While your products may be great, and your current customers might be satisfied with the service you offer, without a strong online presence you can hardly grow your customer base and expand your business.
Having a notable online presence is crucial for your marketing strategy, no matter the type or the size of the business you’re running. After all, 58,8% of the global population is online, peaking at 89,4% in North America and 87,7% in Europe, with daily internet usage per capita at an astonishing average of 170 minutes.
The math is simple – if you’re running a business, you just can’t afford to not be where your audience is – on the Internet. Here is how to build a strong online presence.
Start with your website
Not having a website is a major mistake, so if you’re among that 50% of small businesses that still don’t have a website, it’s time to change the odds of success to your advantage – 8 in 10 customers are more likely to engage with business with a website, as they’ll find it more reputable and trustworthy.
Even a simple website with all the necessary information on your business will fit the purpose, but in order to really give a boost to your online promotion, design it with your customers’ demands on your mind. You can offer them chatbot support so that they can reach you 24/7, or an e-shop to purchase your products anytime they like. Make sure you have a blog on your website too, so you can keep your customers engaged longer with the right kind of high-quality content.
In order to convert your visitors to customers, apart from the great content you’ll use to engage them, your website should be able to perform fast, without any lags- a 1-second delay in page response can decrease conversions for 7%. The general rule for success is to go for a loading speed no higher than 3 seconds.
In 2018, 52,2% of worldwide traffic came from mobile, so make sure your website is optimized for mobile queries too.
Provide valuable content
Although having a website is necessary, it’s not enough if you’re aiming for online marketing success. Another essential ingredient is the content you’ll be providing to your current and target customers via different channels -your website, blog, social media, email marketing campaigns, etc.
Your content is how you can make your business differ from your competitors, but only if you approach its creation professionally. To put it into a nutshell, your content needs to be:
- Well-tailored – It needs to fit the needs of your target audience and be segmented according to the most important traits of your customers as well as their position in the sales funnel.
- Relevant and useful – Your customers are not really interested to read about your company – they want to hear how to solve their problems, they want your help to overcome the problem they’re facing, they want to find the information they are looking for, so that’s what you should offer them. Every piece of your content should give them value.
- Readable – Your content shouldn’t have grammar and punctuation errors, and it should be easy to read.
- Authentic and credible – Your content pieces should be unique and in your own, authentic voice. Still, to make it trustworthy, back up it with data and quote the sources of the data you’re using.
- Engaging – Use different types of content – videos, infographics, images, photos, to boost the engagement of your customers. Incentivize your customers to create user-generated content and share it online.
- SEO – When creating content, you should create it with your target audience on your mind, and not the search engines. Still, if you want it to be accessible to the wider public, you need to optimize it for search engines by implementing keywords your target customers use in searches and links to make it more credible.
To have a clear insight into how your content is performing online, how much traffic and converts pieces bring, you can use digital marketing reporting tools and have all the data you need with just one click.
Use social media
Social media channels are actively used by 48% of the worldwide population, and often with the purpose of searching for products or services, reading reviews and recommendations on a brand, or discussing them in various groups.
Leveraging the power of social media channels is another must for achieving your marketing goals. You should own profiles on social media channels that are most notable in your industry and among your target audience, and post regularly and consistently. Use every opportunity you can to increase the engagement of your followers, either by organizing social media contests or competitions or by discounts and giveaways.
Share a lot of visual content, such as videos, infographics, photos, and motivate your followers to produce content related to your brand too.
Build relationships
The main goal of all your online marketing efforts should be forming meaningful relationships with your customers, as they are necessary for building your customer’s loyalty.
But, in order to spread the network of your prospective customers, you should start with building relationships with those who are already in the business, and are already considered reputable – think among the lives of thought leaders in your industry, or the credible influencers who could provide social proof of your own trustworthiness.
Also, make sure you join online communities where you can find your target customers – they can be grouped either by the location or by the relevant topic. By offering credible information and helping the members overcome their problems you can establish a position of a reliable source of information to your potential customers, and they are more likely to turn to you when they need your services.
Don’t expect results to be immediate, as building a strong online presence might take some time and effort. But with every new blog post or a new follower, you’re pushing a bit forward until the results start growing exponentially.
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