With over 81% of people going to the internet as their first port-of-call when researching something, its crucial you have a good, strong online profile!
Many businesses think a good business card and a few ads in the local paper cuts the mustard, but unfortunately many businesses not keeping relevant with the times are finding themselves acquiring less new clients.
As the population moves towards embracing technology more and more each day, many businesses need to start focusing sharply on their profile through the web.
Here are 5 things you can do that’ll help improve your online presence.
1. Get your Google Business Page Setup
Still, many businesses fail to get their businesses listed on Google My Business. It’s free! You need to use this service.
Go to business.google.com
Setup your Google Business page and add as MUCH information as possible to this page. Then set a weekly schedule reminder to come back and update the page with a new post. This post can be informative / educational or perhaps an offer.
If you can attract good quality reviews, and do regular updates then you will find your listing appearing higher up the pecking order.
2. Start sending updates & offers
Chances are, your customers probably get a lot of emails from competitors who offer a very similar product or service to what you do. Therefore its very important your business keeps in regular contact with your customers.
While we all hate being bombarded with spam email, considering giving your customers a bi-weekly email update that highlights some valuable information they can utilise.
If you’re for instance in accounting. Rather than waffle on about how one of your staff members won an award at bowls; focus on something that adds value to your CLIENT. For instance: Talk about “How clients can save an extra several thousand dollars in tax each year by doing X”.
Email newsletters don’t have to be BORING, nor do they have to be a big SALES pitch… include quality, informative content your clients will appreciate & possibly ask you to do and help with!
3. Get Your Blog On!
One of the very few things most businesses do is create valuable blog articles. (Aren’t I good!)
It’s important you write useful, informative blogs and articles for your clients and potential clients to read. This information can be simple education just like this article here where we go through “5 things you can improve on”. But there are many topics any business, in any industry can write about.
Here’s some examples to build your businesses exposure online:
- What to avoid when doing X
- What you should consider before doing X
- How this person, saved $X, by doing X
- Why so many businesses fail, because they don’t do X
- How doing X will build your business by X
These blog articles can help BOOST your website ranking in Google. Because you’re adding valuable information to the web that is informative and well written. While you can probably tell my articles aren’t perfect, they’re still informative and understandable. You don’t have to be an author to blog. You don’t have to write a novel either, however for the best results I suggest articles between 1000 and 1500 words.
4. Setup Links On Other Sites
This is not widely used by most businesses, but it can be a great way to get your name out there to people interested in your product and service.
This is quite a broad subject. But basically it involves asking people: your clients, your suppliers and other stakeholders if they would put your link / business on their website. This is called a ‘backlink’ in technical terms.
Backlinking is a great way to build up a network of links to your site from other relevant business websites; meaning that more & more people can find you through other websites on the net BUT it also has a very strong power in that it can help build your websites ranking up on search engines like Google.
So more backlinks is a contributing factor to your website appearing higher up in Google Search results!
It can be hard to get other webmaster to include your link on their page - but going back to the old “add-value” adage, try offering a complimentary article or value-add content that can help that other businesses customers.
For example - if you’re in Law, and you want to get listed on a large accounting firms website. You could do a deal where you write them a brief but high quality article on how to (for example) “Best structure a trust for maximum tax benefits”.
These types of articles, again, don’t only add significant value to the person reading them, but it also helps you get a back link AND furthermore, makes you look like an expert in your field by offering such valuable information! (And hopefully you are an expert!)
5. Get a Digital Marketing Strategy
Yes it costs money, but you need to spend money wisely to make money in some cases. Digital marketing consists of several key focuses that can help you get business feeding from the web therefore raising your profile.
Common strategies include using tools such as:
- Google Ads
- Facebook & Instagram Ads
- LinkedIn Ads
- Direct E-Mail
Basically you are wanting to ‘buy’ people to come to your site. Now, we don’t want to just buy anyone! If we’re in Law, we probably don’t want some 13 year old kid who loves Fortnite - so with Digital Marketing we have special methods to ‘target’ the right group of people as well as show in the right places, at the right time.
If you can execute this properly, you can significantly increase your businesses profile when people search for what you do.
Just simply Google search or listen to my podcasts to learn more about Digital Marketing.
Look! Nothing comes easy or free unfortunately. If you want to get some better results for your business online - you need to invest time OR you need to invest your money into getting other experts to help you.
With all or even just a couple of the above, you can improve and lift your businesses online profile.
