When it comes to creating your brand, increasing your credibility, and maintaining your reputation, having an online visibility is more important than ever. You’re significantly limiting how your new business prospects can learn about what you have to offer if you’re not active online, publishing customer reviews, and connecting with your audience on social media. Adapting your marketing plan to include both online and offline components, regardless of your industry, will help you take advantage of the opportunities given by the ever-changing digital world.
Having a good online presence is crucial today, whether you’re a service-based, brick-and-mortar, or online firm. And it’s not just eCommerce that’s affected. While the epidemic has expedited online expansion, it has also enhanced support for local companies. Moreover, 97% of consumers use the internet to identify and investigate local businesses. Extremely smart SEO services in Bangalore helps to maintain your reputation through online visibility.
What is an online presence?
The ease with which a customer may locate the business when looking for relevant keywords online, or the number of virtual ‘touchpoints’ a client can interact with when wishing to learn more about your brand, products, and services, can both be used to characterize a business’s online presence. If you have a strong online presence, you will be very visible on the internet and social media, making you significantly more ‘discoverable’ to prospective clients.
Having a website and being active on relevant social media sites are both essential in their most basic form. Similarly, a Google Business Listing can display your contact information quickly and encourage consumers to visit your website when they search online.
You can also develop digital places with the help of web technologies. This can help you strengthen virtual interactions with your customers and perhaps make online service delivery easier. Zoom, WhatsApp, YouTube, and TikTok can all be used if they’re relevant to your target audience and business.
This was especially vital for many enterprises under Covid-19, as they couldn’t rely on the ‘physical space’ to acquire and retain new clients. As fitness studios moved their programs online and eateries shifted to home delivery via social media, business owners quickly responded to create new revenue sources. Between 2019 and 2021, estate agents used video platforms to take house hunters on virtual home tours, resulting in a 600 percent increase in the use of 360 degree virtual home tour technologies. Experian Economics projects that by 2025, online sales will have surpassed levels not seen before.
Now that the lockdown restrictions have been lifted, businesses may expand on the digital investments they’ve made out of necessity to sustain and grow their long-term futures.
For many retailers, this would involve giving customers a variety of options for browsing, buying, and returning things, as well as connecting and communicating with the brand – potentially combining e-commerce, mobile commerce, and social media with a physical shop experience. Here are six suggestions for boosting your online visibility.
Make your website search engine and smartphone-friendly
“On the internet, 81% of customers search for a product or service.” While most businesses recognize the value of having a website, it’s critical to ensure that it’s optimized for maximum visibility on search engines.
Use relevant keywords that clients would use to find a company like yours while writing website copy or listing products. Create a Google Business Listings page as well, and fill in every field with as much information as possible – phone number, address, website, map location, images, and reviews. This might demonstrate your credibility and increase the likelihood of clients noticing and visiting your website.
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. People are increasingly using their cell phones for everyday tasks such as mobile searches and mobile payments. It’s important for user experience, but with consumers increasingly searching for products and services on smartphones rather than computers, it’s also critical to ensure that potential buyers can discover you. To see how your current website performs, go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page.
Create a content marketing plan that works for you
“The majority of B2B buyers read branded content on a company’s website, consuming an average of 13 pieces per month.”
Any business may use content to raise its online profile, communicate with customers, and create trust. Creating a large number of interesting assets, such as blogs, videos, whitepapers, or social media posts, is referred to as “content writing” Each one increases your chances of getting noticed online by hosting them on a variety of digital channels.
Your business and audience will dictate the type of content you create and where you distribute it. It must tell your brand’s story and mission, as well as effectively express your company’s benefits and value. As many firms have done during the shutdown, this might also be a method to monetize your expertise and boost your primary product or service offering.
If you’re a B2B company, keep in mind that your website is one of the most significant content channels for 65% of B2B buyers. Keep track of how your material is performing using the insights supplied by your website and social media analytics so you can make sure it’s targeted to your target viewers.
Include video in your online presence approach
“By 2021, 86% of organizations will be using video as a marketing strategy.”
Over the last five years, video marketing has exploded in popularity, with an increasing number of marketers from all industries embracing it. During Covid-19, several businesses found this to be an essential method to communicate with their customers despite physical limitations.
According to a 2020 Semrush survey, a video was the most effective content marketing tactic for 41% of respondents, while repurposing previous material was lauded by 61%. Consider turning a dormant blog post into a video, or showcasing the benefits or features of some of your items uniquely and entertainingly if you’re just getting started with video.
