What does it mean to have a strong digital presence? Depending on who you are asking, the answer varies. Some may consider it as an overrated thing. While others may find it highly underrated. But the real meaning and importance can only be described from a marketer’s point of view.

Digital presence for business means the online existence of a business. It is basically how a business exists and showcases itself. When people search for your business, services, or company, this is the information they find on the internet. Digital presence includes two types of content. One that you can control and the other that you can’t control. For example, your website, logo, social media, media mentions, store or office locations, online reviews, ratings, directory listings, digital presence ads, etc.

A company’s digital presence consists of many different elements. These elements sum up the impression a brand makes online with the help of websites, search engine, content, and other digital presence media platforms. No matter what the case is, a user will always end up interacting with your digital presence.

With the increasing demand for online channels and technology. It is important for all types of businesses to create a digital presence. This can help raise brand awareness, engage target audiences, drive growth, and reach potential customers.

Reasons Why You Need To Build A Digital Presence?

The most commonly raised questions related to digital presence will be, why do you need a strong digital presence? And why is it important to have a digital presence? The answer to these particular questions is quite obvious. All the customers want to find a solution to their problems online. For this purpose, a company needs to have a digital presence. It will make it easier for them to find your information. Such as your company’s services, your details, and all the related information needed to contact you.

A strong digital presence of a company will provide an answer to all the user’s questions. Make sure you have a strong and significant digital presence. Also, make sure it is also a positive one. Because every single impression counts. However, if you already have a digital presence, there are multiple ways to boost it for a better outcome.

Ways To Boost Your Digital Presence

Having a digital presence, isn’t it? You can surely develop a solid digital presence marketing strategy that helps you reach your current goals. But it is worth investing even a second to secure your future marketing strategy. Why building a digital presence important?

There are more than 1 billion websites available on the internet today. It’s easy to get lost in this crowd. To draw your targeted audience’s attention, you have to boost your online digital presence. For this purpose, you may want to use various tools like blogs, websites, social media platforms, local search, YouTube channels, newsletters, offers, digital presence advertising, and others. Make sure you are using these tools while making them work together.

Think out of the box as the internet is already filled with websites using the same old strategies. This will not only engage users but also convince them to give your business a try. Here are some of the best tips to help you be more successful. And how to build a strong digital presence, in no time.

Email Marketing And Guest Posts

While talking about methods for building your digital presence, email marketing, and guest posts are on the top of the list. Out of all the new techniques, this one still remains tried and true. Email marketing is a more effective way of acquiring customers than social media. Because of the pandemic, the email open rate has increased by more than 16 percent. This proves that email is still one of the best ways to reach consumers.

It is a go-to recommendation as email marketing delivers an unmatched return on investment (ROI). However, it depends on your strategy to build a qualified email list. You also have an option to purchase email lists. But this approach is more likely to fail. Why? Mainly, because you will be sending emails to people who didn’t subscribe to receive emails in the first place.

You have to develop a successful email marketing strategy that motivates people to subscribe. For this purpose, you can use a few effective tricks. This includes offering a downloadable eBook or guide. Or even by promoting exclusive offers, providing a free tool that requires users to supply email, or updating the website to encourage people to sign-up for an email newsletter. 

All your focus should be on quality, not quantity. In the case of using an email management tool, you want to invest in subscribers that have a great chance of becoming your client.

For branding purposes, guest posts can help you gain exposure and earn credibility for your valuable content. A great opportunity is to become a guest writer for established websites like Entrepreneur, Inc or Forbes. Such sites have huge authority and a great number of audiences. If viewers enjoy your content, they will visit your website and follow you on social media. This can even lead to gaining potential customers.

Invest In Customer Persona Research

If you are a business owner, do you know your potential customers? What are they actually looking for and their requirements? Do you have an idea of which type of customers you want to connect with? Have you tried thinking from their perspective? One of the most valuable marketing investments is customer persona research. Not just for now, but for all the time. It is something that will always remain equally important.

A customer persona is a detailed representation of who your customer is. It is obtained by data-driven research. Understanding the person who is behind the buying decisions of your products or services. It helps to target a more high-value audience. It also helps in creating content, product development, and offer services according to the customer’s needs.

Getting a great customer persona is not an easy task. They don’t just appear by accident. You will have to invest a good amount of time in research. If you succeed in creating authentic and data-driven personas. You will be able to make choices for your business according to that information. It will give you better knowledge and understanding of your targeted audience’s wants and needs. In addition, you will also be able to understand your position in your niche more clearly.

To get valuable insights into your target customers; questionnaires, A/B testing, surveys, and usability tests might help. It is important to develop several customer personas to determine which is your best and consistent customer. And to also find the best ways to reach them with an effective and impactful marketing campaign.

