9 Ways to Promote Your Business Online in Sri Lanka

For Sri Lankans, online content consumption is soaring in 2021; it’s estimated (globally) the average person spends six hours and 59 minutes every day consuming digital content, including through their phone, TV, and other forms of media.

Well, it’s interesting to know that people are doing many things online. Some of us might be gamers, social butterflies on Facebook and Instagram, professionals with a LinkedIn profile, or even every one of us buyers who buy items and services from online sites!

As the internet expands, so does a company’s online presence. To stay competitive in this digital age, companies need an “online” image that is easy to find and builds their reputation for quality workmanship or services, and increases brand awareness of potential customers who are searching related keywords on search engines like Google.

There are many benefits of expanding your business to the online world, but you will need a strong strategy to be effective.

In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most effective methods that you can use to improve your online presence.

9 Ways to Promote Your Business Online in Sri Lanka

1. Have a social media presence

As a business owner, you should always be active on social media, as people are constantly looking for what you have to offer. Some business owners even use it as a free marketing tool since they can post updates and information about their company without having to spend money on ads in newspapers or magazines.

Social media is reaching new heights in Sri Lanka. In January 2021, it was estimated that there were 7.90 million social media users among the population of 21.46 million people!

Top Social Media Sites in Sri Lanka

1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. Instagram
4. WhatsApp
5. Twitter
6. LinkedIn
7. Tiktok

2. Make a website for your business

A website is the most important step in building an online presence, and it’s easier than ever to get started. With today’s technology, you can build a professional site with your company name, logo designs, address information for shipping or billing purposes, as well as shopping and eCommerce systems within few days- sometimes even hours!

A new business owner might be wondering just how much of their time and money they need to devote solely towards making a new website. Well, lucky for new entrepreneurs: You’ll never have to spend a huge budget building websites. There are open source solutions and low-budget solutions, like WordPress and Wix. 

3. Optimize your website for SEO

Building a website is one thing, but optimizing it for search engine optimization (SEO) is another. SEO plays an important role in getting your site noticed by Google and other major search engines like Yahoo or Bing. This process can be as easy or difficult and time-consuming, depending on how much work you do.

Here are some simple ways to optimize your website for SEO

1. Keyword research: Conduct a thorough keyword research to find out what people are looking for and how they search. You can use tools like ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Keyword planner (free tool).
2. Add Quality Contents: A good content strategy is to provide quality and engaging information for a long time. This will keep your audience coming back, which ultimately leads to more revenue.
3. Optimize for on-page SEO: Optimizing for on-page SEO can be done by simply adding keywords to headings, subheadings, and title tags. Also, setting up the right schema, interlinking articles, using meta titles and descriptions.
4. Optimizing for off-page SEO: This will make a huge difference in how users are finding you. This includes backlinks, social media presence, and branding, to name a few.
5. Responsive and Speed: The website needs to be optimized for mobile because the design is not very user-friendly on a small screen. And make it faster to use, which in turn can increase your rankings, conversion rates, and overall business.

4. Claim your business profile on directories

Claiming one’s business profile on popular platforms such as Google Business, Bing and Yelp can help in many ways. 

1. Increased exposure: Being listed among these search engines which are visited with regularity for information about local businesses means increased exposure for the company online;
2. The power of branding: Driving your brand engagement and reputation to new heights, even customers who ultimately choose another business over yours or don’t click on your link will see your name—cementing it in potential customer’s minds as an industry leader with high ratings.

5. Build an email list and email campaigns

Email marketing is a powerful tool for any business owner—no matter what industry you are in. It can help you connect with your customers, build stronger relationships, and create an enduring brand that’ll take your company to new heights.

Businesses pay five times more to attract a new customer than they do to keep an existing one. Emails are the best way to keep them in touch.

You should capture new emails using tools like Mailchimp, optingmonster, or mailwizz so you can grow your email list with the people that will most likely be interested in what you have to offer.

