“Scaling” has become a common term in the arena of online business growth. Put simply, it means that you increase sales and profits without having to invest a great deal of money to do that. And, given our current digital business environment, there are plenty of ways to do this.
Consider the many options you have to get yourself “out there” with only investments of time and energy, not cold hard cash. Here are three of those tactics.
Improve/Increase Your Social Media Presence
This will involve research of several kinds. Here is what that research will involve:
- Be certain that you have an updated and full picture of your target audience and its behaviors on social media. There are lots of tools to do this – creating the right customer persona and then finding out where they hang out online, is your first step to “scale” your customer base.
- See how your competitors are using social media and which platforms and types of posts are resonating with your audience. Use their success to create your own.
- Get a social listening tool – some are free but even fee-based ones are low in cost. Any time you are mentioned anywhere, you will receive an alert. You can then access those comments and respond. This helps to keep your reputation intact.
Get Yourself Rated on Review Sites
There are consumer/customer review sites for everything these days. Some are large and general, such as Trustpilot or Yelp. Some are very specific and focus on certain sectors. Consumers do check these out when they are ready to make purchases, so be certain that you have good reviews. Here’s how to do this:
- Ask you’re happy customers to write reviews on these major sites, make it easy for them to do that, and offer an incentive for them to do this.
- Ask sector-specific review sites to conduct a review of your company. For example, check out The Word Point review on this translation review website. It rates translation services based upon specific criteria. You can request a review in your sector and get rated.
Stay Current in Your Niche and Educate Your Audience
This is best accomplished by a business blog that houses engaging and compelling articles that will resonate with current and potential customers. Customers want to be educated, entertained, and inspired. If your blog posts can do this, you can garner a following that will not only consume your blogs but will also share those with their communities.
If you sell decking products, for example, what are the latest and best types of products on the market? What is the future of newer products that are coming? Your blog posts should feature these. And they are obviously also featured on your website landing pages.
The key is to drive current and potential customers to these blog posts and landing pages on your site. You can do this in a couple of ways:
- You can create social media posts, with enticing posts and links to your blog posts and/or landing pages. You can also link to blog posts of others if they will establish you as an expert in your niche. Here is an example of a post that The Word Point drives its customers to, in order to speak to the future of the translation industry. This lets customers know that it is “on top of” its industry.
- You can use email to drive subscribers to your site and blog content, always providing them a method to share that content with their tribes. The wider reach you can achieve, the greater your opportunity to pick up new customers.
These Three…
Each of these tactics is immediately actionable and requires little more than a commitment of time on your part. Of course, you can hire expensive consultants to achieve more online visibility, but you should try these first. You may be able to achieve many of the same results.
Author Bio: Merissa Moore is a researcher, consultant, and frequent contributor to blogs on all things of current interest to companies with a digital presence. In her limited spare time, Moore dabbles in gourmet cooking and advocacy for animal rights.
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