How to Build a Strong Online Presence for Business Success
No matter how big or small your business is, having a compelling, professional and comprehensive online presence is a no brainer. To give you some idea why, Google claim that 97% of consumers use the web to search for local businesses.
A great website design is the interface for your business; in many instances it is the first experience that your audience will have with your business. It attracts customers that haven’t previously heard of your brand. Once you’ve begun to communicate with your audience you need to continue to communicate fresh and informative content with a social media presence and by developing an seo friendly website.
What is an online presence
Your website: Outbound marketing via a website reinforces your brand offerings to your target market. So here are three things you need to look at when building your online presence.
As we’ve already discussed, all businesses should have a website even if it just contains basic information. A restaurant needs a menu and opening times and how you can book online for example. This is particularly important in a city like Sydney where competition is high and you need to be highly accessible and visible to succeed. A digital agency in Sydney can help you to source, build and host your website. It doesn’t need to cost a fortune or does it need to be on the cutting edge of design. If your budget is limited and many companies or businesses starting out are in exactly that position, you are much better off building your online presence with fresh content.
Search engine optimisation: Here’s another statistic to reckon with when considering your digital marketing strategy. Now you have a website it is vital for your customers to be able to find you. A high proportion of your customers, in fact 89% of your customers, use search engines to find your product, service or business. Search engine optimisation (SEO) makes this possible.
The purpose of SEO is to make it easy for search engines to find your website and list it in their ‘organic’ results because, obviously, the higher you are on results pages the more traffic you will receive.
Organic SEO is dependent on the use of keywords, the posting of fresh and informative content, monitoring the information on your website to make sure it’s current and correct and using off site strategies to drive traffic to your site.
Adwords and Pay per Click. AdWords is Google’s paid advertising product. Adwords are the ads that appear at the top or side of your screen. They are the ads that are company paid for so that people will notice their business whenever they’re searching Google. The ads are only paid for when someone clicks on the ad. This is known as pay-per-click advertising.
Social media: Not every social media channel will work for every business. It is important to understand your audience to know which social media platform attracts your audience. For instance, a young demographic is more likely to be attracted to Instagram. It’s a photo-sharing network, so it works effectively for businesses selling jewellery, food or homewares for example.
If you want a platform with broad appeal, Facebook and Twitter will serve most businesses. Social media is a medium for news, tips, photos and videos and questions and answers.
Remembering fresh content is the aim and sharing on multiple platforms will reach as mch of your audience as possible.The more compelling and engaging your material is, the more likely your followers will like, comment and share your posts. Engagement and reciprocity is the key to promoting and building your brand. The more positive and broad the engagement, the greater the chance of exposure to new and diverse audiences. This is known as engaging with your brand.