Building Your Online Presence (Part 4)

A Marketing 101 Series

This week, we are closing out this marketing 101 series by talking through some advanced marketing options and tools that can help take your business to new levels. Specifically, we will be looking at adopting or branching out into new markets, experimenting with online advertising, and influencer marketing. 

If you have missed our previous entries in this series, you can find them on our blog, or you can link to each item in the series by clicking the links below to catch up before reading the rest of this.

Part 1 - Have a Social Media Presence, Create a Website, Start an Email List

Part 2 - Produce Content, Personify Your Brand, Mastering SEO

Part 3 - Create Value, Develop Relationships, Analyze Results

Now, let’s take a look at the final three components in our series of building your online presence:

1 // Adopting New Forums

When we talk about adopting new forums, we’re really talking about trying new places for marketing to attract more clients and get your brand name out there. Each new place that a business tries to market itself, it must understand the audience it’s going to encounter and how to successfully interact with them. To drive home this point, think about apps like Tik Tok and Facebook. The audiences on these two platforms are very different. While many facebook users might have a Tik Tok account, not everyone with a Tik Tok account is going to have facebook? Why? Because the target demographic for Tik Tok is considerably younger than the target demographic for Facebook.

When adopting new forums or places to promote your business, there are going to be different standards and ways of communicating than what you are used to currently. Don’t be afraid to spend some time researching places you want to advertise, and if you’ve got someone in your network who is already active on a platform you want to use, reach out to them and ask for an hour for them to explain what they did and how their content is being received. 

The biggest thing to remember here, is that as you add platforms and places to market, the amount of time necessary to do all of this well is going to increase. While it may not be a huge time increase, be prepared to spend some extra time on this. 

One last comment on this, is to slowly add places where you are marketing. If you add five different places to where you market but don’t have the time to manage the new platforms, they will end up being wasted time and money because of inconsistency. 

2 // Experiment with Online Advertising

Online advertising is an excellent choice for your marketing efforts when you have a specific purpose in mind for your marketing. It’s fast, affordable, and results can be seen in real-time. It really is one of the best tools in your business marketing tool kit. 

If you are still working on getting your messaging correct but want to use the idea of getting people to your website, create an irresistible offer that they would be foolish not to take or better yet, have a freebie giveaway that helps you build your email list! Advertising can be used for all kinds of things to help you build your business. 

Finally, advertising can also help you with search rankings on Google. By choosing the right keywords for your search, it will help you rank higher in searches because people will see your ads and be directed to your website. While this may take a little trial and error, it’s an important step in creating better brand awareness for yourself and your business.

3 // Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is using the power of other people’s followers to help your brand. Influencers on social media have become the new “celebrity endorsement” of the day, and they can have a following of 1,000 up to  millions, depending on the influencer and the product category you’re looking for. Working with the influencer, they can help you tailor your message to their style while delivering powerful results from their followers. Trust their judgment, as they have spent a massive amount of time cultivating their audience and building their trust. 

Paying for the help of an influencer can be worth it, just be aware that the larger the audience, the more costly the investment will be. Influencers have the ear of thousands on every post and reel, and to hear your company get mentioned by them can draw a massive amount of traffic for you. 

One last thing with influencer marketing, is that along with having the influencer spread your name to their audience, it’s very important to have some type of marketing funnel or plan to get those people to convert into sales. Converting your audience is not the job of the influencer, it’s yours. Their job is to get people to your site to give you more opportunities to close business. 

Final Thoughts

Over the past month, we’ve built you a step by step guide to building your online presence and also how to take steps to grow that presence as you build your business. Much like anything else in marketing, it’s about consistency. Start with creating your presence and work your way up to these last steps, and watch your business continue to grow.

If you’ve got more questions or would like help in creating a plan for your business, we can help. Send us an email at hello@goldbear.media with your question and we’ll be happy to spend a few minutes with you to help.

Also, we’ve taken the information from the last 4 weeks and turned them into a downloadable guide that you can use to build your online presence. Simply click here to download this free guide, and enjoy.