Emphasize Your Brand’s Authority

For a successful business, interacting with your audience is crucial. This can be done by simply replying to them in their messages or comments. Your brand’s authority becomes stronger as you connect more deeply with your targeted customers. The audience must be rest assured that they can depend on you for any kind of latest industry news. To detect if your audience is liking the content you are posting is by comments and shares.

You are doing great if they are commenting on your posts. Or admiring your efforts and valuable content. The key is to be consistent with your posting whether it’s on social media or website. By providing the users with time-to-time relevant content, you will eventually build your brand’s authority. While also proving that you are conveying informative content and know what you are talking about.

Always look for opportunities to prove yourself and your company as an industry leader. Your brand’s authority is an element that has a major impact on SEO as well. For example; if you are publishing content on your site like blogs and don’t list it with well-written author bios, you are genuinely missing out on a golden opportunity. Just by implementing this small factor, you can create brand authority and additionally earn some easy SEO points.

Use Videos

Great content is the key to successful SEO. But producing stale content isn’t taking you anywhere in the industry. Internet is filled with blog articles and its competition is increasing, every minute. The market competition is already tough enough, and to make the cut you have to come up with the latest, informative and interesting content. As mentioned by professionals, good content marketing supports SEO and vice versa.

Video content is trending and holds immense potential for virtual brands. To produce new and unique content, video marketing might be the solution. Introduce attention-grabbing and relevant videos to your content to make an effective impact. This type of content is also highly watchable and shareable. Around 26% of smartphone users, watch online videos on a daily basis. In addition, 70% of users and buyers watch a video while purchasing a product or availing of a service.

The possibilities of creating video content are endless. You can use it for product demonstrations, promoting a product or service, how-to videos, facility tours, behind-the-scenes, “meet the team” interviews, tutorials, or for “about us”. This is a great way to boost your social media digital presence and SEO ranking.

In order to create professional videos for your site, you don’t need to hire a whole video department. Depending on your need and budget, you can avail of video creation services by video editing companies or software.

Engage With Your Audience

If you want to make some loyal and regular customers online, you need to engage with them. To gain new customers, use compelling content with eye-catching visuals. Engaging with your targeted audience doesn’t only help you understand their needs but also builds a stronger seller and buyer relationship.

Keep your followers updated with the smallest details regarding your business to build a stronger connection. The introduction of social media to the world has taken communication to a whole new level. The less activity on social media, the more likely you are to seem simply out of business. For best results, create a regular content schedule.

Analyze if updating your social channel is worth your time. Choose social channels accordingly that make sense for your business and are being used by your targeted audience. To increase your chances of success, improve your communication with potential customers and focus on networking.

Writing a blog post, posting it on your social media accounts, and asking your follower to read it, isn’t enough. You need to engage with your target audience. It’s easy and can be done by just asking about their experience or opinion on the topic of your blog post. Acknowledge your audience and respond to them if they leave a review or comment.

In case of any negative reviews, take the time to respond. Apologize to them for the inconvenience and offer to contact them privately to resolve the issue further. Try staying in contact with the user as long as the matter is not resolved as it will leave a bad impression.

Website Optimization

Not having a website in the year 2021 is a major oversight. According to research, 90% of consumers search for products or services online. A brand’s website makes the whole experience a lot easier. A large number of small businesses don’t have a website because of many reasons like lack of skills or resources, etc.

As a business owner, one needs to understand the importance of a website in today’s world. Either it’s for a big organization or a small business. Having a rapid and simple website is important. Nothing fancy or complicated, even a simple site with a few necessary pages to showcase your work will be enough. From the design perspective, try to follow the latest brand design trends to give it an updated look. If you don’t find it necessary for your type of business; build a site to display your work, contact info, testimonials, biography, and a blog.

To develop a website, there are several CMS sites including HubSpot, Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace which you can use. For businesses that completely rely on their website for sales or contacting new customers/clients, some elements matter. The most important one is to optimize it for a mobile-friendly experience and quick loading along with updated information and optimize URLs. The majority of people use smartphones to perform searches, so a mobile-friendly website is crucial.

SEO is another effective way to boost your digital presence. With the help of SEO, you can optimize your site to appear in Google search results or maybe even at the top of them, too. You will have to optimize your website by investing time in Off-page SEO, On-page SEO, and Technical SEO. Some things that you will have to do are researching keywords, auditing your website, using keywords in the website’s content, producing consistent content, building relationships with bloggers and publishers, and improving your website usability.