6. Promote your products and services with online ads

You’re looking for customers, so why not advertise? Promote your products and services with online ads in order to get the word out about what you have to offer.

Ads can be on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, banner advertisements that appear in various places around the internet such as Google search results pages or other websites, video commercials played before a YouTube video starts playing – there are lots of possibilities!

Note: It is important not to invest in advertisements if there’s no chance of making a profit.

If you’re planning on investing your time and money into an advertising campaign, it would be wise to do research beforehand, or the risk may turn out disastrous for your business. 

7. Promote your business with influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a great way to promote your business. Influencers are people with large followings on social media who can help promote and endorse products. There’s no better time than now for you to invest wisely and get some influencers on board.

Do you want to build your business through influencer marketing? The benefits of using an influencer for promotional purposes include the ability to reach a wide audience, decrease brand awareness costs, increase customer engagement rates, boost sales conversions, provide greater depth in product reviews than traditional advertising methods allow; the list goes on! Learn how to find popular Sri Lankan Instagrammers, You tubers or Tiktok influencers that can be good fits for your company’s needs.

8. Allow Affiliate marketers to promote your products and services

Affiliate marketing is a business model where the company (merchant) pays someone (the affiliate) who knows how to promote and engage with customers to bring more leads and sales for the company.

Affiliate marketers typically work for a commission. Many of them are self-employed and have more knowledge about online marketing than the average online marketer. They can bring your targeted audience to your business.

Affiliate marketing is gaining popularity in Sri Lanka, and you can be one of the first adopters who benefits from this business model.

What are some reasons to start an affiliate program?

1. Affiliate marketing is cost-effective since you have to pay a small commission when only something sells.
2. Affiliate marketing is a great way to help broaden your new audience base.
3. Affiliates can help you grow your business by increasing traffic and sales.

9. Develop relationships with potential customers

You will be happiest when your customers are happy. They need to feel valued for your company’s products and services to be effective, so you must develop relationships with potential customers by listening closely, understanding their needs, continuously improving the customer experience based on feedback from each client.

You may have all the expertise when it comes to SEO, content marketing, and social media. Still, if you don’t build relationships with your customers, you won’t succeed in online marketing.

A lot goes into improving customer relationships online, including:

1. Creating a customer service social media channel: This is an excellent way to provide your customers with the support that they need for their problems and needs in real-time, as well as giving them instant feedback. 
2. Listening to our customers’ feedback: This will help you develop better products more than your competitors, which are customized and specific to meet individual’s demands while also providing high-quality customer service at all times.
3. Personalize your customer experience: live chat support, interacting with your best customers on social media, using their first name when interacting with them, so on.
4. Offer rewards: Such as giveaways, free shipping, discounts on future orders, or coupons.

How to learn about your competitors and compete?

Don’t just compete with people; use your competitors to help you innovate. Check out what they are doing and how their strategies might be better than yours in some way so that you can change up the game plan if need be!

Don’t waste time competing against other’s success when there is plenty of room for improvement on your side of things too. Evaluate each competitor closely- maybe find areas where one company has the edge over another, which can be used to improve your own company.

How to automate your online marketing process?

The key to successful online marketing is automating the process. By having a set of automated processes in place, you can save loads of time and focus on what matters most: your customer’s experience!

Automation has its advantages when it comes to accomplishing more with less work. When put into practice ahead of schedule, automation allows you to have a powerful strategy that will be executed efficiently from start to finish without any need for human intervention or oversight, such as 

• Uploading content automatically for social media using tools (later.com, hootsuite.com, buffer.com)
• Scheduling your future blog posts
• Using email autoresponders

Final Thoughts

If you want to increase your business in Sri Lanka, you need a great marketing plan.

With this list of 9 ways to promote your business online in Sri Lanka, you have various options for increasing visibility and getting more customers. 

We hope these tips will help get you started! Let us know if we can provide any additional guidance or resources that would be helpful as you work on implementing the ideas in this post.

Thanks for reading In Lanka 🙂