Hello! My name is Amberly. I am an award-winning Digital Marketer that has helped businesses grow online over the past 14 years. I've worked with some incredible companies around the globe including Walt Disney World, Six Flags, Hilton, etc. as well as numerous small businesses. I am currently the CEO of a digital marketing agency and a Professor at State College of Florida - Manatee .
Being in the trenches, I have seen a whole lot of what works and what does not when it comes to growing a business online. I'm on a mission to help over 10,000 small businesses grow (including Blurt, if that's a possibility!)
I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some of the top ways to increase your visibility, website traffic, and sales online. These are proven tips that have helped my clients skyrocket their business! I have countless case studies and awards to show that these are proven to work when implemented correctly. The sky is the limit when it comes to leveraging the web to help get to the next level!
Ready to learn how to increase sales and turn your website into the ultimate lead generating machine? Let's go.
Here are 27 tips to grow online:
- Promote your unique selling point everywhere (What makes you different than your competitors? List it out. Leverage that.)
- Target specific niche markets with ads on social media (Ex: You can run ads to 25-35 year old female Moms who live in around a 20 mile radius of Chicago) You can get extremely targeted. Laser targeted social media campaigns do much better than just throwing random content up anywhere. I have seen much better conversions with targeted ad campaigns!
- Retarget website visitors with ads to bring them back to your site
- Show off customer photos and testimonials that include why they love your product/service
- Have a solid marketing strategy FIRST before you start to implement anything
- Run a contest and give away something for free in exchange for social media shares
- Collect email address by giving something away of value (Extremely helpful PDF, checklist, ebook, etc.)
- Use that email list, upload it to Facebook, and run targeted ads just to your email subscribers
- Pinpoint the channel with the highest conversions and double down your efforts there
- Share massive value and how you help your customers solve their problems or make their life easier/better
- Cut out the fluff. Focus on what truly matters to your customers! How can you solve their pain points?
- Post consistent content. It's a long term game. Consistency is key!
- Remove the obstacles of risk. Combat objectives in your content.
- Invest in a long term SEO program. Getting your website to the top of Google has significant value and can scale your business up to a whole new level!
- Highlight your customers in your content (Testimonials, Videos, Case Studies, Images, etc.)
- Get very clear on who your customer is (demographics, characteristics, location, etc.) Laser target them with video ads on social media.
- Consistently add blogs
- Broadcast your USP (Unique Selling Point) on your homepage
- Look at your data to make strategic marketing suggestions
- Offer a rick free money back guarantee and create a sense of urgency
- Have a solid email sequence set up for new customers
- Go above and beyond! Do something unexpected for your customers (add in a free gift, send a surprise birthday special, etc.)
- Make sure your website is up to date and user experience is easy
- Invest in high quality images and graphics
- Personalize your customer experience (Ex: live 1:1 chats. adding their name in the email)
- Determine your customers struggles and develop content around that
- Actually talk to your potential customers 1:1
- Never stop testing and experimenting! Look at your data (Google Analytics, Insights, etc.) to see what's working and where there is room for improvement.
Hopefully these tips help. Do you have any more to add to the list? Let me know if the comments below.
Have questions? I'm here to help!
-Amberly Bucci
CEO / Digital Marketer
www.amberlybucci.com
Wanted to add to this one
Facebook will also allow you to create lookalike lists of folks unknown to you. I've heard some great things about the responsiveness to these lookalike lists.
The giveaway is a powerful tool, one that I used extensively to build a list when I was self publishing. I would caution any doing this however to not go extreme in building the list. By that I mean not only should you ensure everyone opts in and has an opt out button, you should regularly cull your list as well. You will get a percentage who signed up just to get the freebie and they will never open anything you send them after that. Not only do email campaigns cost per the size of ones list, one can actually get penalized if the unopened emails grow to large. As well as some folks will forget why you are emailing them after awhile if they aren't interested and could begin marking your emails as spam instead of opting out.
