You have built a website for your business, added your products, and made it possible for customers to place an order. Now you need people to actually find it.

Simply having a website does not automatically bring customers.

Just like a physical store, people need to know your website exists before they can buy from you. The difference is that online, your potential customers could be searching on Google, scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, watching an influencer, or seeing an ad.

The goal is to find the right ways to reach those people and bring them to your website.

But before spending heavily on promotion, make sure your website is ready for the traffic you are about to send there. If you are already getting website traffic but no sales, bringing another 1,000 visitors may not solve the problem. You first need to make it easier to get customers to buy from your website once they arrive.

Once that foundation is in place, you can focus on getting more of the right people through the door.

If you are trying to get more customers to your website in Nigeria, here are seven practical strategies to start with.

Think about the last time you needed something and did not already know where to buy it.

You probably searched for it.

“Birthday cake in Lekki.”

“Braider in Ikeja.”

“Food delivery near me.”

“Shopify developer in Nigeria.”

Those searches are opportunities for businesses that appear when customers are already looking for what they sell.

This is where SEO comes in.

SEO helps search engines understand your website and show relevant pages when people search for things connected to your business.

Start by thinking about what your customers actually type into Google instead of what you call your products internally.

If you sell cakes in Lagos, for example, your customers may be searching for:

Then make sure your website has useful pages and content that genuinely answer those searches.

Your product names, page titles, descriptions, location pages, and website content should make it easy for both customers and search engines to understand what you sell and where you sell it.

SEO may not give you hundreds of customers tomorrow, but it gives your website an opportunity to keep being discovered after a campaign has ended.

If you run a business that serves customers at a physical location or travels to customers, your Google Business Profile can help people discover you when they search on Google Search and Maps.

Someone searching “hair salon near me” or “fine dining restaurant in Yaba” may already be much closer to buying than someone casually watching a “₦20k budget-friendly fine dining restaurant in Yaba” Reel.

Make sure customers can easily find important information such as:

And most importantly, link your website.

The goal is to connect the places customers discover your business with the place where you actually want them to buy.

If you have not created yours yet, our guide on How to Set Up a Google Business Profile in 2026 explains the process step by step.

Posting on Instagram or TikTok is not the strategy by itself.

What do you want people to do after seeing the post?

A business can get thousands of views, likes, and comments without those people ever visiting its website.

Your content should sometimes have a clear next step.

If you are promoting a new collection, send customers to the collection.

If you are promoting a particular meal, send them to where they can order the meal.

If you are running a website-exclusive offer, send them directly to the offer.

Do not make someone watch a Reel about a product, visit your profile, search through your bio, enter your homepage, and then start searching for the same product again.

Make the journey shorter.

Influencer marketing can get people talking about your business.

But attention alone should not be the final goal.

Before working with an influencer, ask yourself whether their audience actually looks like the people who buy what you sell.

A creator with 20,000 followers who has the right audience can be more useful to your business than someone with 200,000 followers whose audience has little interest in your product.

This is one reason micro-influencers can be worth testing.

But there is another important part.

Track what happens.

Instead of simply asking an influencer to post about your business, give each creator something you can track, such as:

Then look beyond views and likes.

If the goal is sales, performance should eventually be measured against sales.

Paid ads can bring customers to your website much faster than waiting for them to discover you organically.

But where exactly are you sending them?

Imagine seeing an Instagram ad for a particular pair of shoes.

You like them, click the ad, and instead of landing on the shoes you just saw, you arrive on the store’s homepage.

Now you have to find the shoes yourself.

Some people will.

But many others will leave.

If you are advertising a specific product, offer, or collection, send customers as close as possible to what attracted their attention in the first place.

Before increasing your ad budget, make sure the page receiving that traffic is ready to convert it.

If your Meta ads are getting views but not producing customers, our guide on Why Your Meta Ads Are Not Working in 2026 explains some of the things you should check before spending more money.

Not everybody who visits your website for the first time will buy.

Someone may look at a dress today and decide to buy it after they get paid. Someone may add food to their cart and get distracted. Another customer may compare your product with three other businesses before deciding.

That is why marketing should not always focus only on finding completely new people. You can also market to people who have already shown interest.

For example, you could retarget:

The message can also change depending on what they previously did.

Someone who has never heard of your business may need to understand what you sell.

Someone who already viewed a product may need a reminder.

Someone who bought from you before may need to see your newest product or an offer that gives them a reason to return.

This is why building customer data and tracking behaviour, as we discussed in 7 Practical Step-by-Step Ways to Get Customers to Buy From Your Website.

Imagine you spent money on Meta ads, TikTok content, and three influencers in the same month.

At the end of the month, sales increased.

Which one worked?

If you cannot answer that question, deciding where to spend your next marketing budget becomes difficult.

Do not only track:

Also track what happens after the traffic arrives.

A campaign that gets 100,000 views and five orders may not necessarily be better than one that gets 10,000 views and 50 orders.

The goal is not simply to get the largest number of people possible onto your website.

The goal is to get more of the right people to your website and turn those people into customers.

If your website is already ready to sell, your marketing should connect discovery with purchase.

A simple version looks like this:

Do not spend all your energy getting more traffic if the website cannot convert it.

First, find out why people are not buying.

Second, fix the buying journey.

Then bring more qualified customers into the system.

SEO, Google Business Profile, social media, influencers, and paid ads are not separate random activities. They should all be working towards getting the right customers to your website and making it easy for them to buy.

Start by making sure your website is ready to turn visitors into customers. Then use channels such as SEO, Google Business Profile where eligible, social media, influencers, and paid advertising to reach people who are likely to need what you sell.

You can promote your website through Google Search, local search, social media content, Meta ads, Google Ads, influencers, email marketing, and other channels where your customers spend time. You do not necessarily need to use every channel at once. Start with the ones most relevant to your customers and track the results.

Give people a clear reason to leave Instagram and visit your website. Promote specific products, collections, or website-exclusive offers and link customers as close as possible to the page where they can take action.

SEO helps search engines understand your website so relevant pages can appear when potential customers search for products, services, or information connected to your business. This can bring people who are already actively looking for what you sell to your website.

No. Paid advertising is one way to get website traffic, but businesses can also attract customers through SEO, Google Business Profile, social media, content, influencers, referrals, and email marketing. The right combination depends on your business, audience, and budget.

Till next time,

Team Thrive

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