You already know that a targeted marketing campaign that reaches consumers in your niche is the best way to convert leads. But, attaining growth requires your business to maximize the number of lead conversions available from your finite audience. How you utilize your company’s online presence can make a dramatic impact on those numbers.

With these 3 easy tips, you can learn to use your online presence more efficiently and gain a wider reach for your business.

Form Relationships with Influencers

?Influencers are people who have clout or respect in your industry, and can give your small business credibility. When your audience associates you with people or brands they already respect, it raises their expectations about your reliability.

Influencers in your industry will have a large following on social media, and often have a lot of retweets and engagement with their followers. You can find influencers by searching on Twitter, or following top blogs in your industry. In fact, you can use these simple methods for finding the right influencer for your business:

• Seek out individuals who provide information you and your business team finds useful or entertaining.
• Make sure they and their audience share values that will make you a good fit.
• Look at how much engagement they receive from followers, as this is a better indication of influence than just the number of followers.

To form a relationship with an influencer, you need to convince them that you can provide value to them (it’s not a one-way relationship). If you can provide value to the influencer, then you stand a good chance of providing value, and thus gaining the following of, their audience.

One way to connect with an influencer is to engage with them on social media. Just be sure to leave your marketing hat hung up. As long as your social media presence clearly states who you are and what company you’re with, they’ll get the implicit message that you are trying to reach their audience, too. Your communications should focus more on establishing rapport and a set of shared values. If you have useful information for their audience, they will engage with you.

Influencers can also be celebrities who have the ability to bring awareness to your business. Depending upon your target audience, seeking professional relationships with celebrity influencers can be a great way to reach a wider audience.

Celebrities, by the nature of their fame, wield much influence. If you have a product that solves a problem that the celebrity is having, then you are more likely to have success when sending your product to that celebrity. But, that’s not the only way to connect with celebrities. You can also seek those individuals who share concern for a common cause and get them interested in a particular charity you are supporting. ?

Provide Useful Content

Educating consumers is another way to build you up as an expert in your industry. Many small businesses have utilized blogging and content marketing to grow their audience by providing useful information. If social media is the way to connect and form relationships, content marketing is the stuff of substance that makes your business worth interacting with in the online space. Your content is where you truly show your relevance.

Blogging is one of the best known ways of getting valuable content to your audience, but be aware—your blog does not grow your business by being pushy about what you provide. It’s the place where you build your reputation and build a relationship with your audience.

So, what do you put on your blog? Show your audience that you are knowledgeable in your field. Provide insight and useful information, even news about your industry, and when they are ready to buy, they will remember you as the business that stood out as a friendly expert. People appreciate information that is offered up for free and without a catch. Webinars are another way to educate consumers. One of the best ways to use a webinar is to guide your audience through the steps of how to get the most from the product or service you provide.

Be Open to Answering Questions Honestly

The number one reason that people visit your website or other online space is to find answers. Any successful business provides a solution to the problems of its target audience. As the leader of an existing small business, you should already know why your customers or clients need your product or service. The task at hand, then, is making sure they understand how it benefits them.

Especially for small businesses, it’s important to create a sense of trust between your business and your audience. Industry forums offer you a chance to give your company a bigger voice. Find forums that your target audience is on, and genuinely participate in the conversations and try and solve issues and provide useful information and answers on the forum. Don’t advertise yourself on the forum, and don’t fill answers with links to your site. By utilizing this avenue, you brand yourself and your business as experts in your industry.

Quora is also a great place to reach your audience. Quora offers the opportunity for you to answer questions related to specific industries, and it draws in a wide audience because it caters to multiple specialties.

So, how do you grow your small business? You build relationships, both with influencers and with your target audience. And, you do this by being sincere about your interest in their needs and in your desire to provide them with value.