Online marketing doesn’t end with just creating a website alone. You have to exert all kinds of effort to make your website well known and established online.
Every day new technologies are being developed and it’s important that as a business owner, CEO or the person responsible for your company’s marketing, you keep up with the advances and changes. It’s not enough just to build a website that publishes resourceful content. You really have to distribute your helpful content in places where your prospects are located.
The key to this strategy is getting found online where your prospects might be searching. Your potential customers or clients should be able to easily find you because of the placement of your content. But how do you establish a better online presence?
Let’s start with a well-designed and better developed website. Appearance is not everything, but it can be a great contribution to set the professional “tone” for prospects. Your functionally, well-designed website needs to be appealing to keep your visitors interested, engaged, and wanting to come back again for more!
1) Know how you want your business to be known Is your brand recognizable? You should know what your prospective customers or clients want in order for them to choose you among the variety of competitors in your marketplace. It is important that they clearly see your business as the only answer to their needs and wants. Better branding will make your business more identifiable than your competitors in the market, and makes it much easier for them to find and recognize you online.
2) Publish great quality content with targeted keywords and phrases Always keep in mind that the excessive use of keywords is a detriment to you by search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others. Be sure that you incorporate your keywords and phrases sensibly without compromising the quality of your content. This will also help improve your search engine (SEO) ranking. A high search engine ranking will certainly improve your chances for getting found online.
3) Drive traffic , generate leads and convert leads to sales Once you have an appealing, relevant and “sticky” website people can go to for their searching needs, website traffic will come (and stay)! The next step therefore is for you to turn these visitors into customers, and these customers into sales. To do this, make sure that your website has a “call to action” in order for your visitors to move to the next step. Your call to action should be relevant, specific and it must encourage them to respond. It’s also a good idea to reward them for responding. You could reward them with a free download of valuable information, access to a “private” area of your website or something else to thank them for taking action. Once they respond, you’ll likely have sales you never experienced before. When you begin a system of moving prospects smoothly through this process, you’re influencing your industry and beginning to capture a larger segment of the marketplace – for good!
4) Use social media to interact and engage with your audience More and more people are engaging in social communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter to research, find their needs and connect with other like-minded people. Because of this, social media communities are the best place to position your business while educating, informing and empowering prospects about your business. Become regularly involved in the social media networks where your prospects “hang out”, and take the time necessary to interact and become involved in their questions, comments and discussions. It’s a great way of advertising and presenting your business in a “soft sell” way, while making your products or services more accessible for your audience. It’s also a sure way of getting found online.
Establishing a better online presence can be done by following tried and true steps that take time, effort and patience, but the fruit of your labor will surely be rewarding. An established online presence will position you above your competitors, and make your company a highly recognized and trusted brand that people will want to buy from and share with others.
