How to get customers online

There are many ways to get customers.

The most common, most widely used and best known, because they work, are:

• Cold calling.
• Television and radio adverts.
• Newspaper and magazine adverts.
• Leaflets.
• Billboards.
• etc.

But over time everything has evolved, and so has the way businesses make themselves known.

This new way of attracting customers comes from the internet, which gives small and medium-sized businesses far greater reach and accessibility.

Thanks to the wide range of tools available, we can carry out much more detailed analysis of investment and return, unlike traditional advertising.

Online advertising tools make another difference when it comes to winning customers. They allow better user targeting when showing our adverts.

By knowing our ideal customer, their needs and preferences, we can optimise and personalise the content we show to our consumers.

Which businesses use social media for marketing?

86% of businesses use social media for marketing. Source: DataReportal.

Which businesses use a content strategy?

77% of businesses say they have a content marketing strategy. Source: Hubspot.

How much internet traffic does Google bring?

92.96% of internet traffic comes from Google. Source: Ahrefs.

What is the average return on investment for Google Ads?

The average return on investment for Google Ads is 200%. Source: WordStream.

How to prepare to attract customers online

Attracting customers online takes preparation.

Whenever you publish something, it will have at least some impact, but the reach and the image we create will depend heavily on the groundwork we put in at the start.

That is why we need to bear a few things in mind before we start:

1. Know your audience (buyer persona)

Research the needs, wants and online habits of your potential customers. Build detailed profiles of your ideal customer so you understand who you are talking to. This will help you tailor your message and your offers.

2. Build an attractive, functional website

Your website should be attractive, easy to navigate and fast. Responsive design is crucial so that visitors can access it from any device. Make sure users can quickly find what they are looking for.

3. Optimise your site for search engines (SEO)

Use relevant keywords that your audience uses in its searches. Create valuable, optimised content that answers the questions and needs of your potential customers. SEO is essential to improve your visibility and attract organic traffic.

4. Put a content marketing strategy in place

Complement your website with a blog where you publish relevant, useful content. This will attract visits and position you as an expert in your field, as well as improving your SEO.

5. Use social media

Build an active presence on the social networks where your audience spends its time. Share interesting content, engage with your followers and build a loyal community. Social media is key to increasing your reach and attracting new customers.

6. Run paid campaigns

Paid campaigns will help you quickly assess the viability of your product, message or design. They are the fastest way to see a return.

7. Plan your digital marketing strategy

Set clear, measurable goals for your digital marketing. Choose the right channels for your business, whether social media, email marketing, online advertising, etc. Make sure every action is aligned with your goals.

8. Set a realistic budget

Prepare a budget for your digital marketing activities. Although it can be expensive, there are options for every pocket. Invest in the tactics that deliver the highest return on investment.

9. Email marketing

Use email marketing to stay in touch with your potential and existing customers. Send relevant content, special offers and updates that keep your audience engaged.

10. Measure and adjust your strategy

Set success metrics and use analytics tools to measure your results. Monitor web traffic, social media engagement and conversions. Adjust your strategy based on the data to keep optimising your efforts.

11. Encourage engagement and loyalty

Introduce loyalty programmes and engagement strategies to keep your customers engaged and loyal. Use live chat or chatbots to offer instant support and improve the user experience.

Identify your ideal customer

Knowing your ideal customer is key to attracting customers online.

Start by defining their demographic profile (age, gender, location and income), then dig deeper into their online interests and behaviour.

Research your ideal customer’s needs using surveys, interviews and competitor analysis. Look for patterns in their comments and frequently asked questions. This will help you understand their pain points and desires.

Create a detailed buyer persona with a name, photo and personal story, and describe their goals, challenges and how your product helps them.

Build an attractive, easy-to-navigate website

Your website is your online business card.

It should be attractive and easy to use, because good design attracts customers and keeps them interested.

Key elements of attractive web design:

• Use colours that reflect your brand.
• Choose readable fonts.
• Include high-quality images.
• Keep the design clean and tidy.

Navigation is crucial, as visitors need to find what they are looking for quickly.

Use clear menus and a logical structure, and include an internal search box to make the experience easier.

Responsive design is essential so your website looks good on every device. Use an adaptable theme or hire an experienced developer.

Loading speed affects conversions and SEO rankings. Optimise your images, use good hosting, remove unnecessary modules and plugins, minify the code, make use of caching and implement a CDN.

Optimise your site for search engines (SEO)

SEO is key to attracting customers online with the help of search engines.

Start with keyword research (Keyword Research) using tools such as Google Keyword Planner to find out the search volume for different terms.

If you are just starting out, it is a good idea to focus on terms made up of several words with few searches, and gradually go after keywords with more searches as you start to rank.

Once your keyword research is ready, start optimising your content by improving titles, descriptions, H1s, URLs and content.

Content is king in SEO, so as well as optimising, you should regularly publish useful, original content that answers your audience’s questions.

We can use a variety of formats such as videos and infographics, which will improve user engagement with the content and make it easier to attract natural links.

When it comes to earning links, we must not forget that investing in link building strategies is a must if we want to do SEO.

When getting these links, we should put quality before quantity, avoiding techniques that could get our website penalised.

We must not forget to set up a Google My Business listing, which is relatively easy to do at first and helps you win your first customers near your business. It is free and offers statistics so you can measure its impact on your business.

Put a content marketing strategy in place

Content marketing lets us attract and retain customers.

Creating content that is valuable and relevant to your audience and meets their needs will increase your customers’ trust and loyalty.

Some effective types of content that can help you with this are:

• Blog: share useful tips and solve common problems.
• Videos: explain complex concepts in a visual, engaging way.
• Infographics: present data in an easy-to-understand way.
• Podcasts: offer audio content that can be enjoyed at any time.

