This means that businesses will have to think of a global audience no matter how small the size. Catering to the wider world of customers increases every business’s scope and brings in considerable revenue. However, it also brings customer journey mapping and personalization of the customer roadmap for people from various demographics.
While large business enterprises have the bandwidth to research, invest, and execute a massive online brand persona, it is almost impossible for small businesses to pull it off. So, what can small companies do to find success online? Here are a few tips that would help you attain your online goals seamlessly and with a smaller investment!
Build a Business Website
In the online business world, it is your website that acts as the face of your business. Your customers form impressions about your product or service even before interacting with your business by looking at your website. A recent study suggests that it takes around 0.05 seconds or 50 milliseconds for users to form an impression about a business once they take a look at a website. So, a good website needs to be able to engage its users instantly. And with the growing number of mobile and tablet users, you must optimize your website for all devices. That way, your customers can engage with your platform from numerous devices without hassle.
A perfect website should include numerous key elements like a responsive design, engaging layout, enhance the user experience, and tell a story! While it is great to use images and videos, remember that around 39% of the users will stop engaging with a website if it takes too long to load. So, make sure your website engagingly tells your brand story without letting the users spend too much time waiting for the pages to load.
Optimize Your Business
Building an engaging website and having a strong social media presence is essential. However, it is also important to make sure your customers find you with ease. And for that, you will have to invest in on-page and off-page SEO, get quality backlinks, add quality-organic content, and enhance the page loading speed. Spending time understanding the website analytics, traffic source, and bounce rates will significantly enhance your website ranking.
Hiring a professional SEO marketer would help you evaluate your website’s concerns, perform a competitor analysis, and enhance your website’s ranking. Remember that your website’s goal is not just to serve as a platform for business online, but also to create awareness, generate new leads, and engage the users throughout the entire customer journey process.
Blogs and Online Forums
Talking about your business on your website, social media, and emails is a great way to reach out to customers. It sure helps them understand your product or solution, but that is not enough in most cases. To earn the trust of your users, you should communicate with them without the motive of selling. Always address the user’s concern of “what’s in it for me?” before expecting them to buy your product or service. One great way to do this is by having a blog where you address the industry’s key concerns, possible problems that your customers might face, and the scope for growth in the future.
It would help if you regularly contributed to online platforms and discussions. This way, your customers would hear about you from your ads and social media posts, and forum discussions. Once you establish thought leadership, it would be easy for your business to drive customers to the website and convert them. Remember, your customers need to trust that you understand their problem before believing that you have a solution.
Build A Strong Social Presence
Until a decade ago, social media was a place where long-lost friends and relatives re-connected. However, now things have changed. People prefer to have their brand interactions through social media, making it important for your business to have a strong social media presence.
With over 53 percent of the world population on social media, it is almost non-negotiable for businesses of all sizes to have a strong social media presence. Recent research suggests that around 79 percent of the customers would expect a brand to respond within a day to their social media posts. In comparison, 29 percent believe that social media is the easiest way to communicate with brands.
However, there is one more important statistic than all of this that makes it crucial for brands to have a strong social media presence. While the posts you make on your social handles and the messages you respond to are important, we could say that it is just the tip of the iceberg. If you wish to have an unbiased opinion of your brand, you should invest some time and resources into social listening to understand your brand’s audience.
Research by Stackla suggests that around 79 percent of the users would let the user-generated content on a brand influence their buying decision. And that’s a number that organizations cannot afford to miss!
Remember that you put your heart and soul into building this business, and with the right guidance, you could march it in the path of success. Building a strong online presence and investing in building a credible online reputation are stepping stones in achieving this dream.
So, make sure you put in as much time and effort into branding your business online as you would in offline marketing. We hope the tips we shared here would come in handy and help you take the baby steps in the path to success. Remember that success does not happen overnight, but you would soon be a pioneer in your business space with consistent effort.
