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Internet content is an effective business tool. It can strengthen your brand's online presence while boosting traffic, conversions, and brand equity. To differentiate your small business from the competition, you need to improve your online presence and have a web footprint. Considering that 97% of consumers look for local businesses online, you might as well disappear if they are still looking for you.
Developing a small business online presence means focusing on three main areas: search engine optimization, public perception of your brand online, and the actions and content you create. Considering how difficult it is to establish a stronger online presence, this guide will offer practical advice on where to begin.
The Benefits of Online Presence for Small Companies
For small business owners, having a visible online presence is the first step, but it also needs to be accompanied by excellent experiences. To attract new clients and establish yourself as the industry leader in your area, you require more than just visibility.
You need to be knowledgeable about social media, SEO, and creating social proof. To make it happen, you need patience, money, and time. However, if you work on the online presence of your small business, you can benefit from the following:
Getting Noticed: A third of online users look up local businesses several times a week. Creating an online presence for your company enables your target market to discover your brand.
Boost Your Legitimacy: Before making a purchase, consumers conduct research. 83% of consumers say they will visit a store after seeing something online. You're missing out on the majority of your potential clients if you don't have a website.
Always Be Marketing: You can't afford to miss out in the 24/7 world of today. A strong online presence gives you an ongoing marketing campaign that works around the clock, even when you're not using it.
Optimize Your Investment: According to a survey, 46% of small businesses did not have a website in 2018, which could have resulted in financial losses. The most economical way to market your brand is through online marketing, which gives you access to real-time analytics and economical advertising strategies.
Increase Conversion: The Rule of Seven states that a lead must have seven interactions with you before they decide to become a customer. Working to increase your company's reach will provide you more chances to connect with people and increase conversions.
Conquer Google: To determine your ranking, Google will examine your website along with the rest of your assets. If you can eventually get Google to rank you first, your website will receive 27.6% of all clicks.
Enhance Your Buyer's Journey: A buyer's journey is a diagram that shows a lead's path from learning about your brand to making a purchase of your goods or services. Since 63% of trips start online these days, it makes sense to prioritize having a strong online presence.
The main advantages for businesses that invest in online visibility are the benefits of having a small business website. Understanding that there are no short cuts to success is important before starting your campaign to boost online visibility.
It calls for perseverance, reliability, and an openness to change. Let's talk about how your small business can start building its online profile now that we have that in mind.
How to Increase Online Visibility
Assessing your current situation is the first step in creating a business online presence. Are you starting a new company or trying to grow the one you already have? GoSite provides a number of resources to help you with your local small business internet marketing; peruse this guide to get ideas on how to advance your brand.
1. Create a Compelling Website
Your online storefront is your website. Since a website is the main way to generate leads for your business, it might as well not exist. Use an easy-to-use web design builder like WordPress. In a matter of hours, create a mobile-friendly, SEO-ready website for your small business that is straightforward, clean, and polished.
2. Use Local SEO Placements
Google has always given local business listings priority. Making sure that all of the information that is readily available is correct—including your address, phone number, and business hours—is the first step. GoSite Placement partners with Uberall to list your business's details in every significant directory, saving you time compared to Google Business Profile and other directory platforms.
Increasing your online directory placements and making sure all of your information is 100% accurate across listings and profiles are always important components of local SEO for businesses in the service area.
3. Drive Online Reviews
For your company, online reviews are an important source of social proof. Customers of today read four or more reviews before making a purchase, demonstrating how important they are to them. It's not as simple as it seems to obtain online reviews. A happy customer is unlikely to forget to write a review, but a dissatisfied customer won't require reminding. First and foremost, you ought to consistently request that each client submit a review on their preferred review site, be it Facebook, Google Reviews, or Yelp. To improve your conversion rate and save time, you can automate this process with tools like GoSite Reviews.
Don’t be disheartened if building up your review cache takes time. Only 5-10% of customers will go on to write a review, regardless of their experience.
4. Create Informative Content
The concept of content marketing is as old as the internet itself. Excellent content promotes your company by:
Positioning you as an authority
Boosting your SEO
Providing customers with something valuable
An effective content marketing strategy can raise your company's traffic, time on page, and conversion rates, among other web metrics. For this reason, an active content marketing strategy is used by 72% of B2B and 70% of B2C marketers.
