After you start a carpet business, your marketing methods have to evolve with the times to keep the customers coming in.

And if you haven’t joined the online promotion bandwagon, then there’s no time to start like now. The Internet isn’t called the World Wide Web for nothing: it presents vast opportunities for carpet businesses to grow their customer base and boost sales. This is especially so in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, where people are spending increasing amounts of time online.

For starters, your carpet business will need some kind of online presence, like a website, for people to learn more about your business and wares. But once you’ve set that up, how can you promote your carpet business online? Here are three tips.

1. Post on social media

When trying to grow awareness of your carpet business, you’ve got to go where your target audience is spending their time and attention. This means wading into the never-ending buzz of social media.

From Facebook to Instagram and Pinterest, and even TikTok, there is no shortage of social media platforms for you to promote your carpet business on. However, you may not have the time or resources to post on all of them.

Accordingly, you’ll have to do some market research on the platforms where your potential customers are, and then prioritize creating social media posts for these.

For example, carpet business Carpet One Floor & Home has chosen to promote its carpets on Facebook:

Pinterest is also a great platform for carpet businesses to post on. Post gorgeous pics of your carpets on Pinterest, and they might just net you some pins—and ultimately, sales!

These days, marketing templates for small businesses are plentiful online, making it a breeze to create stunning social media posts even if you aren’t a graphic designer.

2. Claim your Google Maps listing

While people can buy practically anything online, carpets are one thing that they might want to touch and feel before buying. As a result, they might visit a carpet store to check out its carpets in person.

This is where creating a Google Maps listing for your carpet business is super important. By adding your carpet business to Google Maps, you’re signaling your location to help potential customers know where you are.

After all, if a carpet buyer does a Google search for carpet stores near them, you want them to be able to find you, instead of a competing store!

Google offers Google Maps listings for free, and all you need is a Google account to set one up for your carpet business. Apart from providing your store address, you should also share key business information such as your opening hours, website, and phone number.

When you’re done, you should be able to find your business on Google Maps. For example, here are the Google Maps listings for carpet businesses in Boise, Idaho:

3. Offer a referral program

Finally, launch an online referral program for your carpet business.

In other words, you’ll hand out incentives for people to refer your business to others in their network. Creating a referral program is a great way of getting others to spread the word, especially if your loyal customers are already singing praises about your carpets.

Depending on how your referral program is set up, you could give out the reward right after the referrer has promoted your carpet business to their friends and family.

Alternatively, you could release the reward only if a referred person makes a purchase from you.

For example, carpet business Creative Carpet & Flooring will issue a $25 gift card for introducing the business to five other people, and an extra $25 restaurant gift card if one of them ends up buying something.

Separately, consider investing in a referral program platform if many people have signed up to be referrers. These platforms offer powerful features, such as the generating of unique referral links, to help businesses keep track of successful referrals.

It’s time to promote your carpet business to the world (wide web)

While you can still put up billboards and hand out flyers, moving your marketing campaigns online opens opportunities for your carpet business to be seen by new audiences.

This includes people from overseas countries, who may just fall in love with your luscious carpets and place an order or two. And when that happens, you’ll have the happy problem of figuring out how to ship your precious cargo abroad, so that it reaches international customers in pristine condition.

How will you promote your carpet business online?