The past two years have been a challenge for small businesses. We were forced to change the way we run our businesses. And, consumers’ shopping behaviors have also changed drastically.
Today, 99% of consumers rely on the internet to find information about local businesses in 2021. (compared to ~90% pre-pandemic)
50% of all business websites get less than 500 visitors a month, here’re 5 ways to get more traffic to yours.
Free
1) Email list or Customer list
Your existing contacts be it an email list or a customer list, are your business’ most valuable asset.
Encourage them to visit your website or share about it with their social circles.
Some ways you can do this:
i) Run a promotion
Festive seasons, shopping seasons or even celebrations are great reasons to run a promotion to your website. This works especially well for e-commerce or direct to consumer retail businesses.
What if you’re a B2B business?
Well, you’ll need to design a promotion that fits your client’s needs.
ii) Referral programs
Referral programs are time proven growth strategies. There are now softwares like ReferralCandy or InviteReferrals that allow you to set up and customise your referral programs according to your needs and objectives.
2) Social Media
Your potential clients can learn about your business and offering before they even know of your brand or website.
This can be through simple sharing of your content, or a review from their social circle, via social media.
The examples above are passive cases where your customers could have shared about your business.
However, you can proactively take the first step to reach more people. Here’s how:
i) Share about how you help customers solve their issue as an article on your website
ii) Share this article on your social media post
iii) Encourage your existing followers to share the article with their friends who might be facing similar issues.
Paid
3) Social Media Ads
Depending on the social media platforms that your potential customers you, you can run ads to reach out to them on various platforms.
From Facebook to TikTok, small businesses can now run ads even with a small budget of $50-100 per month to reach potential customers who would otherwise not get to know of you.
4) Search Engine Ads
If your industry rely on search traffic, you could also consider pay per click (PPC) campaigns on search engines like Google and Bing.
This allows you to drive highly targeted traffic to your website and can often lead to sales if done strategically.
5) Partnerships with influencers or thought leaders
It takes time to grow a following online. And as a busy small business owner, you may not have the time or resource to focus on growing followers.
The good news is that there are way more “influencers” today. Although influencer marketing had received flake, the industry has grown to $13.8B in 2021 and more brands are planning to allocate their budgets there this year.
You can take advantage of this by looking for up and coming influencers whom your potential clients follow. Each influencer should allow you to reach a wider group of audience who may not find you otherwise.
Looking for ways to grow your business in 2022? Reach out to us at Loud Kitchen, or ping me at any of these platforms.