How To Maximize Your Online Presence

A business’s online presence is one of the most valuable assets when it comes to growing and thriving in today’s culture. The first time a new consumer is exposed to a business is often online, through social media or exposure to a company’s website. The quality of your web presence brings eyes to your company, informs consumers of your product or services, and strengthens your reputation and notoriety.

Optimizing your online presence can draw the interest of new customers and generate a steady stream of traffic and engagement. Almost any modern business has an online marketing strategy, but it is rare to have one operating to the level that ensures continuous new referrals. 

A strong presence online can mean constant attention and careful monitoring. Failing to put in the effort and time that is necessary will lead your business to losing potential customers and damaging your visibility and reputation. 

In the era of social media, your online image is paramount. Building a positive brand image and maintaining it is vital to any business, whether they are established or still trying to make a name for themselves. 

Neglecting one avenue of a business’s online presence can undermine your potential for growth and brand loyalty. Staying on top of everything can be a challenge and standing out can be difficult as well. It is essential to broaden your strategies and think outside the box. Diversifying how your business exists online can be the difference-maker. Here are some solid ideas to consider in capitalizing on your online potential.

Strategy And Goal Management

You need to know your goals, and continuously and consistently monitor your progress towards them. No matter what you choose to do towards building your presence, it is necessary to evaluate at each step the efficacy of every element of your online strategy. 

Document all goals and all actions taken. Compare and contrast your results. This meticulous data monitoring and management will definitely pay off. Schedule regular looks at how efficiently your strategies are performing. You need to know if what you are trying is paying off, and if something isn’t working, frequent monitoring and analysis can keep you from losing time and investment in futile strategies. At the very least, this can help you adjust your approach and possibly even show the shortcomings that are leading to these strategies not working for you. Adaptation can be a powerful attribute in the digital marketing sector. 

With serious time and consideration put into the strategy stage, your online presence doesn’t have to just be about necessity. Instead, your online strategy can be an active and integral part of your business’s growth and success.

A Strong Home Base Is Key. Build Your Website with Care

Your website is a central access point to everything you have to offer. This home base allows for your customers to contact you, interact with your page and business, consume your content, and link to everywhere else your business exists. 

Web design can be such an important stage in building a successful web presence. The value of using an established website design company cannot be overstated. Donny Escolastico, a lead art director at MAXBURST, a New York digital agency specializing in website redesign for growing businesses and brands, said “you only get one shot to make that perfect impression on your potential customer, so make it count by designing and building your organizations web presence wisely”.

A business website should be clear and direct while at the same time have a balance of engaging pull. Have a clear and understandable message about what you offer, and why it is of value. Too much clutter can drastically affect your bounce rate. This is the percentage of visitors that very quickly leave your page by instantly closing or pressing back on their browser. If you can’t hold a viewer to your page long enough to entice them with your content, then driving eyes to your website is ineffective. 

Another crucial element that an effective web design company can offer you is making sure your website is optimized for the best user experience possible. Make sure that your page is viewable on all devices and investing in a quality web host can ensure shorter loading times. 

If you are just starting out, or even if you have a strong presence already, simplicity can be your friend. Content and features can be important but only if it is easy to navigate and use. With a larger company and a larger website, there are many advanced features that could be very valuable to your customers, such as live help chat, mobile apps, or interactive content.  

Strengthen Your Search Engine Optimization Rankings

Everyone with a business knows the importance of search engine optimization. Your SEO plays one of the most important roles in bringing customers to your website. This can also be one of the most intricate and complicated elements of managing a web presence. 

In 2018, HubSpot’s State Of Inbound Survey showed that 61% say their top marketing priority is improving SEO and growing their organic presence. It is clear that the value of strong SEO rankings is only increasing. 

Analytics can be a great asset to figuring out how to target SEO results. Knowing what is working can come from understanding who is accessing your site, and from where. Another valuable tool is the Google Keyword Planner. This can help you find what keywords your website ranks with. 

Content Is King

Your online presence has many facets. How it’s made accessible, how easy it is to consume, and how quickly it can spread and grow in the marketplace. All these elements are powered and held together by one thing: content. 

Everything about your company that exists online is your content. Anything that can be consumed, interacted with, discovered, or shared is all your content, and your content is what gives your web presence value. 

Relevant, engaging, and informative content is the premiere factor in building a brand identity and engaging a following. In the world of social media, valuable and engaging content will lead to being shared through people’s pages and distributed for you in their circles, and their circle’s, circles. Also, the more your content is engaged with all over the internet, the higher ranked your site will be. 

Direct Customer Engagement. Is Email Still Important?

Email marketing is not dead. Really, it’s anything but dead. Email still proves to be an incredibly valuable tool for customer engagement. In fact, studies have shown that email is still more effective in building a customer base than social media. This may seem hard to believe but the thing is, email grew and took hold over decades, and over 91% of consumers in the US still use their email daily. 

Effective use of email marketing is all about targeting, timing and organization. It can be very important to organize what you send based on who you are sending to. New customers or long-time subscribers should have different approaches and be offered different content. Custom messages, special offers, contests, or asking for direct customer feedback. Many tools are at your disposal with email marketing. Knowing what to send and when to send it is really all about careful analysis and understanding your customer base. 

Online Advertising Investment

Of all strategies to power your online presence, online advertising can often be one of the most likely to be a sure thing. It’s definitely an investment, and not just of money. Google recommends 2-3 months of advertising minimum to see results. Ads can be very effective in building leads.

Ads through social media can be an important marketing avenue as well, and one great quality of advertising through social media pages is that your ability to target ads is greatly increased. Advertising through social media almost always offers targeting options. You can tailor your marketing to be directed by age demographics, ethnicities, sex, interests, and even sometimes involvement with competitors.

Know Your Platforms

This can be invaluable, especially for social media campaigns. Using data metrics, it is easy to see information about who favors what platforms. While Facebook is still the leader across the board, Instagram is more popular among college aged audiences, Snapchat is popular with youth, and Pinterest has a high female demographic. These are just some small statistics that can be used to target your marketing specifically. 

Inter-brand Networking

Building relationships with other brands is a great way to spread your influence. Your ability to spread brand awareness of other related or complementary businesses will also be appreciated by your own audience. Guest posting, blogging, and collaborative content are all valuable things to be involved in.

An online presence is a complicated thing to build and support. There are so many things to think about and the field is growing and evolving every day. With careful planning and strategy, a strong social media presence, an investment in presentation and advertising, valuable content, and building strong relationships, you are sure to gain a strong foothold in the online marketing sphere.