There are around 1.95 billion websites on the internet. This means there are 1.95 billion online businesses out there who want the same thing as you: the attention of their customers.
The competition might not be direct but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. At the end of the day, the more time they spend watching movies on Netflix, the more time they are not shopping on Amazon or interacting with people on Instagram or Facebook, or interacting with your brand.
Perfect Your Online Presence
To be their first preference, or be in the top-of-mind awareness for a specific industry or category, maintaining a consistent and engaging online presence of your business is essential. But occupying premium space in your target audiences’ minds doesn’t have to be expensive or hard.
The key to making your online presence more effective is to be human. This makes your brand relatable, giving your target audience a chance to connect with your brand.
In addition to that, let’s explore some other effective ways you can strengthen your online presence in 2021.
6 Ways to Strengthen Online Presence of Your Business
1. Optimize Website User Experience
Your website is your business’s first impression. And to make the right first impression, you will need to create an intuitive and rewarding experience for your visitors.
Start by removing unnecessary steps and elements that create friction in their overall experience. The simpler your website, the better the customer experience.
If you are still in the website designing and development phase, here’s an amazing website design cost estimator to help you create an appropriate budget.
Secondly, there’s nothing more boring and off-putting than a static website. So try adding interactive elements like videos, slides, quizzes, games, etc. But also make sure they are fun, add value to their experience, and create unnecessary friction for them. Such elements should complement your website’s main goal and shouldn’t drive your customers’ focus from the main goal.
Lastly, invest in tools that can help you create personalized experiences for your visitors. Netflix and Spotify are the kings of a personalized experience, as they recommend movies and songs, playlists to their viewers and listeners based on their past choices. This is a great way to make your customers feel special and heard.
Other simple and effective ways to optimize your website’s user experience:
- Providing easy-to-access customer support
- Optimizing CTAs based on past data
- Implement responsive web design
- Keep forms short and simple
2. Make the Most of Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool offered by Google to help business owners manage their branded online presence. Optimizing your Google My Business listing can boost your local rankings, improve search engine engagement, and convert more customers.
The first step is to claim your business on GMB and add in the basic information like your business’ name, address, working hours, website link, phone numbers, email address, etc.
Once you are done with the basic information, work on the following sections:
- Question and answers – you can add them based on the past customer questions and feedback
- Product and service listings
- Posts – based on your industry, specific category, and target keywords
- Reviews – ask your loyal customers to leave a review of their experience with your brand
One of the main sections of GMB is the Business section which is a brief description of your offerings. Make sure the description is engaging, friendly, and has the target keywords. Also, keep the content simple and concise.
Lastly, keep adding quality photos of your product or office space to increase customer engagement.
3. Data Protection
The more protection you provide, the stronger your customers’ trust becomes.
Data leaks, thefts, and hacks are happening quite frequently these days. As a result, businesses need to pay attention and prioritize making efforts to protect their customers’ data.
Here are a few ways you can get on top of protecting your customers’ data:
- Endpoint, email, and network protection to filter files containing spam and malware
- Conduct company-wide cybersecurity training sessions
- Secure the web gateway
- Have a data protection policy in effect
- Add encryption on servers to protect sensitive data
4. Create Useful and Engaging Content
When we say content, we mean content in every form and shape—blogs, infographics, videos, podcasts, ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, etc.
Creating value-adding and engaging content goes a long way in building a good rapport with your customers. However, the key to successfully utilize the true potential of content is to be consistent with it. And the key to being consistent is to have a content plan in place. But make sure your content plan aligns with your business’ main goals.
Here are a few ways you can create original, engaging, and value-adding content for your customers:
- Tell a story, but make sure it has some useful takeaways, because they are going to spend 10-12mins of their lives reading your content, so make it worthwhile.
- Invest in creating evergreen content and then reuse it into graphics, Twitter threads, Instagram stories.
- Enable your followers on social media to create branded content for you by giving them assets like meme templates, reels, giveaways, and use the user-generated content to build trust among your audience.
5. Engage in Real-time on Social Media
To engage with your followers on social media platforms, talk about what you know: your industry. Don’t just talk about your products/services; share your knowledge and expertise with your audience. For example, if you have a chain of gyms, then you can share your knowledge about nutrition, discipline, exercises, training, etc.
When you share your expertise, you are giving your audience a rock-solid reason to trust you. And for a cherry on top, you can showcase some of your best work through case studies, before/after posts, testimonials, etc.
After you’ve built a small group of loyal followers, you can host giveaways, making it easier for your loyal followers/promoters to promote your brand. You can also host Q&A sessions to answer FAQs and real-time questions about the products or your area of expertise.
One other great way of engaging with your target audience is to share/repost content from businesses with similar target audiences. Following the same example, a gym owner can repost content from dieticians, nutritionists, personal trainers, bodybuilders, etc. When you repost their content, they’ll mention your business which means their audience will engage with your account.
6. Spend Wisely on Advertisement
There’s no way around paid advertisement anymore. After all the efforts improving user experience, social media engagement, and content marketing, you’ll still need to invest in paid advertising to reach your target audience with the right message, at the right time, with the right call to action for better conversions.
Quick tips to start with the paid advertisement:
- Create a checklist for paid advertisement
- Have a properly analyzed advertising keywords list for campaigns
- Test, analyze, optimize, and repeat for the best results
Quick tips to start with social media paid advertisement:
- Experiment with different forms of content, time frames, and audience
- Fine-tune your copies, schedules, and budget
- Always go to social media analytics for new ideas for campaigns and to analyze which kind of content works for your business
Pro Tip: Always have a predefined budget before running any paid campaign, which should be according to what you are willing to pay to acquire leads/customers.
Lastly, Stay in Touch
After doing all this hard work, you don’t want your customers to visit/shop with you only once. So, make sure to have an after-sales communication plan in place to keep them engaged with your business. It could be through email newsletters, app notifications (if you have an app), social media campaigns, offline advertising, feedback loop, etc.
Image Credit: anna tarazevich; pexels; thank you!
