Allowing for a short lunch break, some procrastination and the usual things that crop up, you now have around 6 hours between now and close of the daily business.  Be pro-active and make sure your business raises its profile in that quarter of a day and brings in potential new custom. Here’s six ways you could be making that difference.

Join in with an online community

If you read a blog, find an article of interest on a news site or see a debate going on within a forum or newsgroup that you have an opinion on, join in. When you leave a comment make sure your signature includes your name, email address and website link. Don’t be blatantly obvious about your self-plugging though, that will be detrimental to any credibility you are seeking. It is important to post comments that are relevant too. If you can show your expertise even better as that will encourage readers to pay attention to your future posts too, so don’t make it a one off either. Become an active part of the community and you will soon find potential new customers making a few enquiries about you.

Get winning awards

OK so you may not win and award in a day – although you may be surprised. Being in it to win it is the key though. Very often award organisers will look to interact with new entrants and thank them for entering via social media, which could mean a mention of your brand to a whole new set of potential customers. Winning an award shouldn’t be seen as being easy but study what potential categories you could fall in and if not this year then maybe tweak your offering with that category in min for next year. If you do win – or even get a special mention –  you can expect a whole new tide of visitors to your site. Winning is not everything, but getting your brand and website URL mentioned alongside those that do will boost your potential customer base.

Run your own competitions

Somebody once said the best way to win an award is to run the award ceremony yourself. We don’t propose you do the same but certainly those who run competitions and awards can get plenty of publicity themselves.  The easiest way is to run a competition about your brand to potential customers. It could be naming a new product, or coming up with a new logo, it could even be as simple as a free giveaway for some social shares. Whatever you choose, make the copy snappy and the prize cool and desirable – even I not of great financial value – and people are more likely to share with their friends and social followings. This will bring in new traffic to your site and lots of new potential customers as well as people talking about your brand too.

Optimise what you have

Search Engine Optimisation is not all about new content. It is about making the most of what you have and bringing it in line with the latest algorithims and search trends.  SEO and common sense go hand in hand so the common sense approach to improving the visibility of your site actually rests in looking at what you already have and making the most of that. If you missed it here’s Alexandra Gavril’s SEO tips on tweaking old pages to improve your page rank https://www.123-reg.co.uk/blog/seo-2/se0-basics-tweaking-old-pages-improve-page-rank/.

Invest in some online marketing

With some clever targeting a pay per click advertising campaign can drive an impessive amount o traffic to your site and usually it is all the sort of traffic that is turning to the web or help, so potentially easier to convert as customers. If you aren’t quite sure what to do, there are experts that do including our very own Google-trained team https://www.123-reg.co.uk/ppc-management-services/, who for a very small investment can get you almost instant results.

Get into give-aways

It’s true there is no such thing as a free lunch but the world of social has breathed new life into the clamber for free gifts. Social media can spread the word in minutes rather than weeks of an off-line campaign and you will be amazed what people are keen to get their hands on. Even pens, badges and other stationary branded with your logo can drive new social shares and potentially new traffic and if you can offer free e-books or insider tips in audio or video format you will be surprised how many people will flock to your site and also be willing to provide their contact details in return, so make sure you have your contact form ready too.