It is important to create an editorial calendar so you can prepare your posts in advance and keep a steady flow of content.

In this editorial calendar, you should also plan the promotion of your content on social media:

1. Share links to your articles on Facebook and Twitter.
2. Create eye-catching images for Instagram and Pinterest.
3. Post short videos on TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

Finally, it is worth trying to turn readers into customers in different ways:

• Include clear calls to action in your content.
• Offer downloadable resources in exchange for contact details.
• Create an email series to nurture leads.

Use social media

Social media is a megaphone that lets you reach a wider audience and build your community.

You should first identify where your audience mainly spends its time and what kinds of content it consumes.

• Facebook: ideal for varied content and for reaching a broad audience.
• Instagram: perfect for visual businesses, fashion, food and lifestyle.
• Twitter: excellent for news, quick updates and real-time content.
• LinkedIn: essential for B2B businesses and professional networking.
• TikTok: ideal for creative content and for reaching younger audiences.
• Pinterest: useful for sharing visual ideas and driving traffic to your website.

Share a mix of informative, entertaining and promotional content, and engage with your audience. Reply to comments and messages promptly and genuinely.

Run paid campaigns

Paid campaigns are the fastest and most effective way to assess the viability of a product.

They let us reach thousands of users by paying.

The hard part of this type of campaign is the research. We need to know very well which audience we want to target, creating a solid targeting and remarketing strategy.

As well as validating a product or delivering a faster return (in exchange for a larger initial outlay), they can also give us information about our strategy, our target audience or how our website performs, since we can also use them to run A/B tests.

Paid campaigns are usually run on Google Ads, Linkedin Ads and Facebook for business, but there are other advertising platforms too.

We recommend that you do not create campaigns if you have no previous experience or if your tracking and conversion pixels are not set up correctly.

Plan your digital marketing strategy

When setting our digital marketing strategy, we need to define clear, measurable goals.

The most typical are getting more sales or revenue, but sometimes we may have other kinds of goals in mind, such as increasing the total volume of traffic to our website or improving average time on site.

These goals will depend on the type of business and its needs, according to the stage the business is at.

For example, a newly created website will first aim to work out how to attract users and, once past that acquisition hurdle, to turn those users into consumers.

To do this, we will also need to think about which channels will be most suitable for our business.

It is true that the more often we reach the user, the more familiar our brand, product or service will become to them, and the easier it will be for them to become a customer, but some channels will always give us a higher return than others.

In this respect, SEO offers a long/medium-term return that holds up much better over time and keeps growing; paid campaigns offer immediate conversion, but the moment you stop paying, the conversions stop; email marketing is generally one of the best-converting channels, but it needs acquisition strategies, so it usually relies on other channels to grow.

These are some examples of how each channel works, bearing in mind their pros and cons.

Set a realistic budget

The budget is usually the most underdeveloped part.

Businesses often do not want to spend much on this type of service and try to grow by investing €200 or €300 a month.

This investment has to cover tools, analysis, execution and managing communication with the client.

Given that professional tools cost between €100 and €200 a month, practically the whole budget goes on them.

If you want to achieve results, it is advisable to have a budget of €1000 or more.

Sometimes it can be done for a little less, but actions that matter to the strategy will be sacrificed, which will make everything slower.

Email marketing

Email marketing campaigns not only achieve higher conversion and more personalised information, they also let you interact with users by email.

The best thing about email campaigns (or personally what I like most) is the automation flows and email sequences triggered by user actions.

These email flows trigger new emails, depending on how users interact with the emails or on the visits they make to your website, with the aim of generating business.

Measure and adjust your strategy

Measuring your results is essential if you want to know how the strategy is progressing.

There are currently various data measurement and visualisation tools that can help us set up all this tracking.

One of the best known today is Google Analytics, which lets us measure, through metrics and dimensions, everything the user does on the website, although there are other paid tools that include unique features, such as:

• Hotjar for heatmaps
• SEMrush for SEO analysis
• Crazy Egg for A/B testing

All this data can then be brought together in dashboard tools, which let you view data from multiple tools in one place, using charts to understand the information better.

Throughout this whole analysis process, it is very important to run A/B tests that help us improve content, designs or conversion flows.

Nor should we forget to keep reviewing the strategies applied and the impact they generate, with the aim of proposing changes and/or new actions.

Encourage engagement and loyalty

Keeping your customers interested in and loyal to your brand requires loyalty programmes and engagement strategies.

Loyalty programmes

1. Reward points: offer points for every purchase that can be redeemed for discounts or products.
2. Membership tiers: create tiers (bronze, silver, gold) with benefits that increase as customers spend more.
3. Exclusive discounts: provide special offers only for programme members.
4. Birthday gifts: send special discounts or gifts on your customers’ birthdays.
5. Early access: let programme members be the first to access new products or special sales.

Engagement strategies

1. Social media: reply to comments and messages quickly, and share content your audience will find interesting.
2. Email marketing: send personalised emails with valuable content, offers and product updates.
3. Surveys and feedback: ask for opinions and comments to improve your business and make customers feel heard.
4. Events and webinars: organise online events to interact directly with your customers and give them useful information.

Live chat and chatbots

1. Live chat: offers real-time human interaction to solve problems quickly and help during the buying process.
2. Chatbots: automated programs that answer common questions and provide basic assistance 24 hours a day. They are ideal for handling frequent queries and giving instant answers.

When SEO is approached with a commercial mindset, it can become a steady source of opportunities. That is why I have published a dedicated guide to SEO for sales in Valencia.

For cultural businesses, getting customers online usually means selling tickets, filling the calendar and attracting promoters. You can see it applied in SEO for concert venues in Valencia.