But what constitutes “content”?
Anything that is helpful to your audience can be considered content. It could be an informative blog post or an entertaining YouTube video. The idea is to engage your audience by providing something of value for free.
5. Get on Social Media
In the modern business environment, social media is indispensable. You can access half of the world's population, as there are roughly 4.74 billion active users on social media. Without a doubt, social media is one of the most effective tools available to both large multinational corporations and small, local businesses. These are the platforms where your customers are, as the average person uses them for 147 minutes every day. What then is the secret to social media success?
Post high-quality visual content
Focus on branding efforts
Take advantage of trending topics
Interact with your audience
Use paid ads
Naturally, you also need to be active on the appropriate social media networks. To concentrate your efforts before expanding your net, try concentrating on two or three channels at first.
6. Cross-Promote Your Content
Cross-promoting refers to distributing comparable content across multiple channels. It also entails requesting that your current followers look for you on various social media networks. For instance, you could advertise on Facebook about a discount available only on Instagram.
Cross-promotion uses both your present and past customers to generate momentum across all of your channels. But don't just copy and paste content from one channel to another. Customers need an incentive to follow you across multiple platforms.
7. Collaborate with Other Businesses
One effective method to take advantage of the strength in numbers is to collaborate with other brands. Usually, companies in related but distinct industries will collaborate on these projects instead of direct rivals. Business collaboration has the benefit of enabling you to enter a new market segment without having to worry about losing your current clientele. Make sure the audience of other businesses is relevant to you and has similar values and objectives before contacting them.
8. Take Advantage of Influencer Marketing
Although it's a relatively new marketing strategy, influencer marketing has shown to be incredibly successful. Fifty percent of millennials said they trusted recommendations for products from influencers. However, what defines an influencer? Anyone with a sizable social media following and a loyal following is considered an influencer. Influencers from all walks of life and all ages can be found, so you'll have plenty of chances to use this strategy. Keep in mind that influencers don't always require a large following. Joining forces with regional influencers who have as few as 10,000 followers can help you succeed.
9. Create Engagement with User-Generated Content
You can market your business on behalf of your followers. It indicates that your customers are interested in your brand if there are lots of comments on your Facebook updates. The algorithms are aware of this as well. It takes work to get this kind of engagement, and it rarely happens on its own. Therefore, publishing user-generated content has become a popular strategy used by businesses to boost brand visibility online. Your brand is trustworthy if real people are producing your content. Once more, it won't happen on its own, so you might need to start contests, surveys, and other forms of reward to plant the initial seeds of participation.
10. Optimize Your Website for Success
You can create your website with GoSite Sites' assistance, but this is not enough. Until your user experience is flawless, you must experiment. Everything a visitor sees on your website, which serves as your company's online presence, represents who you are. However, how can you tell if your website is meeting the needs of its visitors? The following are some crucial inquiries to make:
How much business comes directly from my website?
Are people using my contact form?
Which pages are most frequently visited by users?
What are my bounce rates?
Do my competitors' websites make it more difficult or easier for businesses to make purchases from me?
You can obtain some of this data from Google Analytics, but getting direct feedback from your clients on your website is still the best way to find out what they think. This can be discovered online, through reviews, or by asking your clients when your staff will be meeting with them in person.
11. Invest in Paid Ads
Options for paid advertising are a fantastic method to stand out from the competition. The issue is that, if you're not careful, advertising campaigns can get very expensive. To reach the right people, start small with your budget and don't be afraid to invest in professional help, whether you use social media or search engine ads.
12. Create a Mobile App
Apps are now a major aspect of daily life. Currently, 62% of companies either have an app or are working on creating one. Providing an app will help your brand become more visible online and draw in more customers. Even though very few consumers will download an app from an unidentified company, apps are still beneficial because they strengthen the bond already established with your target market. Mobile apps with great design can streamline product and service management, facilitate upselling, and give users direct access to your team.
Mastering the art of establishing an online presence is crucial for promoting and branding your business effectively. Small companies can often feel overwhelmed by the prospect of marketing themselves online. Task Tiger Designs provides an all-in-one platform to assist entrepreneurs like you in laying the foundations of your online marketing strategy. Whether you're looking to build a website, conquer local SEO, or garner more online reviews, this simple yet powerful platform from Task Tiger Designs will supercharge your business.
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