Search engines are essentially the heart of the internet and googling is a term used so often that it is now recognized by Merriam-Webster as a grammatically correct verb.
If you have a website or social media pages, it is vital to understand how your customers and target audience would find your business online. There a few different
techniques to make your business more visible, outlined below is just a couple of these techniques.
Stimulative advertising:
This is an advert that your target audience comes across by chance and is then stimulated into contacting your business and purchasing your product or service. Examples of stimulative advertising include social media posts, video adverts and results on search engines like Google.
The internet gives you the ability to reach billions of potential customers, in the UK alone 62 million people on average used the internet each month in 2020. So using stimulative advertising on the internet and social media platforms allows you to not only attract customers but builds brand awareness, in turn increasing traffic to your social pages and website and improving your visibility on search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.
Directional advertising:
This is the method of putting an advert in front of your prospective customer in a place that they are searching for the service or product you offer.
Examples of directional advertising include; making your business visible on search engine maps in your target audiences local are, so if they are looking for builder in London, does your business come within the top page of results?
Other examples include; using location tags and creating paid ads in the local area of your target audience for social media posts. Did you know on Facebook you can boost a post to reach people of a certain age, in a certain location and with relevant interests to your industry. So if you are a toy store in Manchester, you can select a post to show up on the news feed of people living within a 15 mile radius of your businesses address, with children or an interests in the types of toys you sell in your store.
There are many benefits to directional advertising as it is a technique which allows you directly put yourself in front of your target audience, leading to a higher conversion rate and best of all the consumers you are targeting already have an interest in the product or service you are advertising to them.
Word of Mouth
With the evolution of social media, word have mouth has become an essential tool in increasing you visibility and brand awareness online, as people who receive both good and bad experiences can now share this with their friends, family and even potential consumers in the form of online reviews and social media posts.
Did you know:
93% of people say online reviews impact their buying decision
91% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, above other types of advertising
To boost word of mouth recommendations around your business, it is important to promote your current or previous customers to leave reviews on a wide variety or online mediums, for example on Google and Facebook. By promoting customers to leave reviews of their positive experience with your customer you are creating a positive brand image and making your brand appear trustworthy to your target audience and potential consumers.
A second way of achieving word of mouth recommendations is by asking your customers to recommend your business to friends and family, get them to share your social media posts or even create promotions around sharing your business with their friends and family on social media.
Sources for statistics:
Igniyte Limited 2019 30 online review facts and stats you need to know – Igniyte