Current events and social distancing have required big changes for many small businesses. For your own business, that could mean a shift to needing more of a digital presence in order to reach your target audience.
Thankfully, we have access to endless tools and resources to help your business establish, or increase, its digital presence.
3 Ways To Improve And Increase Your Digital Presence
1. Website Optimization
Your website is the central hub of your digital operations; as it is most likely how most of your prospects will first learn about your business or organization.
When we lack a physical space to meet our target audiences, the accuracy and quality of your website becomes even more important. It takes just 0.05 seconds for a viewer to judge your site, and thus form an opinion on your entire business.
Optimizing your website is therefore paramount, in terms of being found and user experience. If you haven’t looked updated or evaluated your website recently, now is a good time to look at it through the lens of your visitor.
Use the online tools available to help you optimize your current site:
SEO
Your audience has to first find your site in order to become customers, and search engine optimization is your greatest asset in improving traffic to your site.
Google Analytics is a must for understanding visitors’ behavior and guiding you on what changes to make to optimize your site.
With Google analytics, you have access to a variety of tools to help raise your SERP ranking and visibility. Review what landing pages are most popular, what pages are bringing in the most organic traffic, and what keywords are most popular on each page.
Moz also creates a variety of convenient and affordable SEO tools to simplify this process no matter your experience level. With Moz you can review your website performance based on location, gain insight into any page regarding ranking keywords and optimization analysis, and install MozBar as a helpful SEO browser toolbar.
These tools can be especially useful for small businesses trying to connect with the local community. You can use SEO to find exactly what your audience likes most and continue to provide what they want.
Check out our Intro to SEO blog here!
Data
The tools you use to optimize your site will also collect vital information that can help you to fine-tune your digital marketing strategy.
Using the Analytics dashboard you can view all your key metrics, create custom reports, manage advertising spending, segment audiences, and more. With this information you are able to see in real-time how your customers are responding to the content and updates you make and adjust accordingly.
When big changes are happening, it is important to keep track of how these changes affect your audience. This data is essential in learning how consumers are behaving and how best to connect with them online.
2. Content Creation
Consumers today are looking for more from businesses than just a sales pitch.
Creating content is a way to connect with prospects online and give something back; by providing valuable resources, you can become an industry leader and a trusted source in the minds of your customers. Providing valuable content for your readers
Blogs
Blogs are by far the most used content format for small businesses with 55% of marketers saying that blog creation is their top inbound marketing priority. No matter your industry, there are topics to be discussed and questions to be answered. From “listicles” to case studies, blogs allow you to share a lot of information with your customers.
When you share valuable information with customers, you create a stronger relationship and gain trust. No longer are you only focused on the sale; customer service, satisfaction, and trust are some of the greatest qualities a business can uphold to maintain a loyal customer base.
Additionally, if utilized correctly, blogs can be an excellent means of boosting your current SEO strategy.
Social Content
Though blogs are often shared on social media, there are many other options for interesting social content from all types of small businesses. Especially when at home, you can find inspiration for different types of personal content.
For small businesses connecting with your local community, it is especially impactful to show behind-the-scenes of your business; social media is a unique opportunity to connect with your audiences in a more human way.
Showing the friendly faces behind the business, and behind the screen, can help to cement your place in the community. Especially when trying to manage a business through turbulent times, social media can be a lovely break and an opportunity to connect with others.
3. Paid Promotions
While your fantastic content can drive visitors to your site, it’s helpful to utilize paid promotions in order to give things a little boost.
Every social media platform available has some means of paying to promote content. Doing so ensures greater visibility and engagement and expands your digital presence.
Not only is Facebook the most popular social media platform in the world, it is also used by 86% of small businesses for marketing, sales, and customer service. As the number one platform for businesses, Facebook makes setting up paid advertising campaigns quick and painless.
Facebook has two ways to promote content; you can choose to create an advertising campaign or simply boost an individual post.
A boosted post is a post on your audience’s timelines based on a few criteria, including age, gender, interests, and location; you can also set a budget and duration for your ad. With these ads comes some important data like engagement and website clicks.
Facebook Ads is a slightly more in-depth digital advertising campaign. Here you can set campaign objectives like lead generation or store traffic, as well as choose from different display options, from customized CTAs to augmented reality ads. Ads gives you much more freedom to exemplify your brand identity and engage your unique audience.
Google Ads
While your SEO strategy is constantly working to get your name to the top of the results page, you can always count on Google Ads to give you a boost. Bidding for ad spaces gives you the opportunity to sit at the top of Google’s SERP, where all viewers will have to scroll and see your ad; the top search results have an average click-through-rate of almost 35% compared to only 15% and 10% for the second and third results respectively.
The pay-per-click advertising system means you only have to pay for what you get; no clicks, no payment. Google far outranks any other competitor with a 87% market share in search engines; this massive daily flow of traffic is guaranteed to increase traffic and promises a large ROI.
Changes in technology always affect how we work; thankfully, it has provided us with endless solutions to life’s daily challenges. A brand with a strong digital presence has a much stronger chance of expanding and generating leads than brands without, and the freedom and customization of the tools available means you can express any brand identity digitally.
Now is an opportunity to explore your options for expanding your digital marketing program to find the solution that fits your business.
Thanks for reading,
Christine
