Online marketing is an affordable and easy to use media for selling your goods and services to millions of customers across the globe. With the new way of life, customers now rely on their mobile devices to find brands that sell the products and services they need in the comfort of their homes. However, while creating online accounts is mostly free, businesses need to invest time and money to realise value from their digital footprint. Here are five quick tips as you seek to grow online:

Know your customers:

Knowing who your customers are and how they consume online media is an essential first step for your online marketing effort. Create personas for your audience to map who they are, what interests them and the channels which they use so that you meet them where they’re and interact in the most meaningful way possible. The personas you build will inform which channels you prioritise depending on the product or service your business is communicating.

Create strong content:

Effective content will attract and retain customers by providing them engaging and valuable material to learn more about and connect with your brand. Online channels offer any business the ability to play around with how the message is delivered, always have a good mix of multimedia (GIFs, slideshows, videos) and static formats, polls, among others.

Apart from creating your brand content, curating content that is relevant to your audience is a good way to offer value to your followers. Tap into relevant resources on the world wide web and share to your platforms with clear attribution to the sources of the content to create a good balance for your audience.

Measure and iterate:

You can’t prove a return on your investment online if you can’t measure the activities you’re undertaking and their impact on the business. Always ensure that you have all the relevant tools needed to attribute the growth to specific channels where possible. Before you start marketing online, always set the key performance indicators for your business and attach targets to them, that way, you’re able to come back at a later time to evaluate the effectiveness or lack of for your online marketing effort. 

Organic growth may not cut it:

Organic is a scenario where a business relies on only followers or likes on the page to grow. All social media channels require a certain investment in paid ads to drive meaningful value for your business, while you can use several techniques to distribute your content without paying, it will not go beyond your current followers or close friends circles. While paid ads can be intimidating at first, they’re one sure way of getting good visibility for your brand to generate leads, adverting on most channels is also quite affordable with costs as low as UGX 3,800 to reach over 1,000 people.