Hi!
Franny here again. It's day two of our learning on digital marketing and today's topic is super important for the growth of a business, especially small businesses.
Today we will be diving into building and maintaining an online presence for your business. now, this might be a lot to take in so, take your time to go through this.
Having an online presence is very crucial for the growth of a business in this era as I said in my previous post. If I'm being very honest, building and maintaining an online presence is very hard. Your business isn't the only one solving a particular problem even in your area. So, getting people to purchase from you and/or use your services over others can be tricky but not impossible. First, you need to get people familiar with your business and that can be done through a few processes. Let me walk you through it.
Your Online Goals
As a business, you need to know realistically, what you want to achieve online as this helps in setting the right goals for your business. There are lots of ways that being online can benefit your business such as;
- helping you build relationships on social media with potential clients
- selling your products and services online
- finding new customers and/or keeping existing ones.
Building Your Online Presence
After you have successfully answered the question above, we can move forward. There are three main options for building an online presence for your business(there are other ways but these are the most popular ones).
- Local online directories: an example of this is Google My Business. Here, you can list your business on the platform so that when people google your type of service in your area, your business will pop up as a suggestion. Cool right?
- Website and mobile apps: now, these two are relative. Not all types of businesses need them, some do and some don't really. A small business that is still growing may not necessarily need it unless you are looking to create an e-commerce website. Some businesses have expanded to the point of needing an app to make business transactions seamless and smooth. The most important thing is knowing where your business is at the moment and then you can figure out which one works best for you.
- Social media and videos: this is hands down one of the best ways to promote your business online. By creating a social media account for your business, you can reach as many people as possible. Creating videos of your services and products also gives people a clearer perspective of what you do and why they should purchase from you.
Marketing Your Online Presence
This can be done with the use of SEOs(Search Engine Optimizations) and SEM(Search Engine Marketing) these tools help you reach a wider range of audience that can help grow your business.
In SEM, the business pays to enter an auction. They then bid for advertising space on a website, and whoever wins gets to show their search ad. Tagging keywords within your content could increase the chance of your website appearing higher up in search engine rankings. This is called search engine optimization (SEO) and is a free way for businesses to reach more potential customers. However, neither provide free marketing space or optimised website design.
Analysing And Adapting
Analysing the progress of your business growth is very important. Creating a system where you can monitor the progress of the growth of your business has to be realistic. Remember to not expect too much too soon as that can be discouraging.
A crucial part of any online plan is to measure what you are doing and make sure it's working, this is called Analytics.
A good plan will consider these things;
- Know your online goals and set realistic expectations
- Use analytics to track and measure what you are doing and if it's working
- Always keep up to date and adapt to changes and technology and the industry you work in.
I hope you found this helpful.
Till the next post
Franny.
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