Gone are the good old days when being an entrepreneur was all about your marketing and management skills.
Nowadays, however, it is not expected of a business owner to only establish a business and leave it be, but also build a digital presence for it.
What exactly does the “digital presence” encompass? In simple terms, your brand’s online presence refers to everything and anything that your existing and potential customers can find about your business on the Internet. And in a world where the Internet takes up so much of our daily lives, you cannot afford for people not to find out about you online. Besides the great pool of audience you become exposed to, a clear digital presence also announces your business to the world. Like it or not, over a billion people go online to search for things, and the chances are that your market is one of those areas people search about. So why not put your name online too?
For starters, the whole concept of an online presence may seem daunting; but it isn’t at all. In fact, it can be something exciting! To get your brand all over the Internet you will need to build and develop a website, create a dynamic blog, grow your social media accounts, use some simple digital marketing apps, local search, SEO, newsletters, YouTube channels, and others. Furthermore, we’ve outlined some tactics in this article, which we believe are enough to get you started on your journey towards building your brand’s digital presence.
Website Optimization
According to some recent studies, it was established that many small businesses don’t even have a website, and the reason is that the small business owners believe that the niche they activate in doesn’t require an online presence. A recent survey, however, showed that more than 90% of consumers go online to search for products, services, and reviews before making their purchases. So not having a website is indeed a great oversight.
There is nothing complicated about having a website; you can even start working on it after reading this article, and if you don’t really have the skills and budget, you can use a free website builder to help you create your site. All you need is a well-optimized presentation website that will show what you do or sell, give your location to potential customers, showcase a brief history of your company with some testimonials and maybe even a blog. Make sure you optimize the website properly so that it loads fast and is user-friendly. Don’t worry; a good website builder can help you handle all of these.
Business blog
While websites are more of a static digital presence, blogs are quite dynamic, and if you want to get your name out there in the world quickly, then, blogging is the right way to go. With blogging, you can always create informative, advertising, marketing, and educational content, all of which can be shared on every social channel out there, which aids in raising awareness about your business. Make sure the content you create addresses the market problem and be sure to optimize it properly too using the right tools and SEO.
Social Media
If having a website is crucial to your online presence, then, a social media profile is even more vital to your online growth. First and foremost, you will need to choose your social media platforms wisely because not all social platforms are ideal for every business. Research where your audience hangs out the most, and get active there. With social media, you can always reach out to as many people as you want, and the extent of your reach depends on how dedicated you are to growing your social accounts. Facebook, for instance, has over 2 billion members, and Instagram, on the other hand, has over a billion monthly users. So you see, the pool of audience is there, it is only left to you to leverage it.
Email Marketing
While social media will announce your brand to the world, email marketing will convert the audience into customers. After all, you don’t just want people hearing about you; what you really desire is conversion – which is exactly what you get with email marketing. To make an email marketing strategy work, you are going to need to segment your email lists,create customized messages, send informative and relevant emails at the right moment, and analyze data to know which tactics have been working and which ones are failing.
Engage audiences with visuals
Although billions of people use the internet, you will be surprised to know that most of them don’t really have the time to read your long-text content. So how do you catch their attention? You do it through visuals! If you want your target audience to fall in love with your brand’s content, then you need to embrace a visual approach. Use infographics on Facebook instead of writing a long text, post high definition videos and high-quality pictures or even use the right memes!
Having a strong online presence will boost up your sales, but it’s up to you to use all that it has to offer to your own advantage.
DISCLAIMER: Q-Bis Consult SRL – the “Cloud platform for software applications” project is co-financed from the European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Program Competitiveness 2014-2020. The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the European Union or the Government of Romania.
