How To Establish An Online Presence On A Shoestring Budget
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Almost every company wants to create a stronger online presence, but most don’t know where to begin. As it’s pretty difficult to go viral, creating a strong foundation online takes quite a bit of time and effort where the payout can be well-worth what you put in. And if you’ve been considering how you can step up your online game, then I’ve provided a few helpful tips on how to get started. Check them out below:
Assess Your Branding
First and foremost, if you’re going to be doing more promotion online, then you need to have a solid brand to match. After all, we see tons of different brands on our Facebook or Instagram, with most barely grabbing our attention. The reason for this? They don’t represent an ethos or mission that we can gravitate towards, which is one of the most challenging parts.
With branding, the most important element is that it resonates with your audience under a collective narrative or mission. In fact, as noted by LucidPress, 64 percent of consumers cite shared values as the reason they have a relationship with a brand, which goes to show how much importance this weighs. If you feel like your brand is somewhat lackluster, try using an online logo creator or hiring a consultant to ensure these elements are done right before you make any other moves toward promotion.
Get Social With It
After you’ve made sure that your outward image is looking top-notch, it’s time to start getting out there and promoting yourself, where social media is one of the first places you should go. With social, you not only have a medium that enables you to advertise for free but additionally cultivates a following and community. And no matter if you currently are active on social for your brand or not, there’s a science to getting people to trust and follow your company.
Believe it or not, people genuinely like to have a relationship with brands on social, because as noted by Hootsuite, approximately 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one brand on social media. And for you capitalize on numbers like that, the name of the game is engagement, which is mostly the likes and comments you receive on a post. Make it a habit to not only be posting regularly but commenting on other people’s post as well, essentially acting as if this was similar to your personal account. While it might take a little bit of legwork at first, the more you continuously grind at it, the better off your chances of success will be long-term.
Don’t Forget About SEO
Another tremendous digital marketing tool has to be SEO, which is the primary point of entry for most of our research. According to Search Engine Journal, 93 percent of online experiences begin with search, which goes to show how huge of an opportunity for discovery this is for your brand. However, as powerful a tool as SEO can be, it’s also something that requires quite a bit of maintenance to establish.
With SEO, the name of the game is how niche you can define your services. For example, if I’m the only coffee shop in town that serves breakfast early, then owning the search term “coffee+shop+breakfast+(name of the town)” might be advantageous. Furthermore, trying to hone in on this for your business will take some trial and error, which is why it’s smart to acclimate yourself to testing strategies to ensure you’re getting the most out of the efforts you put in. Because although SEO can be a great opportunity to take advantage of, that’s not without a pretty serious amount of efforts to build on, which if your persistent at, will be well-worth the effort.
Email Is Still Effective Too
Finally, if there’s one medium that’s still wildly effective at keeping up your online presence, it has to be with email. As noted by Constant Contact, for every dollar spent on email, $38 is seen in return, which goes to show that despite being a medium many of us dread receiving, can show some real results. Which, if you’re not familiar with email campaigns, then the practice can be much easier than you might imagine.
With email, your number one mission should always be consistency. Try to set out a timeframe when you can send email blasts (i.e., weekly or bi-weekly) as this will help you keep up with the amount you need to distribute. Furthermore, try looking into programs like SendGrid or MailChimp not only to keep track of your efforts but to help with design templates as well. Although I understand email is something that’s not always looked at as the most attractive form of digital marketing, it is one of the most effective, and it’s something you should be considering.
What are some strategies you’ve used to develop an online presence? Comment with your answers below!
