Your Online Presence
Your Online Presence
For a business to be successful, online presence needs to be strong and healthy. Even if you are not an expert, you can use some tips to build your online presence.
Words that come to mind when you’re trying to build an online presence—overpowering, intimidating, discouraging, and nerve-racking, right? Not only is everybody competing for consumers eyes and ears online, you have very little time to invest into what has become an essential task to business development.
The good news is that you don’t have to stress out about this. Keep calm and get started.
1. Make it Functional
Putting a sign next to your cash register or a little Facebook icon on your website isn’t going to cut it. Printing your website URL on your receipts won’t get you anywhere. Nobody is going to engage with you simply because you asked them to. Give them a reason to find you online.
Examples:
Run a contest. post it on your website or social media first. Find a reason that your customers have to find you online.
2. Limited Offers
You would think that people would be too wise to fall for the hard sell limited offer. NO! Customers don’t want to miss out on something that is limited. Having limited offers on the home page of your website and sending out promotions will build your customer base. There’s plenty of market research that shows that telling people not to miss out still works.
Yes, “Act now to get 50% off” still works.
3. Create Advocates
You don’t have time to build your online presence but you can put people to work to do it for you. You just need advocates(supporters).
4. Improve Your Website
Your website is a giant piece of advertising media. Every square inch matters. You should craft it as precise as you did your product or service. Every piece of it matters. Keep these things in mind:
a. Tell your customer who you are, what you do, and how they get it. If you don’t
communicate that within the first 5 seconds of them finding your site, you will lose
a large portion of your sales.
b. Tell them how you will solve their problem. Why are they looking for you? Speak
to their problem and tell them how you can make it better.
c. Get rid of most of the text. They aren’t reading it anyway. Every word matters.
Make all of them impactful. Less is more.
d. Don’t talk about yourself. They’re more interested in themselves than they are
you or your business.
When you make your online presence into something for your customer instead of something that talks about you, they’ll begin to show up.
5. Your Social Media Playbook
There are literally millions of articles about how to use social media but here are a few quick tips.
a. Not all businesses will benefit from social media but most do.
b. Pick one social media platform that matches your demographic.
What works for one type of business might not work for another.
c. You don’t need to be on every network. Pick 1 or 2.
d. Talk about your customers. Not yourself
e. Create community. Advertise sparingly.
f. If you want to advertise, think about online advertising. It’s cheap compared to
print.
g. Respond. If people start a conversation with your business, continue it.
6. E-mail Isn’t Dead
Uninformed “experts” are sounding the alarm that e-mail is dead but the facts are that it’s still the best form of online outreach.
How to do it right?
a. E-mail quality content less often. Once per week or every other week is fine.
b. Target customers. Know your customer and send e-mails that they want to
receive.
c. Use imagery. Pictures and videos are essential for customer engagement.
d. Include a call to action. It might not to be to purchase something but a learn
more button or some other way for them to further engage is essential.
e. E-mail lawfully. Ask their permission before adding them to a list. Know the CAN-
SPAM laws.
7. Join with Another Business to Drive Online Engagement
Looking for other businesses that have the same type of consumer is a great way to build your own customer base without having to pay high marketing fees.
Partnering with them on a promotion is a great way to introduce your business to more people. Work together to come up with an outreach where you could share costs and get bigger exposure.
8. Keeps Things Current
Too many business owners build a website without any plan of how to keep it fresh. People won’t pay attention if you don’t have anything new to say. Whether you build your online presence yourself or hire somebody, have a plan for constant updating. Who will own the website and social media? The ongoing maintenance is just as important as the initial build.
Bottom Line
Your online presence won’t just happen. You have to invest time and money into building a presence but also remember this: Your online presence will amplify the good and the bad of your business. If there are problems to fix in your business, don’t expect online to be the answer. Continue growing a great business and your online presence will make you shine.
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