic: According to online magazine Fast Company, 25% of smartphone owners ages 18–44 say they “can’t recall the last time their smartphone wasn’t right next to them.”

Wow.

Let’s put it simply – if your site doesn’t respond or convert for mobile usage, you are missing out on a huge chunk of action. Get a mobile responsive site today!

3. Your Social Media feeds are not integrated

Having a Social Media presence is no longer optional for small business. If you want to engage and interact with your clients, you must be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+. And, did you know that any post, update, or tweet that you make can be set to automatically displayed through onto your site?

This will serve two purposes:- one, you will create new content for your site every time you update your Social Media and two, you can gather more followers through the use of on-page links. If your site can’t do this, once again, you are missing out!

4. Your content is past its used-by date

One of my pet peeves is visiting a website with blog posts that have a really old date on them. Of course, you can cheat and not use a date at all however you are kidding yourself if you think that a potential client with a keen eye won’t notice. The same applies with your page-to-page content. Make sure your information is always up-to-date and if you can’t commit to a Blog post at least every month (more is better), then maybe you should give that task to someone else on your team.

5. You are receiving very little new business referral from your site

How do your customers first get in touch? Do they find you in a phone directory, a newspaper or radio advertisement or via your website? Conduct a quick survey with customers as they make a purchase – we’ve all seen the instant competition ploy at small business counters. Fill in a survey form (a couple of questions at most) and pop it in the box to win a prize.

Look at and compile the results. If your website is not delivering the customers in a manner that you would expect, then maybe it’s time for the big makeover. Something is not connecting with site visitors and must be fixed to ensure a healthy inflow of prospects to your business.

If any of the points above apply to your site, get in contact with the team at Tropical Coast Web Design today and we’ll take an in-depth look at your old site to determine what needs to be done and provide you with a detailed report – for free!

Many people believe that they just have to build a business website and then sit back and watch the rush of business coming their way.

When the expected rush doesn’t happen, the obligatory question pops up – “Why isn’t anyone visiting my site?” At this point (earlier would be better), it’s time to take a closer look at the site and find out why the inflow of traffic to the site is low and determine what can be done about it.

There are dozens of reasons why people would avoid a particular site. In this post, I will focus on five (5) areas that must be paid some serious attention in order to lift the fortunes of a business website. In each, I will also suggest a simple remedy that should be implemented to counter that particular problem. Please note that with some of these tips, you will need to be patient and allow a couple of weeks for the changes to have any effect (unsurprisingly, this is also one of the topics below!)

 Your Current Site Looks Cheap (and it was!)

When a new business builds its first website, there is a general temptation to save money and use cheap or free web design. If this is you, try to resist this temptation as much as you can. Spend a little extra time and a little extra money to get exactly what your business needs. This might mean hiring a designer that understands your field of work and the direction you want take with the site. Maybe you need to use a copywriter to write  content aimed at your specific target audience. You may even need a Virtual Assistant to manage your Social Media presence if you just don’t have the time. Remember, in the eyes of a consumer, a low-quality online presence can be result in your business being perceived as a high-risk proposition – “Their site is cheap and nasty, maybe their work is too?”

Nobody knows that your brand-new site exists

If no-one can find your site on Google and you don’t have a social media presence, how on earth can  anyone be expected to find you? Stop hiding under that rock and get out there. Shout it out to the world! Exclaim your site’s existence to all that will listen on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and all the other Social Medias. Blast out an email to your entire mailing list and let them in on the secret. Chances are if nobody knows about your site, it’s probably because you haven’t told them about it!

Be Patient

Harping back to my comment in the intro of this blog, sometimes it pays to be a little patient. It can take Google anywhere from 2 days to 2 months to find your new website, check it all out with their bots and then display it on search results. It won’t be there overnight, nor will it appear at #1, unless you are incredibly lucky. Optimising your site for the search engines should be slow, gradual process – so take your time and get it right!

Your content is rubbish

Now this might sound a little harsh however if your site reads like an essay from your local primary school, then it is highly unlikely to grab a prospect’s attention and pull them in through the virtual doors. It may even have the opposite effect. If you struggle to write sales copy (the text that sells on a website), get in a professional to do it for you. It’s cheaper than you think and often involves no more than a few bulleted points on your behalf and your copywriter will do the rest.

Your website is ssssllllllooooowwwwww

With high-speed broadband becoming the norm across the developed world, a site that is slow to load will be a site that gets skipped. In the days of dial-up internet, a site had ten seconds to load, or the visitor went somewhere else. These days, that time span has dropped to three seconds.

Here’s a test: Get on your computer, clear your computer’s cache (you’ll find it in your browser’s options) and open up your website. Conduct a stopwatch test and see how long it takes for your site to load.