I would also caution folks about spending to much time on Google placement. You obviously want to do as well as possible, which is why you should consider Golden Keyword ratio. However, Google is the first to admit that over 90% of all websites will never get even one visitor from them.
https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/
Knowing this, one should focus their efforts primarily on creating funnels to ones web presence. Unfortunately the average person will never get the rep with Google that many of the corporations you've worked with will get as far as being considered an authority.
Some alternatives could be self publishing as I was doing, but tainted more to get folks to your upsell on your own website. Using other folks email list. While this can be costly, over time one will begin possessing their own quality list. The list is like having your own printing press for money if built and used correctly. By correctly I mean not overusing it, and making sure most of the email is not trying to sell something, but being helpful to the target audience. This makes them receptive on the occasions you do pitch something. Receptive because studies have shown you need to interact with a potential customer multiple times before they actually buy something. Best to make those interactions focused on them to build your rep as someone who cares about more than the quick buck they represent.
Hope you don't mind my adding my observations. Great list and welcome to Blurt. You should change one of your tags to hello Blurt since this is your introduction post.
Hello! Thank you for your kind welcome. I appreciate your thoughtful response and insight! You had some great ideas. It definitely sounds like you've been in this for a while also!
As far as Facebook look alike audiences, they do work really well. Of course, it's all about testing. I do find since lookalike audiences pull in similar data points and demographics, that conversions are typically higher. However, you have to test and each business is different for various reasons. I do find that retargeting ads work well too.
Facebook Advertising is actually one of my specialties. I find it fun to create campaigns, tweak, and optimize them for the best results. Here are some results from a few recent client campaigns.
Re: the giveaway / lead magnet - you're right. It's important to make sure it's laser targeted to the exact audience you want to get in front of. Your email list should be only current customers or potential customers. As a course creator, I use ConvertKit as my email marketing tool. The platform is quite intuitive, it connects easily with Kajabi (my course software) and I don't have to pay per email.
I do have to say that I do think in fact it's very important for many businesses to get found in Google. If you can hire an expert to leverage the power of SEO, it is very possible to get website traffic. I've done Search Engine Optimization for countless websites over the past 14 years, and there hasn't been one that I haven't increased their traffic for. I love sharing case studies and statistics to illustrate how I help businesses grow in Google. Perhaps I'll share some more posts with SEO case studies moving forward!
Thanks again. I appreciate your observations and insight. I love chatting about anything digital marketing!
It's all about solving the problem for customers. When the customers are satisfied, they will always come back for more.
I enjoyed this lovely and detailed post. Well done.
Hi Olawalium! You're exactly right. Putting the customers first and solving their problems is key. If you can delight your customers, the sky is the limit. :)
Absolutely, it's about customer satisfaction. Thank you so much.
Hey hey hey! It's my cousin Amberly! So happy you decided to offer your highly skilled and experienced services to the Blurt community. This is a huge opportunity for Blurt and yourself. A big Win-Win. If anyone has the skills and know how to digitally market and grow Blurt it most certainly is you.
I personally will make sure the right people know that you and your services are available to grow Blurt; and I sincerely thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to introduce yourself to the Blurt community!
Hi, @world-travel-pro! I'm so glad I joined Blurt. Thank you for introducing me to this awesome community. Best cousin ever! I look forward to connecting with like-minded people and business owners who may have similar goals to grow.
Also, I'm happy to be a resource to those who have any questions about digital marketing. :)
Awesome Cuz! It's almost surreal seeing you here in my world of blogging and earning crypto! It's a lot of fun, and you meet all sorts of interesting people and you just never know what kind of opportunities pop up! As you already know, you are more like a sister than a cousin...and it doesn't get any better than that! Chat soon, and hope you are having a great day!
It's the consistency part for me and that's what doing business is all about.
Yes, you nailed it! The name of the game is consistency. Keep doing 1% better each day and you'll make massive progress over time.
That's it. Consistently building on it.
Welcome to blurt :) we are very happy to have you here and your skills
Thank you, @ultavioletmag. I'm happy to be here!
Hi Amberly, this is Ricardo co-founder of Blurt. I’ve seen your post for the first time, I went to your website and filled out the contact form. Hope to speak soon.