How To Grow Your Business Online Many businesses may exist on the Internet but they truly are not living up to promise

For many industries, online sales make for the vast amount of their takings. Most businesses are online, but the big question is: are they fulfilling their fullest potential? The answer is frankly, no!

Many businesses may exist on the Internet but they truly are not living up to promise, according to Julius Tirrá of Celebian. Understanding the online sphere and how to make the most of it involves knowhow and expertise, however it doesn't mean you can't do so with a little forward planning and outsourcing of expertise, according to Tirrá.

Below are seven great ways you can grow your business.

Design a Good Website

A website is a must-have if looking to grow a business empire online. It is your business' frontline for creating the first impression to your target customers and audiences and the platform to sell whatever products or services you have to offer. That said, it would be advisable to create a website unique to your business, not a copy of the generic ones found all over. One of the advantages of creating a unique website is that customers will be able to distinguish you from the rest, enabling you to build and grow your brand.

There is more to creating a good website than just the aesthetics; it needs to be practical, fast, and more importantly, responsive says Tirrá. This should be, however, relatively easy, especially if looking to create or partner with an e-commerce website. Many e-commerce websites, including Facebook, Flipkart, Amazon, etc., have some of the best platforms you can use. You also won't have to invest heavily in the website if partnering with these websites.

Ensure the Website Is Mobile-friendly

The website needs to be both desktop and mobile-friendly too. Many people today (including your target customers/audiences) use their smartphones or iPads/tablets to shop online; they need to be able to access and navigate your website on limited screen sizes. As long as audiences and customers can access and navigate your website with ease, you can be assured of stronger impressions and return visits.

Creating a mobile-friendly website has its benefits in that it will boost the userbase, enable you to collect usage data, and even analyse collected data to see which areas can be improved for better performance. With almost everyone today using their smartphones to access the Internet and possibly shop online, creating a mobile-ready website is the way to go. It would help if you also considered creating a profile on some of the social media platforms, such as Facebook, for improved visibility as well.

Embrace Social Media Marketing

Social media provides an excellent platform for marketing and promoting your business. With billions of users logging onto these platforms each day, you can be sure to attract tons of traffic from it. Social media marketing is a highly converting strategy that can help grow your business or brand within a short time, especially if done correctly.

Facebook, for example, has a marketplace section that allows businesses (small and big) to advertise their services and products. You can opt to use the free or paid option, depending on how much you wish to spend on Facebook marketing campaigns. Some of the benefits of paying for Facebook advertising is that your content will be displayed to the target audience, increasing clickthrough rates, and possible conversions. Whatever your ranking is on search engines, you can be sure to benefit from social media marketing on Instagram and others. Twitter, for instance, makes it possible to push specific advertisements to target audiences within your business' niche.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for several decades and is still effective and efficient to this date. Almost everyone today has an email or two. You can thus take advantage of email marketing to promote your business as well. All you need is to build an emailing list to use for your marketing campaigns and promotions. Asking your audiences to signup for newsletters, running a giveaway campaign, or even promotions with a chance of someone winning a present, are some of the ways you can collect email addresses genuinely. With global audiences and relatively high conversions, you can be sure to get your business known and even earn more clients this way.

Know Your Competitors

Google Analytics (among other tools) enables website owners and managers to study current trends, make predictions, and research their competition. These tools allow one to find similarities and strategies that work for other companies and those that you could use to boost your chances. Google analytics is thus a handy tool that can help you avoid losses by focusing on higher-performing campaigns.

Another advantage of running an online business is that you can research and even find other strategies that could help drive traffic to your website. Some of these analytics tools can help you identify your rival's weaknesses, giving you a chance to turn the tables around and divert traffic to your business.

Optimize Content

Although you might know this already, the key to getting your business known by organic visitors and search engines is publishing high-quality and properly optimized content. Publishing optimized content on your website and running blogs can significantly impact your search engine rankings and website performance. Properly optimized websites often get a spot on the top page of a search result, translating to increased traffic and online visibility.

The key to optimizing content lies with proper keyword research and usage of the same. For this reason, you want to choose keywords relevant to your business niche and high-converting at the same time. Search engine optimization is one of the pillars of online marketing and plays a crucial role in boosting online visibility and inbound traffic.

Work Towards Increasing Website Traffic

Web traffic is everything when running an online business. It is through the said traffic that you can start converting much of it into potential and even loyal customers/clients. A website that gets tons of traffic is more likely to generate sales/profits than one that doesn't. Your business thus should unwind and focus on attracting traffic by first creating and publishing unique and high-quality content, optimising your content, then venturing into other online marketing campaigns.

Generating organic traffic is one of the best ways to grow your online business. You can also use paid methods to generate the same. Facebook and Google, for example, offer paid options for directing traffic your way. This however entails paying for such through Google or Facebook Ads. You could also hire online marketing experts to help get your business known and improve traffic as well. You only need to find the best online marketing agency or company, especially one with tons of experience in the field.