If you run your own business, whether you own a shop or a restaurant or you provide trade services like painting and decorating, your business relies on customers being able to find your business.

Most consumers looking for a product or service that they need will go online to find a company, using a search engine like Google. Therefore, it is very important that businesses have a good digital marketing strategy to attract customers. If you are looking to boost your marketing strategy this year, here are some tips:

Use social media to build relationships

A lot of businesses make the mistake of just using social media to deliver sales pitches. However, social media can be used in other effective ways such as developing connections and building trust. Producing high-quality posts that serve a purpose to people will help you to build a relationship with your followers, who will then use your business when they require a product or service that you provide.

“social media” (CC BY 2.0) by Sean MacEntee

Add/Update your Google My Business details

Google is the biggest search engine, so a lot of customers will be using it to find companies. You should check your details on your Google My Business page to see what customers can see about your company or add the page if it doesn’t already exist. Make sure that you select all of the service categories that apply to your business, as this will make sure your business appears in more searches. Optimise your page by adding information like opening hours, contact details and also uploading professional-looking photos on Google My Business will help to attract more customers.

Source: Pixabay

Offer online incentives

Big brands do this really well, for example, some companies offer free shipping as an incentive. Discounts such as 20% off your first purchase are common and fast food chains offer free food via their apps. Finding the right incentive for your business is important, so whether you provide a discount, a free item or other online incentives, monitor the impact of your incentive to find one that boosts your profits.

Build up reviews

Customers trust the information that other customers provide about companies, so having good reviews is very important. Restaurants get reviewed on sites like TripAdvisor, whilst Google also provides customers with the ability to leave a review about customers. You should encourage your customers to leave feedback on the relevant site for your business and use the comments that they leave to help ensure you are providing the service that your customers expect.

Have a professional website

The design of your company website plays a big part in persuading customers whether to do business with you, so make sure that your website looks professional and is easy to use. To use an example, the Cherry Casino website keeps it simple without overloading the visitor with too much information. It uses a colour scheme that both matches its name (cherry shades) and is suitably vibrant without going too far.

Research shows that 75% of users will decide how credible your brand is based on your website. So, if you haven’t invested much in your website design, it is probably worth doing for the sales it will drive.

Hopefully this will have given you some ideas to boost your marketing strategy. It is always worth keeping up to date with the latest digital marketing trends and incorporating them into your business strategy to ensure your competitors don’t leave you behind.