Create a community centered on the brand’s mission
According to the report, “78% of customers want brands to use social media to help people interact with one another.”
Now is the time to ensure that your brand values are visible. It’s critical to tell a clear, consistent, and compelling brand story across all of your content and online channels, with social media marketing.
The key is to concentrate on the channels that are most appropriate for your customer. For B2B customers, this may entail prioritizing LinkedIn or Twitter, while for others, it may entail experimenting with emerging platforms such as TikTok. As Lockdown has demonstrated, you can build great relationships with your consumers online, so think of fresh methods to bring them in.
Boost your credibility by keeping your online reviews current
“By 2021, 93% of consumers will have used the internet to find a local business, and 87% will have read online reviews before making a purchase,” according to the report.
One of the most effective techniques to attract clients has always been word of mouth. This technique can be used for online reviews in the digital age. It can also be a quick and cost-effective solution to increase your web visibility for businesses.
Including reviews on your website and encouraging people to leave reviews on Google and other media sites like Facebook is a terrific approach to build brand trust.
Establish explicit objectives to measure return on investment (ROI)
Take the time to assess the performance and ROI of a variety of internet marketing channels to design a strategy that works for your brand.
Online visibility can save money in a variety of ways. While certain platforms, such as social ads or collaborating with outside professionals to create films, need financial investment, there are a lot of free and low-cost options available. E-commerce and email marketing platforms can help you sell your products and services while improving your website and using social media can help you rank higher in search engines. Building brand trust through virtual places and relationships, as well as video conferencing solutions like Zoom, may all add value to your online activity.
Many of these digital technologies will be able to give data and analytics to assist you in better understanding your consumers, their behavior and preferences, and how they interact with your company at each stage of the customer journey. In addition, you may determine which internet strategies are most effective for your company, allowing you to focus your budgets and resources more precisely.
One of the most significant advantages of doing anything online is the tremendous amount of data available. This can help you gain a deeper understanding of your clients, streamline service delivery, and create more targeted and efficient marketing initiatives. You can also add to your client data by creating B2B marketing lists with services like Experian B2B Prospector, which will allow you to reach the inboxes of those most likely to buy from you.
Why is it important to have a good internet presence?
The more quality experiences you can provide to your target audience, the more opportunities you’ll have to increase brand awareness and boost your reputation. However, other ways having a strong internet presence can assist your company.
Become known: 97% of consumers use the internet to look for local products and services. A good internet presence makes it simple for ideal clients who are unaware of your existence to find you, whether or not they are looking for what you have to offer.
Be seen as a legitimate business: 83% of people visit a store based on the web information. Before making a purchase, consumers consult several sources of information. Consumers and search engines alike will ignore you if you don’t present information about your company across all of these channels.
Market your business 24/7: People can discover, learn about, engage with, and contact you whenever it is convenient for them, no matter where they are in the buyer journey or what device they are using if you have a strong online presence set up.
Save money: All digital marketing platforms have data that shows you what’s working and what isn’t, allowing you to adjust your cash properly.
Increase your conversion rate: It takes an average of seven interactions with a company before a lead becomes a customer. Being visible across various platforms increases the likelihood of those interactions taking place sooner.
Earn Google’s trust: When it comes to ranking, Google considers more than simply your website. It examines your assets across the internet to see how consistent they are.
Perfect your buyer’s journey: 63% of all purchasing trips begin online. With a strong online presence, you can reach clients at all stages of their customer journey, including across several devices.
An upbeat conclusion
The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the digital and cultural upheaval that was already sweeping the business sector, paving the way for new opportunities in 2021 and beyond.
Despite the numerous economic hurdles posed by the epidemic, resilient, innovative, and entrepreneurial enterprises today have numerous possibilities to survive and prosper.
Building and managing your online presence will be critical to capturing this unique opportunity for growth by reaching more customers, analyzing your data, and opening up new revenue sources. The good news is that there are more low-cost, accessible options than ever before, with the potential for a high return on investment.
Being able to create massive online communities is now something I recognize as a useful skill. I learned a lot of my skills by doing and attempting them. Aside from that, I’ve been reading all I can about community development and how to engage people. Rather than using the channels naturally, I began to use them strategically. Due to my online popularity, I was able to secure various tasks and clients from all over the world.
