Nowadays, there is a rising trend of businesses going from the traditional brick-and-mortar store to online. When the pandemic broke off, urging people to make certain adjustments such as refraining from physical contact, we found ourselves doing more and more things online. Instead of going to the office, we start to work remotely. Even businesses were no exceptions to the transition by switching from running their physical shops to e-commerce. Analysis from UNCTAD has found global e-commerce sales rose to $26.7 trillion in 2020, making up 19% of all retail sales (up from 16% in 2019). 

In line with this, for businesses, small and medium-sized, there is always a question about how to choose the most effective way of advertising and promote their businesses to gain new customers in the digital platform. 
Of course, ads on the city boards, TV, and radio ads still pay off, but the worldwide web brings a more significant return investment ratio. 
Here is a list of ways to promote business online in 2021.

Website

Many areas simply cannot advance without the use of the Internet nowadays. So first, you need to think about creating your homepage. You may start with a one-page website and increase the pages and content step by step to present your business from different angles.

To promote a business on the Internet through a website, you need to have a catalog of services or goods with a detailed description of most points. The website should also contain:

• Contact details;
• Advantages over competitors;
• History of the company and the team of creators;
• Portfolio of completed projects.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will help you promote the website. It will bring your site to appear on the first pages of Google more often, and therefore more people click on it. But it is a time and effort-consuming process that will lead to some results in months or even years. If you want to have visible results (customers) immediately, you can start Pay Per Click advertising. The best way is to apply these both ways simultaneously: SEO for the long-term perspective and PPC for the quick results.

Blog

It can be a separate page or a section on your main website, but its presence is required. Publish interesting articles on your business topics while applying SEO optimization to pop up more often on the first pages of search engines. It will draw attention to you and increase the level of trust and confidence from potential customers. If you constantly and regularly build up the blog with new articles, you can gain confidence among your possible audience as an authoritative source in your area of expertise.

You can also publish articles with links to your website on forums or discussions of other websites or platforms. Active links will bring you traffic of potential customers and improve your value in the eyes of search engines. For example, Quora is a great place to post text because it has a large audience that can potentially become your client. Do not forget about keyword optimization, which will increase the likelihood that people will notice your article.

Social networks

They have two options for promoting your business - paid and free. In the second case, you create a page about your business, publish something interesting, review your services/products, and explain why you should use them.

To get a larger audience, it is advised to use paid advertising on social networks. Social media marketing (SMM) is considered a practical option for promoting business sites, as it offers many advantages:

• Targeting - attract a specific audience.
• Large audience of the social network.
• More affordable than many other types of advertising.
• Organic - people will share and attract their friends with exciting advertising.

We recommend using two methods at once - paid advertising and maintaining a page about the company. It will allow you to get the maximum coverage and attract the most significant number of people to your products and services.

Other bloggers and media stars/ Influencers

Promoting a business through advertising with famous people or so-called “influencers” gives an excellent response. You can offer your products/services through bloggers on many sites:

• Instagram;
• TikTok;
• YouTube.

This option may seem expensive, but you need to understand that an audience of several hundred thousand or even millions of people will hear about you. As practice shows, at least 30% of them will look at your offer, and 20% will become one-time buyers. At the same time, another 25% of those who bought/ordered something from you will turn into your regular customer for the first time.

Youtube
If you can present your company in the form of videos, we urge you to utilize this method. YouTube is especially relevant because Internet users prefer to consume content precisely through videos with sounds and graphics rather than reading texts. It works well to promote a new business or existing company:

• Honest reviews with pros and cons.
• Service/product history.
• Lesson on using something and webinars.

Online Reviews/ User Generated Content

A modern consumer usually checks information about a service/product in advance, so they go to sites where customers share their thoughts and opinions. There are many such platforms, so you need to maintain your reputation there. First, publish comprehensive information about your product or services on the reviewer platforms. Second, ask your clients to rate you there or do a review.

Track the mentions about you on forums and social networks and respond to them. It will eliminate the possibility that someone will maliciously damage your reputation. In addition, people tend to trust more "live" companies that enter into dialogue and respond to comments.

Be sure to use the online promotion of your business, and then it will grow steadily, develop and bring you more profits.