Without a constant flow of visitors to your website, your business will not succeed. The beauty of being hands-on with your online business is the fact that you start to become aware of what really works to take your business to the next level. Owning your own online business can become very lucrative and expensive if you don't know where to start.

Knowing SEO

Let's face it, some of us will never understand SEO no matter how hard we try. While backlinks do help to give your business that boost in the search engine, there are more stable ways to bring traffic to your business.

Effective Web Design by Julia Hanke

Social signals are just as important as backlinks. While backlinks tend to fall off over a course of time, typically with social signals they stick around for years. Pinterest is a great way to attract traffic to your business due to the fact that pins rank well on Google search. Pinterest gets over 343 million searches on Google each month. Imagine having 20,000 keyword rich pins working for you. You could bring in some serious traffic. Often visitors browse Pinterest because they know companies are promoting their business through pins. So why aren't you?

Selling On Amazon

Often what small online businesses do is sell their products on Amazon and their website. This technique is actually very smart because Amazon is a big platform and gets over 2.5 billion Google searches each month. I didn't believe it either, but it's true. By utilizing Amazon, you are able to use their website to make your brand or product popular. OMG Commerce has done well in helping Amazon sellers fulfill their goals.

Explainer Videos Are Effective

More and more online businesses are using explainer videos because they are effective and friendly. As humans, we often get tired of having to explain our business over and over again. And for this reason, explainer videos are much needed. An explainer video is short and to the point. And let's be honest, they are fun to watch.

Marketing Offline

It's so easy to get caught up in marketing online only. Don't forget to expand your business offline. Depending on what type of business you are promoting, drop cards can be very effective. A drop card is a card that looks exactly like a $100 dollar bill. Your custom message is on the card and it's folded to present itself as authentic. This method of marketing has been used by the MLM industry a lot. However, as a marketing agency, this could be effective in showing your prospect visually how you could save them hundreds. It would be ideal to drop them at college campuses, coffee shops, or multi-level marketing buildings, such as Primerica.

Facebook Marketing

It is very important to know your business type. For a local business, Facebook ads would most likely be suitable. However, for a business that is strictly online, it can also be effective but I find that business owners tend to spend more on advertising. Pay per click advertising is not fun. For businesses receiving residual income, Facebook advertising would be an interesting platform to try out. If you're on a strict budget, I don't recommend it.

A great social strategy is to contact a social influencer with a lot of YouTube subscribers or Facebook followers and pay that individual to promote your business. This is a fantastic way to bring lots of exposure to your business almost instantly. If what your offering is interesting enough, you should expect to see some Facebook shares, likes, and followers. Depending on the number of followers they have, you could end up spending thousands.

Finding a source of online advertising that will work for you all comes down to trial and error. It is logical to consult like-minded individuals in business and find out what marketing strategies worked for them. One marketing strategy that never fails is word of mouth. The idea is to offer something of value in exchange for telling a friend. I've seen this work well in the automotive industry. And with a bit of creativity, it will work well for your online business too.