Top strategies to grow your business online

Actionable ideas to help your business succeed online

As an online business, you need to stay ahead of the curve — and your competition — to succeed and grow. And, yes, we know that’s a lot easier said than done in the always-evolving Internet age.

But no fear. That’s why we’ve created this free guide containing actionable ideas to develop an online growth strategy that drives more impressions, more online traffic, and more customers.

1. Start with a competitive analysis

Most successful online businesses invest considerable time and resources into analyzing and gaining a deeper understanding of their competition.

Creating a competitive analysis is one of the most effective ways to generate new, actionable ideas. That’s because it helps you discover potential advantages and possible barriers to success within your online market. Your analysis will also empower your team with a better understanding of what online marketing and distribution channels and strategies your competitors are using to reach your target audience.

Here are some questions to think about as you deep dive into your competition’s market positioning. Use these as a starting point to build your strategy for online business growth:

• What is your competitors’ key differentiator and/or value add for their product or service solutions?

• What digital and social marketing channels are they using — and how does their content attract and engage their audience?

• How do they leverage marketing content across traditional and non-traditional online channels?

• Take a look at their business reviews — what are they applauded for? What are they criticized for?

2. Adopt an SEO strategy that makes you first-page worthy

We all want to rank on page one of Google’s search results with all the cool kids. To get there, you’ll need to leverage the power of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and buyer personas.

Getting in with the cool crowd requires thoughtful work. A successful SEO strategy includes research on your buyer personas and SEO keyword optimization for all content. These focus areas can help you learn how your target audience is searching for solutions online and how to be discovered in those searches.

Keyword research is an important component of your research of buyer personas. You can use the personas as a guide to determine the most important keywords for your content. You can also use a keyword finder tool, such as semRush or Ahrefs, to identify other related keywords that align with your target audience. The last step in your SEO strategy is to perform optimization for all your content — inserting those keywords in key web page components, such as headlines, H1 tags, meta-descriptions, and calls to action.

Check out our SEO marketing guide for more ways to optimize your site for organic search.

3. Don’t forget about backlinks

“What are backlinks?” you may be asking. They are hyperlinks that directly connect one website’s page to another website page.

Why is this important? Because Google looks at backlinks to your website as “evidence” of legitimacy or a vote of confidence from consumers and, more importantly, subject matter experts, in your webpage content. Simply put, the more backlinks your website has, the better your credibility, and the better your organic search rankings. And the better your search rankings, the more online traffic flowing to your website.

We suggest taking these steps to level up your backlink game (and online business):

• Find relevant content with lots of links, make something better, then ask those linking to the original to link to your content instead.

• Find unlinked mentions of your brand, then ask the author to make the mention clickable to your site.

• Reach out to others in the field (or in similar disciplines) to offer to contribute short guest blog posts to their site.

• When it comes to social media and PPC advertising, the time is now

Investing in social media and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) digital advertising campaigns on online ad platforms, such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram, is a great way to gain awareness and attract your target audience.

With the advanced targeting tools and real-time analytics available for paid ad campaigns, it’s easy to select the demographics you want to attract and engage. Together with real-time insights into the performance of ad spend, you’re well-positioned to get ahead — and stay ahead — of the competition with greater engagement, clicks, and conversions.

Learn more about how to grow your business through paid social ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Best practices from businesses that succeed online

Successful online businesses don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on a complex digital marketing and advertising program. In fact, they can often achieve their goals at a minimum cost because they understand where to focus their available resources and capacity online.

As a brand that uses online marketing to drive our own customer acquisition and growth, we’re here to help you achieve results.

Here are some of the things successful online businesses do, which you can emulate to grow your business online without spending a fortune. Think of this guide as an informal checklist you can use to dial in your online growth strategy for success.

1. Your online content is high-quality, informative, and engaging

A well-researched content marketing strategy is going to be full of useful information to attract, engage, and build your online audience. None of it will be impactful if your content isn’t high-quality, unique, informative, and engaging. Too many online businesses churn out mediocre content because they’ve bought into the false premise that more is better. Trust us, it’s not. Stick to the “quality over quantity” rule, and you’ll be golden.

2. Your online marketing and messaging is laser-focused on your buyer personas

It can be tempting to go with the “spray and pray” approach to online marketing campaigns, especially if your bandwidth or budget are limited. Unfortunately, you’re not going to achieve the results you want without putting in the work on the front end.

Remember, the audience influences everything. Therefore, it's imperative to identify your target audience and drill down on the buyer personas in each. The deeper your understanding of each persona, the better results you’ll see from your targeted messaging built into your online marketing campaigns.

