You’ve decided to open a business in Chicago, but now what? Where will you advertise? What’s the best approach to take? How can you draw in potential customers to your website?

You’re not alone in wondering these questions. In fact, there are many businesses who want to know how to market their Chicago business online. So, let’s dive in and uncover some of the best practices and tricks for getting your message out there.

Step one: Define your target audience.

Even before you start thinking about how to market your Chicago business, you need to have an idea of who you’re trying to reach. By understanding your target audience’s needs and wants, you will be able to craft the perfect marketing plan and strategy to meet those needs. This is known as market research or, simply put, research.

The best approach is to think about your ideal buyer and then use that to form a picture of whom you’re trying to reach. It’s always a good idea to look at the demographics and psychographics of your target audience. This way you will know what appeals to them and what methods they prefer to learn about your product or service. It’s also important to identify your target audience’s pain points, desires, and interests. You can do this through customer surveys or focus groups, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.

Step two: Choose the right platform.

After you’ve defined your target audience, you can move on to the next step, which is determining which platform to market on. There are many different options ranging from big giant platforms like Facebook and Instagram to more niche channels like YouTube. Each one has its perks and its drawbacks. For example, MySpace is great for connecting with potential customers in your niche, but displaying your products online could be a challenge because of the platform’s algorithm changes. And then there’s the fact that, at this point, you’ve already established a foundation of sorts with your target audience. So building a following on MySpace could be more difficult than on other platforms.

Step three: Produce content.

Even if you’ve got a platform picked out, this doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to generate interest and engagement with your target audience. After all, people need to be interested in what you have to say in order to be reached by your ads. So, as a part of your marketing plan, you need to produce content that will pique the interest of your target audience. There are many different types of content producers ranging from journalists to bloggers to content marketers. No matter what your specialty is, there is seemingly someone out there who can write, shoot, or record a video about your topic. And don’t forget about social media. With over a billion active monthly users, LinkedIn is the most used social network globally. So, it’s a great place to promote your business.

Step four: Use digital marketing and sales tools.

Once you’ve got content hitting social media, you can move on to the next step, which is using marketing and sales tools to capture leads and close sales. There are various platforms where you can do this, but one of the most effective and popular ones is HubSpot.

With HubSpot, you can create highly engaging campaigns that can increase leads and grow your business. For example, you can set up automated campaigns that will send out personalized emails or broadcast text messages to potential customers when they are entered into a conversion funnel. Or, you can use the platform’s calendar to schedule events such as webinars or live phone calls with customers to establish more intimate, 1:1 connections.

Step five: Measure the success of your campaign.

Finally, you can’t effectively measure the success of your marketing campaign without tracking its results. With HubSpot, you can set up automated trackers that will notify you of the effectiveness of each component of your campaign. For example, you can set a goal for your social media campaign and use a tool like Google Analytics to track your results. Essentially, every step of the way, you can be sure of the value of each campaign metric. This is valuable information to have. It means you can alter your approach and optimize your efforts for more effective results.

To cut a long story short, the methodical approach of market research combined with the power of digital marketing and sales tools will put you in command of the customer relationship and help you build a thriving business in Chicago.