The 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing

Online marketing is definitely necessary if you are looking to make sure that your business is a success. Without proper promotion, you are going to find it incredibly difficult to know exactly how you are doing and to properly reach out to a wide variety of customers. This guide outlines 10 of the most golden rules when it comes to online marketing. By following these rules, you will be more than likely to operate a business that manages to genuinely succeed. If you are interested in learning more, then it is highly recommended to read the guide that has been created for your reading pleasure below.

Use as Much Social Media as Possible

When you are running a modern business, you need to be up to date with all of the different modern platforms. This means having as strong a presence on social media sites as you can. Ideally, you should be active across all five of the major social media platforms - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok - in order to have the optimal impact. The advantage of not putting all your eggs in one basket is that if there's an outage ? as seen recently with Facebook ? your business will not be too poorly affected.

Invest in Different Forms of Content

Simply put, the more types of content that you have, the better chance that you will be able to engage with the most types of customers possible. This means making sure that you aren't just relying on blog posts or newsletters or social media posts, but are thinking about investing in innovative ways to reach as wide a customer base as possible. This can stretch from anything like short-form podcasts ? always seen as the next big development ? to short-form social media videos. It's worth having a proper sit-down with your innovation team to figure out the ways that your business will be able to genuinely thrive.

Use Analytics to Track Performance

There is no point having a business proposition if you are unable to analyze it properly. That's why it is so important to be able to use analytics in order to properly track customers. For example, if you are using a third-party platform such as Amazon, then the Amazon eCommerce Software helps you stay in touch with what your customers are up to on a regular basis, making it an incredibly powerful tool. Talking of satisfying your clients:

Always Talk to Your Customers

If you want to be a business that can show off that it truly cares, then it is absolutely imperative to make sure that you are in constant communication with your customers. This is because if customers can't find an easy way to get in touch with you to complain about or resolve any issues that they might have, they will find it difficult to trust your business going forward and might even actually take their business elsewhere. Set up a 24/7 hotline ? a process which can be done through a third-party service ? in order to make sure that your customers always have someone to contact. This also means that if an something does go wrong, you should:

Be Forthright About Your Failures

The best businesses are able to take proper responsibility when events happen outside of their control. The benefit of doing this is that it shows that you are a business that genuinely cares and is committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure that it will deliver on its promise to customers. Take a look at the recent Netflix debacle over offensive content as an example of how not to deal with PR crises.

Optimize Your Website in the Best Fashion

To get your business going and to be as enjoyable a place as possible to do commerce with, it is absolutely essential that you make sure that your website is optimized in the best way possible. This means working on the loading times of every page as well as the way that people navigate the site. If you believe that a part of the website isn't working, then there is no shame in bringing in an external consultant, who will be able to help your business reach the next level. This is also important when it comes to your search engine optimization efforts and making sure that you do everything you can to rank high up on Google.

Always Court Customer Engagement

It is very important to always bring the customer in as a part of every marketing process that you do. For example, you can run polls on your social media pages to see how customers react to certain ideas, or you can invite guests to leave comments on blog posts as to suggest their own ideas for whatever is happening in the company. Even if you don't implement every change that they suggest, it will help with your company's decision-making process.

Consider a Subscription Service

Subscription services are an amazing way to build brand loyalty. Simply having the idea of a subscription service can be good for your business. By offering a great product that you can charge recurring payments for, people will associate your business with exclusivity and luxury. Find a way today to figure out how you could fold a subscription model ? currently rising in popularity ? into your company?s model.

Find the Right Balance Between New and Loyal

When running the marketing arm of a company, it's important you have a decent split between dedicating your time to new customers and loyal customers. While not wanting to alienate either of them, finding that balance that can help your business to properly grow in a truly sustainable manner.

Have a Unique Selling Point

Having a unique selling point is one of the most important points when it comes to successfully launching your products on the internet. Have a strategy meeting to discuss what your most important asset as a business is and figure out a way to be able to successfully communicate that to your customers.