What is the best way to promote a business?

Hello,

I am currently working with a client and I am making a website, and also with social media. I am going to need to figure out how to promote it, and I know quite a few ways.

Obviously I am going to be doing as much free stuff I can do, such as keyword content, metadata tags etc but I will be spending money in the end to give it the extra boost, but where do you start?

There are so many ways, I could promote the facebook page, twitter page, pay google to list it higher, or try alternative ways than paying google to list it higher with money (not so familiar than these).

So how should you go about it? Should you just go all out and pay google? Should I put 90% into the website and 10% into the facebook page?

Thanks!

Promotion is mandatory to drive traffic and increase the sales revenue from any website. Yes, you’re right about content marketing, It is also great method to increase the traffic. If you’re interest in spending some money, then PPC, Facebook ads, ad-words are the best option for your website.

Facebook page updates are mattering less and less and reaching less and less of followers. However, Facebook pages often get good SEO, so the content on the pages should be accurate and well crafted. Facebook paid advertising still might be worth it, as it can be so targeted. The website and Google are a good way to invest the majority of your time and money in my opinion, unless you have a reason to believe lots of Facebook ads would be better - then go with it.

PPC, Google Ads, Twitter or FB are completely different beasts.

You don’t put 90% into a website and 5% into FB. A website can be promoted in social media but a website it is not social media, in the same way that social media is not a website. Your content should go to the website.

Even Twitter and FB, for sure the biggest channels for promotion, are very different even if they look similar.

Not everybody needs a Twitter account in the same way that not everybody needs a FB account or page (even if this sounds incredible)

Certain businesses do not benefit from social media.

It is the job of that company to understand their market, the type of people that buy from them and buy the products or services they provide.

If their clients do not use FB, a FB fan page will be useless.

Regarding spending money, nobody wants to do that but how much or how little or if you need to … well, that’s what’s called a marketing plan.

So first, you need to know about the type of customer that deals with this company

Once you know if those clients use FB, twitter, instagram, two of those, or all of them, you can build a plan to engage them… and drive traffic to the website itself, as an example, or get them to buy something.

Well, its a website for a plastering business. It is only going to have a facebook and a website (I should probably not have mentioned twitter). As its the type of business that you generally search for, I am guessing google would be best.

Although this leads me onto my next question, which is say I pay google ÂŁ500 to list it higher. What happens if people search it on bing, internet explorer, microsoft edge, opera, or firefox? I know google is the biggest browser, but is there not a better way than just paying google?

I guess this makes sense, even though its not the type of business it could still work well.

FYI Bing, and Google, are not browsers…they are search engines. I just want to make sure that you understand that. You do not appear to have a firm grasp of understanding of that. Apologies if you do.

OK, you seem to be somewhat confused here between browsers and search engines.

Google is a search engine, which can be used by anybody using any browser. Chrome is a browser, owned by Google - but anybody using it could choose to search with Bing, Yahoo! or any other search engine.

And you can pay to have an advertisement placed in Google’s results, rather than to have your site listed higher. (It will be marked as an advertisement, rather than organic result.)

I seem to have got a bit mixed up there. Yes I do understand that, and I know you can use different search engines on different browsers etc. I look so stupid haha

I think I just had a mind blank and listed browsers instead of search engines

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No, you don’t. We all had (and still have) to learn and start somewhere. And we’re here to help.

I find the FB account a good idea if your target buyer goes there. It doesn’t matter if you use FB ads or Google Ads (called Adwords), try to invest wisely. You can go far with just £10 if you do your research well.

And you’ll need to learn well how the system works.

These type of ads use a bidding system. The highest bidder, get his ad in the first line, the one that pay the most. So you pay for each keyword (a keyword is a word or even a sentence that people use when they search)

Chosing the right keywords to bid takes lots of time, but if you find a keyword with lots of people use but has low competition (related to your business, of course) then you have a winner and traffic will go to your site.

The second part, of course, is that your ad appeals to the masses :smiley:

The third is a bit psychological… hence that you understand your market and the people you’re “dealing” with

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So I would want to invest in sentences such as “cheap plastering south england” or something like that?

Yes. Normally, the longer the keyword, the easier is to “beat” the competition. A four word keyword is a good one.

But even if “cheap plastering south england” is a good keyword, with many searches and not many web pages including it… would it be a good one for your business?

Maybe not, if the company doesn’t want the word “cheap” associated with their business. This is when the psychological part comes in. They may go for “great plastering south england” instead… and that keyword may have more competition.

A good experiment, if they’re a willing to do it, could be asking to their customers. Maybe even do a little game with when they come to the store.

“Hey Bill, do you use Google when you want to find something?”
“Sure Bob… Is there anyone who doens’t use it”
“Don’t know… Do you use it often”
“Almost everyday!”
“So, if you had to search for my shop in Google… what woud you write”
“Don’t know, Bob… Let me think… I guess I’d write fast plastering in woking or something similar”

Of course, Bill will write down fast plastering in woking in his lists of keywords…

You could kill two birds with one shot: you will know what the people (at least, customers) will search for and you’ll have a list of keywords to test… And sure that among so many people, one or two will be winners

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Okay, this is making sense.

Also, do the keywords you advertise go together with the ones you use in the website? I know a bit about SEO content, and that you need to identify your keywords, such as plastering, and add them in the url, page title, content, headings etc. I am not sure how this would work as, like you said, an advertised result shows up differently from a generic result.

Plus, I thought google determined searches on your location. So for example, if someone in South England searches for “plastering”, they are more likely to get a result from England than from America, which is what you want as I am sure they won’t be sending plasterers to america. Wouldn’t this eliminate the point of adding a location in the keyword term?

You need to make an inbound marketing strategy, which includes a content map and editorial calendar. Blogging will increase your indexed pages, which will increase your chances on coming up on the first page of Google. Then you can distribute these posts to the channels listed in your distribution strategy.

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[quote=“TobyHall2000, post:12, topic:189943”]
Also, do the keywords you advertise go together with the ones you use in the website?
[/quote]Often that’s the case, but not necessarily. Remember that you will use one or two keywords per page. You promote per page, not per site.

You may want to read the articles at www.hubspot.com and maybe subscribe to their newsletter. It is one of the few companies that tries to educate about online marketing without spamming everyone. They conentrate on inbound marketing.

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The best way to promote the business is marketing and advertisement, to advertise the online marketing or business was digital marketing, in these one can do SEO, SMO, SMM etc.

Welcome to the forums, @VarunaSamuel.

We appreciate your willingness to contribute, but there are a couple of things you could do which would make your reply much more helpful. Firstly, if you read the first post carefully, you’ll see that TobyHall2000 already understands that he needs to advertise and promote his site. He’s asking specific questions about the best way to do that. Answering one of those questions would be more helpful than giving vague, general advice.

Also, listing things like this:

[quote=“VarunaSamuel, post:15, topic:189943”]
one can do SEO, SMO, SMM etc.
[/quote]isn’t very helpful. If the member is new to promotion, they may not even know what those initials stand for, never mind how to go about putting the techniques into practise. Instead of a list of techniques, why not pick the one you think is most useful and explain why you think it’s useful and how to go about it? That would be much more helpful to a beginner.

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