The internet age has opened the door to a number of fascinating, low-cost growth hacking strategies that businesses everywhere should be taking advantage of. If you aren’t using these three tricks to increase sales and grow your company, then your competitors probably are!

1. SEO.

Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is commonly called, is one of the most effective — and affordable — ways of bringing new customer to your business. (Especially if you offer e-commerce.) And, though this marketing strategy may seem perplexing and highly technical to the uninitiated, the truth is that SEO marketing is actually fairly simple and easy to put into practice.

The basic idea is easy enough to comprehend: the higher your company appears on search engine results, the larger your online audience will be. And, therefore, the more customers you will attract.

Putting this idea into practice is slightly more complicated — but, again, it’s nothing overwhelmingly complex. Here are a few basic SEO tips that any business owner can use to drive traffic and increase sales:

• Choose relevant keywords for your business and incorporate them into your website headers.
• Make your website easily navigable, and include backlinks to other relevant parts of your site.
• Create new web content regularly, for example in the form of a blog.
• Ensure that your site loads quickly and is user friendly.

Though SEO strategies do get more complex than this, the four points listed above can make a huge difference right off the bat.

2. Content Marketing.

As we already mentioned above, creating original web content (such as a blog) can help boost your site rankings on Google. But increased web traffic isn’t the only benefit of content marketing.

When you create online resources such as blog posts, how-to videos, and even interesting behind-the-scenes photos, you are also helping to establish your business as an authority in your industry. A customer who learns how to change their oil from your mechanic shop blog, for example, will be much more likely to remember you and give you a call next time they have more serious car trouble.

Moreover, content that is useful, inspiring, or entertaining is also likely to get shared across social media — thus increasing the size and diversity your online audience even further. In some cases, sharing can lead to exponential (that is to say, viral) growth for your business — but even a more modest success can still have a substantial real-world impact for your company.

3. Referrals

Customer referrals have been an important marketing strategy since long before SEO, content marketing, or even the internet existed. However, the web has revolutionized this strategy in powerful ways. To give a simple example: whereas a happy customer once might have told a couple friends about your company by word of mouth only, he or she can now post a positive review, share your company’s Facebook page, and mention your company in person!

On the flip side, of course, an unhappy customer now has much greater power to trash talk your company both online and in person! Customer satisfaction is now more important than ever — but companies that know how to use happy customers to their advantage can now aspire to tremendous marketing success.

To learn more about how your business can increase sales using cutting-edge marketing techniques, visit Strat IQ Consulting online today!