3. Your online properties are optimized for mobile

This may sound obvious, but there are plenty of well-known websites that contain pages that just don’t work on smartphones or tablets. Think about the following pitfalls that can kill your website’s responsiveness and functionality:

• A complex navigation menu
• Images that are not optimized
• Flash video
• Poor UX functionality
• An unreliable hosting service

4. Your audience has plenty of available tools to share your content

You’ll want to do everything you can to encourage your audience to share your content with their networks. That starts with providing sharing buttons and a link to your social media accounts being prominently positioned near your content. When your audience shares what they’ve read or watched with their network (because they enjoy the subject matter and recognize the value) the likelihood of your content going viral grows exponentially.

How to start an online business for free (and make it)

A large percentage of startup online businesses never make it. Frustration with slow growth is commonly one of the culprits.

We’re here to help you beat the odds with some fresh and simple digital marketing tips that will provide the foundation for long-term growth:

1. Narrow your focus with online market segmentation

One of the very first steps is to take a global view of your place in the market. Like many online startups, budget, resources, and capacity can really limit your competitiveness in large market sectors. That’s why we suggest narrowing your online marketing efforts into smaller segments that align with your brand and unique value proposition.

A market segmentation strategy empowers your team to more accurately forecast the potential ROI (return on investment) of smaller market segments. There are major categories of characteristics you can analyze to narrow your target market, such as demographics, geography, psychographic, or sociocultural segmentation. You can also take a hybrid approach and consider multiple categories.

For example, your research could reveal that women who live on the west coast and are under the age of 40 are most likely to purchase your product or solution. With this knowledge, you can create highly-targeted direct marketing or ad campaigns that contains the tailored messaging for this consumer group.

We’re confident you’ll find that marketing (and selling into) a narrower and more well-defined segment is far easier — and potentially more profitable — than the larger market segment.

2. Dig into consumer marketing research

Another step in your journey to success online is learning who your target audience is.

To do this right, we suggest integrating your market research with customer behaviors and preferences to develop buyer personas.

A better understanding of each persona — and what factors into their buying decision — will help you build a robust online strategy for business growth.

3. Embrace social media marketing. It’s all about the followers.

We already know what you’re going to say. “Social doesn’t generate any sales.” We get it. It’s a long-term investment that requires a daily commitment to posting engaging content.

Just like most long-term investments, though, the payoff only comes with patience.

Your followers want to get to know you over time — to see if you’re a potential strong fit. The longer sales cycle gives you an equal opportunity to share your strongest qualities and selling points. Do it right, and your followers will not only convert to customers — they will become evangelists, and tell their network all about your brand!

4. Use video to tell your unique story on social media

Audiences love to be visually engaged by compelling stories. That’s why video content shared on your social media channels can be a game-changer. Video production for social media doesn't require a large investment, yet it can become a powerful tool for your brand messaging strategy — and to form meaningful connections with your target audience online.

5. Embrace the power of content marketing

A surefire way to grow your audience online, gain followers, and earn your place on the first page of Google’s search results is a commitment to content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute defines this as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Please take note of the word “consistent” in the definition above. Being effective in the content marketing game requires consistent posting of high-quality content — meant to be interesting and educational, inspiring interest in your brand or products without hard-selling them.

We know it’s a lot of work for most new online businesses. But your effort will pay dividends when you’re recognized as an authoritative voice in your field, driving top-of-mind awareness from the online audiences (and target customers) you need to grow your business online.

How to grow your business online with event marketing

Take your online business growth to the next level with Eventbrite Boost, the only all-in-one event marketing platform. Our intuitive digital event marketing solution helps you target the right audience with the right message at the right time. This is how to grow an online business — with more clicks, more customers, and more revenue.

Check out this inspirational success story featuring one of our creators using online marketing strategies to spark growth.

How ORLOVE expands its audience with Eventbrite Boost

ORLOVE founder and CEO, Matt Orlove, integrated Eventbrite Boost into his event production company’s marketing plan to help bounce back post-pandemic. It didn’t take long to see results.

Using Boost’s email marketing capabilities for their targeted email blasts, Orlove’s deliverability rose up to 20%. Yet it was Boost’s audience targeting technology that sealed the deal for Orlove.

With the all-in-one marketing platform in his arsenal, Orlove could target the artists they work with on Spotify. This was a game-changer, as those same artists weren’t targetable on Facebook.

And with easy-to-use digital ad reporting illuminating the key performance analytics of their campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, Orlove has everything he needs to continue to expand his audience and grow his music business.

Learn more about how Eventbrite Boost helps ORLOVE reach the widest audience, sell out events, and grow their business online.

Be inspired by greatness

Explore and find inspiration in the successful online strategies event creators are using to grow their following and business in our “Heart of Gathering” video series.

Watch the videos