For your business to succeed, you should create a solid online presence. One of the things that you need to have for your ecommerce store is an excellent storefront, solid advertising, and influence in your industry. Apart from that, it would help if you created a solid online presence.
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As more and more customers start looking up businesses online, your business needs to have a great site, an active social media presence, and access to popular business inventories.
Doing so establishes a tremendous online presence that allows customers to find your location, strengthen your brand, and boost your online sale.
What is an Online Presence?
Your business’s online presence is the overall impact on areas in which your business exists online.
This includes your social media pages, ecommerce site, and business directories (Google My Business and Yelp.) Every mention of your business online when you build an ecommerce website can contribute to your online presence.
Ways to Build a Strong Online Presence
The key to building a robust online presence for your business is consistency and quality.
Here are some things that will help you create a strong online presence for your business:
Ready your website
Customers these days have incredibly high expectations up to the point that if you don’t have a good site, then it’s better not to have one at all.
In fact, 75% of customers admitted that they judge the credibility of a site based on its web design. Thus, we suggest that you hire experts to set up your site. While DIYing your site can be a great experience, there’s also a high chance that you’ll be experiencing endless glitches.
You need to have a lead-generating site that looks and functions precisely the way that you want it to be without losing hours on your end is worth every penny.
Take advantage of SEO
Another effective way to boost your online presence is via SEO. This marketing strategy allows you to enhance your visibility on search results like Bing and Google. With SEO, you can optimize your site to show up on search results and top of them as well.
Getting the top spot on the search results is crucial because most people stick only on the first page, particularly on the first three results on Google. If your site isn’t there, then you’ll significantly experience lesser leads, traffic, and sales.
Ideally, you have to invest in the three critical areas of SEO:
- Off-page SEO: Focuses on your site’s presence across the internet.
- On-page SEO: Focuses on the site itself, such as your product page content.
- Technical SEO: Focuses on the backend of your sites, such as the architecture and page speed.
Set up social media
Social media is a fantastic place where you can engage and strengthen your brand. To maintain a social media site, your goal should be posting regularly, at least once a day.
You should also make sure that you frequently interact with customers that engage with your pages. If you’re starting, it may mean that you also need to manage one or two social media pages.
The most important thing to consider is the platform that your audience uses, and make sure that you prioritize these platforms.
Consider paid ads advertising
Another fantastic way that you can build a strong online presence is through online advertising. If your ad shows on top of search results, in a way, you’re building brand awareness and increasing your online visibility.
You may want to advertise on various search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Moreover, you can also consider social media advertising. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube also have fantastic ad options.
Try remarketing
Having a small online ad budget can help you yield significant results as you quickly build your online presence and increase brand awareness. Using retargeting ads pushes prospects into your sales funnel.
In fact, according to ReadyCloud Suite, 46% of marketers believe that retargeting is one of the most underrated online marketing methods. It’s already a bonus that retargeting allows consumers to see your brand name and products all over the internet as they look up other sites.
Claim your profile on local directories
Even if your operations go beyond your local area, you still want to build profiles on local directories.
By maintaining your presence in local directories, people can easily access information about your business without having to visit your site.
Produce valuable content
Images, videos, and blogs are one of the best ways that you can communicate with your target audience and create buzz. Your content allows you to reach prospective customers while establishing yourself as an industry leader.
Think about newsfeeds on social media. Chances are, they’re full of content that is intended to connect with you while building an audience at the same time. While it may take a lot of time to write a blog or produce a high-quality video, the effort will be well worth it in the end.
So, no matter what industry you’re in, content adds value to your visitors. It shows them your expertise. It helps build your brand identity while drawing in more traffic to your site.
Run email marketing campaigns
Email marketing is another underrated strategy that helps you create and maintain an online presence for your business.
Some of the keys to having a more effective email marketing campaign are workflows, segmentation, and personalization. A great approach is to use various lead generation strategies that will help you grow a qualified list of prospective customers.
You can offer leads several free online resources and maintain various email workflows. That way, you can build database management that will target customers with their specific pain points.
Encourage customer reviews and testimonials
Customer reviews and testimonials are important to help your brand understand your audience and enhance the overall customer experience.
Using various customer insights also assists you in enhancing credibility and social proof while letting customers share their voices.
Moreover, according to BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review, the average customer reads ten online reviews first before they feel that they can trust your business.
So, whenever a customer has a good experience with your business, then you can ask them to visit your site on Google or Yelp and then leave a review.
Furthermore, you may even want to incentivize your customers to leave reviews on your site. In exchange, you can offer them a discount when they purchase from you in the future.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. Building an online presence for your business can be incredibly time-consuming in the long run. However, the payoff is worth it in the end. As you start, you need to prioritize building a site for your business and then listing it on various online directories.