If your site is slow, and you are running a WordPress site, help is easy to find. Install two plugins – WP Super Cache and Jetpack Boost. Both plugins were created by Automattic – the developers of the whole WordPress system. Play with the settings that are recommended by the plugin creators and watch that load time drop away. Fast Loading Site = happy site visitor!

Have you worked with a non-performing site to turn it around? If so, please leave a comment below and let others know about what you tried and if you succeeded in the long run. Your advice may be just what another business is looking for!

If you would like more information on how to improve the traffic to your business website, contact Tropical Coast Web Design and have a chat with me about what can be done to boost your site’s popularity.

Small business owners are often hesitant to change their existing email addresses when they create their first business website.

The owners argue that the Gmail or Hotmail address that they have been using for the past ten years “still works” and that there is no need to change over.

What these business owners are failing to realise is that the benefits of a professional email address far outweigh any drawbacks they may have, and the changeover doesn’t have to be a nightmare either.

Benefit #1 – A PROFESSIONAL email address conveys a PROFESSIONAL image

The generic email addresses from webmail services like Gmail and Hotmail can give a small business the appearance of being an unreliable operation and not serious about how they operate. It can also convey that a business is new, small, or even part time!

A generic email address also doesn’t encourage trust in the brand of your business.

Some prospective clients will simply refuse to share information through to a Gmail or Hotmail account. They want to know that your business is legit and serious enough to engage with.

A professional email address will give you the right branded image to do this.

Benefit #2 – Your own email address makes you easy to REMEMBER.

With so many businesses staking out their claims online, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. Think of the number of email addresses that you have in your own professional directories – Can you remember any of the generic ones?

For example – it is much easier to remember bob@cassowarycoastdining.com.au* than bob332521@gmail.com

Let people get in touch easily by being memorable with your own branded business email address.

Benefit #3 – Give your small business a BIGGER image

Having your own professional email address system lets you convey a corporate image regardless of the size of your business.

By setting up multiple email addresses for the various sections of your business, prospective customers will perceive that you are a much larger business than you are and to some of them, bigger IS better.

For example, Cassowary Coast Dining* could use email addresses such as accounts@cassowarycoastdining.com.au, support@cassowarycoastdining.com.au, bookings@cassowarycoastdining.com.au, etc.

Benefit #4 – You can promote your Brand – EVERY time you send an email

By using a professional email address, you get to promote your OWN business every time you send out an email, not Google’s or Microsoft’s. Even if the recipient has never heard of your business before, your email address is an instant way of bringing it to their attention.

For those still hesitant to make the change, the move from generic email to branded email doesn’t have to be an immediate one (nor do we recommend it).

Make the change with these four simple steps:

1. Be sure to make all your customers aware of the new email (a MailChimp Newsletter would be a fantastic way to do this).
2. Continue to monitor incoming emails via the generic platforms of Gmail or Hotmail.
3. All new outgoing emails should be sent via the new email address.
4. Once the incoming emails to the generic addresses have slowed or stopped completely, close those accounts so that they can no longer be used by anyone.

If you are interested in setting up professional email addresses for your business, contact Tropical Coast Web Design and we’ll collaborate with you throughout the changeover process (and beyond).

* Cassowary Coast Dining is not a real business. Those email addresses are purely for demonstrative purposes.

Imagine having your brand exposed daily to thousands of people in your target audience?

People who are actually interested in your products and services –  a targeted section of the demographic that you seek.

Facebook advertising has been set up specifically to get this kind of exposure.

It’s quite easy to do – your business’ Facebook page is full of opportunities. These are the big blue buttons that you see on your page – Promote your Local Business, Promote Website and Promote your Contact Button. From my own experience, the promotion that invokes the best response is the BOOST button. This appears after each post that you have made.

The BOOST button allows you to show your posts to a wider audience who are interested in what you have to offer. For example, if you found this post on your Facebook feed and you don’t currently follow Tropical Coast Web Design, then Facebook has decided that you may be interested in what we have to offer.

So how do you actually use the BOOST button?

1.  Only Promote Quality Content

Create content on your site that is helpful and informative –  it needs to be relevant to the target audience. This could in the form of videos, blogs (like this one), podcasts or downloads. Choose your medium based on your audience, your strengths, and the information that you want to convey.

2.  Add your Post to Facebook

Once your content is online, create an engaging headline that grabs attention and invokes emotion or action. Alongside this, create a paragraph describing your content so Facebook viewers can quickly get an idea of what you are talking about.

Add these into your Business Facebook feed – just like you do with any new post. Be sure to include a LINK to your actual content! (simply copy and paste the website address)

3. Click BOOST

Self-explanatory –the BOOST button will appear after you click POST to add your content.

4. Set up your “Campaign”

A pop-up window will appear to help get your campaign sorted with easy-to-follow steps:

i. Create an Audience Group.

