How do I market my business online effectively? Speed-round Q&A

Any modern business needs an online marketing strategy of some form. Whether you are trying to attract attention on platforms like Meta or Google, or building direct relationships through mailing lists and LinkedIn, the problem is always the same; how do you market your service, product or campaign the most effectively? And you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just about how much money you spend.

So this month, we’re doing a speed-round Q&A on marketing your business effectively, let’s jump right in.

Q: What’s the best platform to market my business on?

A: It really depends on two major points, where are your customers and which platforms allow you to communicate to them easily? If you’re selling a new type of headphones, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube could all be suitable to do with a lower budget. But Google Ads? If people have never heard of your brand, they’re unlikely to find your headphones on Google unless your store is set up for shopping-capture effectively. Conversely, if you’re one of three local plumbers in your suburb, you can probably imagine how beneficial setting up standard search and mapping indexing on Google could be. So it depends, a lot of research needs to be done before you make these choices and spend all your time and money creating and paying for ads to a platform that gets you no returns.

Q: But if I just spend more money on marketing, won’t I get more sales?

A: Yes and no! If you’re spending all your money marketing to the wrong people, you’ll get nowhere. And that’s where these platforms get you, they make it incredibly difficult to understand how to effectively use their marketing tools. By hiding their algorithms, creating buggy and bloated interfaces and changing how these systems work constantly, they make it nearly impossible for the average person to spend the required time to understand how to run an effective campaign. You will get some leads eventually, but the idea is to spend as little as possible and get the maximum return, and boosting the odd post likely won’t cut it.

Q: So I should just use offline marketing instead and give up?

A: You should use offline marketing, so long as it is targeted and well thought through, traditional marketing is still incredibly important and makes a great adjunct to digital forms of marketing in most cases. The key though is not to give up but realise this simple fact: if you don’t know how to market effectively, the best thing you can do is either pay a verified professional to do it for you, or just post consistently and never pay the platforms. By posting consistently, asking your friends to follow you, asking clients to review you, providing links to your website and socials etc, you will create a solid marketing ecosystem on your own over time. It won’t get you to the top quickly, but you can still grow a business like this in some cases.

Q: Ok, so how do I build a proper customer base?

A: Again, posting consistently and linking to all your online assets works wonders. Classic examples of this include posting on IG & FB but linking to your online shop, or posting a video on YouTube and linking to your Patreon service. But there is another layer to this; more direct forms of online marketing can work really well too. Using email marketing to capture customer emails and market to them directly, and more personally, can be really effective. But be warned, the line between being welcome and too pushy is fine, so don’t overdo it.

Q: Ok, I want to use a professional marketing team, how do I know they will get results?

A: Unfortunately, this is not straightforward! But the first step is ensuring you are working with a legitimate company. Check their credentials, speak to some of their customers if you can, set up meetings to assess their manner and responses, look at their work history and do some digging to cross-check their claims. If they’re a local agency and they’re legitimate, they really can help.

Q: Are there other things I can do to save money and still market online effectively?

A: Yes! Besides posting consistently, using traditional marketing and email marketing, the next best thing you can do is ensure you have good looking, authentic content. Make sure you take some great photos and videos, get good testimonials, and go the extra mile with your customers. If they really like what you do or sell, you can often even ask them to let their friends know about it too.