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How to Market Online: Inviting and Keeping People In

The goal of all businesses is to become the benchmark in their respective industry and become a trailblazer who sets trends for all others to emulate. Anyone in the business world will tell you that the way for a good business to reach a tipping point and get over the hump is a sound marketing strategy.

The best way to trigger profit margin growth and break a deadlock is to channel your marketing energies into the online arena and get the right IT consulting.

The advantages of online marketing over other mediums are well-documented, and they will not be the focal point of this article. Rather, we will discuss on how one should market their business online, and what steps will result in the greatest ROI. Moving needles, rather than overhauling your whole marketing approach can make a big difference.

Before discussing the steps to take, it is important to first stress an important marketing truism: formulating a single marketing message to broadcast to your ecosystem is a vital precondition to successful market in the online realm. It is imperative that before you start an online marketing campaign, you must decide on the uniform and single message that you want to transmit to potential consumers, which will amplify your viral marketing efforts.

A powerful marketing message must play the dual role of grabbing your audience’s attention, and capture, in a snapshot, what your business is all about. With precision, a company must present its persuasive argument on why you – the customer – would want and benefit from their product. This argument should be memorable, crisp and coherent, so your audience does not walk away from your message puzzled and disinterested.

Website – Gateway to Customers

When a prospective customer wants to scope out different businesses, the first place they’ll start comparing is online. A website has the power to sway, inspire and connect with a person, or it can have your web visitors bouncing away. Making a positive first impression and having ‘site stickiness’ may be the difference between a sale or a back button. An interactive, engaging and a well-designed website helps project professionalism, expertise, and makes your business look like a million-dollar company (even when it’s not).

Fair or not, a website is oftentimes seen as a reflection of how good your work is in your actual field. While other mediums come and go, for the time being, a website still remains the perfect platform to inform and involve, and it is a launching pad for an ongoing business relationship. The consequences a good or bad website can have on your company’s fortunes cannot be understated, as the internet remains the foremost medium used today, and it’s front-and-center when your business is offline.

SEO – Raise your Rank and Relevance

Over 200 million websites exist on the internet, how will an interested user be able to locate you in a sea of chaos? Search engines – such as Google, Yahoo! et al – have been able to organize such an unbelievable amount of information in a sensible manner. They have been able to do so by attributing certain values to each factor and variable on a website, and use a complicated algorithmic system to rank them.

In order for your business to ascend up a ranking category in a search query, like “marble flooring” for example, you need to have a targeted SEO strategy to dominate a keyword. But because of the high degree of specialization, it’s best to outsource to a reputable external SEO company that knows the ins-and-outs of the business; and how to stabilize your relative position on search engines.

Social Media – Join the Conversation

Social Media breaks-down barriers and strips away the trappings that have made open and transparent communication in the marketplace between producers and customers impossible.
Social Media synchs various media types (i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.) in a concerted and unified effort to cut across different demographical segments. Leveraging these new connections, Social Media helps you increase your sphere of influence, manage your reputation and form lasting relationships by interacting with a community of serious buyers.

Blog – Generate Industry-Leading Content

While consumer-initiated content on micro-blogging channels like Twitter are very popular, blogs are still the best way to syndicate. In the current landscape, blogs still present a business with the opportunity to spread their perspectives and viewpoints in a powerful manner. Widening your horizons, a blog can be an empowering way for you to write informative articles that can attempt to resolve pressing consumer issues; and give insider accounts into the latest industry happenings.

Historically, companies like IBM stayed remained industry powerhouses by constantly producing non-stop information through articles, journals, and magazines.  It was the fact they were generating content on an impressive scale and radical out-of-the-box thinking that made them industry leaders. They capitalized on the opportunity because they had the necessary resources to catapult them to the forefront. But now, those same resources are available to everybody as blogs cut across borders, financial barriers (blog platforms are free) and can transform perspectives.

Businesses would be surprised how information-hungry people are nowadays, as a multitude of people search on different range of topics from “how to build a birdhouse” to “how to salsa dance.”  You can score big with a business blog by identifying what people are looking for and solving their problems through articles. This will empower your brand because people will associate your business with solving their problems, and this will create advocacy and customer loyalty.

Conclusion

These four pillars of online marketing are a great way to start your online marketing venture, and must be done with a high level of proficiency. These different mediums all converge as they are all founded on creating meaningful and lasting relationships with your customers. Being tuned in to the latest trends and informed on what people are thinking, you can help leverage these mediums to minimize risk and ignite business growth. Just because you know how to start, we really recommend you involve experts in this field that can spearhead a successful and integrated online marketing campaign

Summary

Touching on a variety of successful ways to market online, this write up keys-in on four specific mediums that will help build your brand and meaningful relationships with customers. To increase your online prospects requires a clear strategy and a concerted effort to maximize the potential benefits that these four mediums present to businesses.

Ultimately, with online marketing, it’s all about learning how to invite people in, which we discuss, and how to keep them there as returning customers. Because of its sheer potential, if you don’t understand the dynamics of online marketing, it’s best to look outside your company walls to an external party that can execute an integrated marketing strategy.

Fidelity IT Solutions will fulfill all your Toronto online marketing services – from Toronto SEO services, to Toronto Web Design, to Toronto blogging services to Toronto Social Media services. By utilizing Fidelity IT Solution’s team of professionals, we will drive, integrate and manage all your online marketing needs that will optimize results.