You’ll need think carefully about the interests of your target Facebook audience – more importantly, how old they are, where they are, what are they doing on Facebook, who do they follow and what do they post. Remember that Facebook knows a great deal about us from our own posts and stores this information specifically for advertising purposes – like this.

ii. Select a budget that stays within what you can afford.

Example : $7 per day x 1 Week = $49 (maximum spend)

iii. Add a Facebook Pixel

Adding a Facebook Pixel to your website is optional but assists in tracking the conversions from your Facebook page to your actual website. It is a detailed system to explain so  visit Facebook to find out more.

iv. Payment

You’ll need your Credit Card details. No payments are taken until the end of your selected boost duration.

5. Click on BOOST POST

Finally, check back daily and you will see the results of your BOOST displayed directly under the post. Click on INSIGHTS at the top of your Facebook page to get detailed statistics on your campaign – how many people have seen the post, how many have clicked on it, new page likes and the current status of your selected budget.

If you need any assistance in setting up your own business Facebook campaign, contact Tropical Coast Web Design. We have the experience to help you create an effective Social Media presence that will BOOST your business online.

Let’s be clear from the very beginning – using the internet for small business is NOT the guaranteed golden bullet solution to all your problems.

The addition of an online presence will not automatically turn your fortunes around. Running your own website, engaging customers on social media and selling products online takes effort and hard-work – as will all the strategies outlined in this post.

The internet offers you more avenues to market your business than ever before. You can generate followers and advocates that will purchase from (and market) your business 24/7, sometimes without any one-on-one interaction from you.

Here’s five strategies that you could employ online to help raise awareness of your business and its offerings:

#1. Boost your Facebook Posts

Ever seen the big BOOST button on your Facebook page?

This is the button you will see next to any posts you have made. With the power of a BOOST (and a minimum spend of $7/day), you can display your posts in the Facebook feeds of an extremely specific audience. These people are the prime candidates to which you want to market your products and services.

For example, a local dance shop is selling Fascinators for the upcoming races in town. With Facebook BOOST advertising, they can target women, who like Fashion, and live within 50km of the town, in the 18-50 age group.

With targeted boosts, you get your message sent out exactly where you want it to go – much better than casting a broad net and hoping you catch something.

#2. Build an eCommerce Store

Coupled with the low overheads associated in running an online store alongside your “bricks and mortar” business, there are two major advantages for building your own online store

Firstly, an eCommerce store can sell your products and services 24/7– your customers don’t have to wait for the doors to open or for you to even be available. A good online store is set up to run automatically with payment options and shipping processes integrated.

Secondly – your online store can sell anywhere in the world. Your customer base is dramatically widened beyond the immediate geography of your shopfront. If someone on the other side of Australia (or the world) wants to buy your goods, they can access your online store and make the purchase whenever they want.

#3. Provide 24/7 Customer Service

Good customer service can be time intensive, and sometimes very repetitive with no immediate remuneration for your time.

With a website, you can off-set some of the repetitive parts of your customer service using frequently asked questions (FAQs), video tutorials and downloadable help sheets (Bunnings are the experts in this) to name just a few. 

Setting up your website’s customer service area properly would be time well spent as the support you provide online can save you hours either on the phone or answering emails.

#4. Plan and maintain a Content Marketing strategy

Content marketing is a must have on any small business website. To clarify, Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and producing valuable, relevant, and consistent content that attracts and retains your target audience. It is also a key element of the Google search algorithm, helping to determine your website’s placement in search results.

How do you create an effective Content Management Strategy?

• Decide on your content mediums according to your strengths and your target audience (Blog, videos, podcasts, newsletters….)
• Generate a plan in calendar format which includes the dates, topics, and mediums for the creation of your content. This includes social media updates and blog posts.
• Stick to the plan – consistency is the key to success!

Monitor your traffic to gauge the success of each item. This will give you valuable information in relation to what is working and what isn’t.

#5. Give Email Marketing a try

If you are thinking of employing an email marketing approach to broadcast your small business, you can’t look past MailChimp (no affiliation with Tropical Coast Web Design). It has everything built-in to help you create great looking emails, distribute them and, most importantly, keep you within the law regarding SPAM.

Note: You cannot send emails from a business in Australia to anyone you like. You must have the recipient’s permission or an existing customer relationship with that person. For more information, take a look at the Spam Act 2003.

MailChimp has a built-in unsubscribe option. Recipients of the email simply have click Unsubscribe in the footer of the email and MailChimp will automatically remove them from the list, satisfying another condition of the Spam Act.

Conclusion

The real secret to a successful and productive online presence for your small business is summed in one word – consistency. Your website cannot be a stagnant brochure for your business, it needs to be dynamic, helpful and must reinforce your position as an expert in your field with quality service and/or products. Try to set aside 15 minutes a day and develop each of the strategies into a workable system for you – the rewards for your business will become clear in no time at all.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? If your business needs help developing any of the strategies above, please contact Tropical Coast Web Design – we love to help small business!