Over the years I have ‘organically’ grown many online product businesses; from clothing to homeware, travel to holiday accommodation.

Yes, organic marketing is getting harder, since the social media giant’s focus on paid advertising. BUT it’s still possible to grow your business without it costing you a penny, just your time!

So grab a cuppa and let me show you my ‘10 Tips for Growing Your Online Audience Organically’.

1. Know your Audience

I always say; if you don’t know who you’re selling to, you cannot begin to market your business successfully!

So, THE BEST starting point when embarking on the organic marketing of your small business is always to ask yourself exactly who your business is aimed at? Who ‘ideally’ do you want to attract, who are best placed to buy your online products?

If you can narrow down your ideal customer so acutely that you know their age range, location, family status, profession, hobbies and interests, you can start to build up a crystal clear picture of exactly who these people are.

Once you understand who you’re trying to attract, then you can start to figure out what attracts them and how you should be trying to attract them.

2. Create a Promotional Content Plan

The next step is for you to create a Promotional Plan that will resonate with your ideal customer. Write down applicable promotional periods, seasonal sales and national days that you can slot into your social media Content Calendar.

Then overlay it with posts that fit within my simple 3 Content Pillars:

1. PILLAR 1 – Help and inspire : advice, tips and quotes
2. PILLAR 2 – Your ‘why’ : your story, reviews, features and benefits of buying from you
3. PILLAR 3 – Your ‘what’ : sell your products

By creating this in advance it makes it so much easier for you to be consistent in creating great content that resonates with the people you want to attract.

3. Generate Consistent, Quality Content

I’m sure you know the phrase “quality over quantity”, but do you take notice of it when it comes to your social content?

Posting twice a day but with content that hasn’t really been well thought through and that doesn’t resonate with your ideal customers won’t result in the sales that you’re striving for. Instead, you would be better placed to post just three times a week with strategic, quality content that is tailored for your audience.

Remember your time might be free, but you still need to use it wisely!

4. Get Visible

When you’re a small business, it’s important to get your face out there and show your customers who you are.

People are more likely to buy from a brand that they connect with on a personal level. So help them get to know, like and trust you – the person behind the business. It might be nerve-wracking at first, but I know that you can do this!

5. Connect with your Audience

Connecting with your audience is getting easier and easier as things like Instagram Stories evolve to include poll and question box stickers.

Another great way to connect with your followers is to end your posts by asking a question. Not only will this generate further engagement on your posts, but it helps you to get to know your audience better and create a community of people that are more likely to buy from you.

6. Be Easy to Find

This seems fairly obvious, but to be able to grow your audience organically you have to make sure that people are able to find your business easily. To help with that:

• Make sure your bio is searchable
• Use hashtags on social media
• Create a Google My Business account
• Maximise SEO on your website

7. Create a Customer Friendly Website

Once your customers make it to your website, you want to make the process as simple as possible for them.

Make sure that your website is laid out properly and easy to navigate, that you’ve got the correct hierarchy of products, and that you’ve made it as easy as possible for them to find the products they need and to ultimately buy from you.

8. Add products to Insta Shops

To get maximum organic exposure for your online products, and to make it even easier for your followers to make a purchase, make sure that you’ve added your products to Facebook and Instagram Shops…and you keep them up to date!

I know, I know…it’s frustrating that you’re having to duplicate the content on your website too, but it is time well spent if it means your customers can find and buy your products at the click of a couple of buttons!

It’s also important to link specific products to posts so that your customers don’t have to go searching through to find the product that they saw in your post (one of my biggest bug bears!)

9. Showcase your Social Proof

You can talk about how great your business and products are until you’re blue in the face. But potential customers are more likely to believe it if someone else tells them. This is why it’s super important to have a system in place to gather those all important reviews.

So if you’ve got testimonials and reviews sat on Facebook or Google, dust them off and showcase them to the world!

10. Grow your Database

As you organically grow your social media following, it’s important to make sure that they continue your customer journey and subscribe to your mailing list.

Having an email database is essential so that you can directly communicate with your existing and ‘warm’ audience. PLUS if social media disappeared tomorrow, you’ve still got a way to speak to your customers that you have control over!

Building a business solely on social media is a risky strategy, as you have absolutely no control over it!

That’s it….over to you!

Hopefully this has been able to give you some ideas and inspiration to organically grow your online audience and as a result hit those all-important sales targets.

If you still need some extra help to implement these strategies then take a look at my support packages to see if there’s suits your needs:

Power Hour – Clarity and direction in 60 minutes. Dedicated to what you’re finding challenging in your business right now.

Online Business Booster – Audit, Feedback, Action Plan. Following a review of your current marketing, I will outline my recommendations and we will agree an Action Plan for you to implement.

Marketing Bootcamp – My 4 week ‘Signature’ 1:1 Support Programme. We deep dive into all the things that you’re finding challenging right now, and I work with you to give you the tools and the knowledge to take your business to the next level.

Unsure about what help you need? Drop me an email to hello@theyorkshiremarketingcompany.co.uk. I’d love to hear from you.

Rachelle x