Follow These Four Strategies to Grow Your Online Business

Launching an online business is simply not enough – you also have to grow it. And sometimes quality products and services are just not enough.

Nowadays, competition in every single industry is huge and you will most certainly have a large number of rivals online. That is precisely the reason why you need to find out how exactly to grow your business and always be one step ahead of your competitors.

So, in order to stay ahead of your competition – and you can rest assured that the competition will be fierce – take a look at our handpicked selection of strategies that will make your business stand out from the rest.

Choose the right platform

Before you start investing in marketing strategies, it is important to select the right platform for your online business. One of the most serious mistakes entrepreneurs make is going for the wrong website platform, as this sets them back and hinders their growth.

Over 30% of all websites in the world –small, medium, and large businesses – use WordPress and that is no surprise, knowing that it is a simple but reliable builder.

A great thing about WordPress is that it allows you to install various website themes and plugins. You just need to make sure that the theme is responsive and beautifully designed. But make sure that you install only the essential plugins, as nothing should slow down your website and give your visitors bad load times.

WordPress websites are great for analytics too. Among a ton of different plugins, make sure to install a plugin specifically designed for website analytics, since that allows you to track your growth and see exactly how those numbers add up from month to month.

Mobile-friendly website

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Considering that more than 47% of people roaming the internet today do so from their smartphones, your website needs to be responsive on mobile devices too.

Here are some things you need to do if you want to make your website mobile-friendly:

•       optimize image size
•       avoid flash videos
•       include tappable elements
•       make the navigation easy
•       make functionality a priority

Adapting the images, redesigning the menu bar, and having simple navigation makes the website work well on a phone and helps you have a great customer satisfaction score.

On the other hand, if your website is too slow or inaccessible from a mobile device, customer satisfaction will most certainly drop, which will ultimately lead to less revenue and undermine growth for your business.

Solid marketing strategy

Staying up to date with current marketing trends should be a priority if you want to reach out to new customers and retain your existing ones. Below are a few of the most effective online marketing strategies that can do wonders for your business.

Content as a marketing tool

The first (and most experts say the most important) step towards a solid marketing strategy is your own content. Simply put, you have to produce original and useful content. This will set you up for success by resonating with your customers and making them want to interact with you, follow you, and buy from you.

Moreover, the content you offer should be regularly promoted and that is why you need to look into content marketing solutions. With a solid content marketing strategy, you can attract more attention, interaction, and sustainable conversions.

And that is why creating great content is not enough. You also have to promote it through social media, email newsletters, forums, and other channels.

Which takes us to the next strategy – marketing your business on social media.

Social media marketing

Social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and so on) have never been more popular, so why not take advantage of them? Social media marketing is a very powerful way to communicate with your audience in a more personal way.

Maintain a personal voice and your brand’s image on social media. Through these platforms, you can generate more engagement and interaction, which in turn boosts traffic to your website and generates more conversions. And all of that builds a quality customer base.

Make sure to use more than one social media platform, but also post consistently on all of them. Consistency matters in this game, since that is the only way to build trust with your audience. Once you develop trust, it is much easier for people to recognize your brand as an authority in your industry.

Email marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of reaching out to your leads. But the thing is that you have to be very careful about what you write in your emails and the way you segment your email list.

A number of ‘experts’ say that email marketing doesn’t work like it used to, but they are the ones who have probably made some serious email marketing mistakes which resulted in profit loss. Pushing low-quality content, segmenting your email list in the wrong way, or even worse, not segmenting it at all, can all be detrimental.

To avoid this, research your audience carefully and then provide useful content for them:

• make those emails as personalized as possible
• explain what your business has to offer
• offer valuable promotions
• use the messages as an opportunity to socialize
• talk about any events you attend
• mention new features of your products or services
• be transparent about your business

In other words, relate to your customers on a level that gauges their interest and keeps them engaged with your emails.

Sales management

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Jeff Bezos could have settled for a garage bookstore had he not realized the potential of ecommerce. Can you believe that Amazon, a true giant of the ecommerce industry, started in a garage bookstore? Yes, but Bezos thought about sales management on time.

You have to turn the potential of your business into tangible results and that is impossible without sales management. This is a strategy that can help you reap maximum rewards from the traffic coming to your website.

Just by taking a look at some sales management techniques below, you will realize that such a strategy can be extremely beneficial for your own business.

Product development

Obviously, product development makes your customer service focus on the customers but also keep an eye on the competition at the same time.

Adding new products, keeping a product line, removing some product features – all this can lead to an improvement in your sales figures, which is essential for growth. Remember one thing: customer feedback is the key to your success. After all, asking for feedback and regularly updating your products or services is a sign that you value your customers.

Team improvement

A sales management strategy also improves your sales team.

You may have a solid sales plan, but if people implementing it are unmotivated or undertrained, the plan will certainly fail. And even though you may be able to notice these details on your own, getting a piece of advice from a sales consulting company is a much safer choice.

The integral part of this strategy is hiring the right staff, training them to become experts, and expanding their knowledge of products. Also, you need to empower your reps with the right tools so that they can support your business with great efforts and ideas.

Final thoughts

You should bear one thing in mind: marketing never stops. If you neglect your marketing efforts, you automatically undermine your growth.

Growing a business isn’t an easy undertaking, but it’s quite rewarding. As you grow, you will be able to find out about more and more strategies for further growth and the game will become much easier as time goes by.