Expand To Different Social Media Platforms

More than 50% of people use social media to research their next buy. You don’t need to have a social media digital presence on every single platform. But before choosing social media channels for your business, do proper research on where the majority of your target audience is. Create a profile and get active on those platforms where you have the majority of your audience.

Most commonly, a business will want an active account on these social media platforms; Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. However, it’s best to do your own research of your audience and their social media preference. You can learn more about your audience by checking where your competitors are most active. Also, by researching popular industry sites and from which social media platform they get the most engagement.

Social media is a great way to build credibility and reputation. More importantly, to showcase your brand. Whenever potential customers research your brand, the first place they’ll look for you is social media. They will search for the content you are posting on social media, what people are saying about you, reviews and ratings. Dead social media accounts reflect poorly on your business. You can either remove or fix them by updating with the new and latest content.

Along with just having a social media digital presence, you also want to be active on these platforms. Connect with your followers, stay active, share relevant images, videos, and articles. The latest feature of live videos is also another great option. Make the most out of it by using live videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Not only it is a great way to personalize your business but to also enhance relationships with customers and prospects.

Use Google My Business

With the pandemic and current situation of the world, the use of the internet has arisen. People are finding new ways to avail every small opportunity to continue their life like normal. No matter if they are vendors or consumers. One should never underestimate the potential of web directories. They allow businesses to generate more traffic on their site and reach their targeted audience easily. It also helps you rank in the relevant local searches.

A large number of buyers are searching for online businesses which are open. When searching online, they look for information like contact numbers, open hours, store location, etc. It’s an advantage for businesses to have a Google My Business account. You can also look into other web directories like Bing Places, Yelp and Yellow Pages. This way, it will be convenient for consumers to find their information. It displays all the necessary details including address, photos, hours, phone number, email, website, and even reviews.

To gain success through web directories, it is best to choose the one that adds real value to your online business. Web directories not only promote themselves to website owners but also advertises themselves to potential customers. However, by no means, it’s an easy task but you can always get help from experts in small business branding like Blue Fountain Media.

If any company already has one, it’s important for them to update it. By updating it from time to time, it will reflect any changes made due to COVID-19. But remember to change it when normal operations and timing resume.

Perform Digital Marketing Audits

For any business, it’s important to keep track of what’s working and what’s not. A digital presence marketing audit is the first step in a foundational review. By performing this audit, you will have an overview of your site, email marketing strategy, social media channels, and online collateral.

You don’t need to hire someone or buy software to do this. A digital presence marketing audit can be performed internally with your team. Or in case if it’s not possible for one, they can outsource it to an agency partner like Marketing Essentials. To develop future strategies and plans, it is important to know where your digital presence asset stands at the moment.

When performing a digital presence marketing audit, every agency should keep a few things in mind. Firstly, make sure that your brand is consistent across all social channels, with the posting, style, theme, captions, links, messaging, colors, voice, and logos. In order to improve your conversion rates and SEO, analyze your website data and optimize the front and back end.

Make a record of how the posts on social media and website, email strategy, and other digital presence efforts are performing. Always keep a check on how and when these efforts are converting visitors into leads/customers and make recommendations on how you can improve it. You can also complete an in-depth competitive analysis to see how the company’s digital presence stacks up against the top competitors.

Your next move, strategy, or plans for the growth of your business is completely dependent on the result of this audit. If somehow this audit doesn’t identify any key areas that can be optimized, or if it’s not properly done, your end result will be a huge disappointment. Every step taken during and after an audit will have an impact on the progress of your business.

Improve Conversion Rates For Digital Presence

If you are not seeing any result on your website, it’s probably time to rebuild or renovate it. Not many understand the importance and impact of a website on a business’s conversion rate. But even by adjusting a poorly performing landing page or offer, you will be able to see immediate results.

Change is good. Enhancing the performance or display of a website on a weekly or monthly basis is even better. A customer is more likely to get bored of seeing the same old content and design on a website, every time he opens it. This eventually results in them clicking out faster. Attention-grabbing content and display on a site play a huge role in improving conversion rates.

Ask yourself if you really need to be asking a potential customer to fill out 37 form fields just to buy a product? Or just the basic information like full name, email address, contact number, and address will do the work? No one likes to fill out numerous irrelevant form fields, surely not even you. The more elongated forms you make for your customer, the less likely they are to complete the first and most important step of connecting with your business.

CTAs or calls to action is an essential and easy way to improve conversion rates. Examine each and every page of your site to ensure the display of CTAs that stands out. Make sure when a customer reaches the end of content, you are motivating them to perform the desired action. This can be anything, from asking them to contact you to watching a video or others.

It’s always better to use a CTA rather than giving the user multiple options of what to see and do next. The more options a customer has in front of him. The more likely he is, not to take any action at all. Because as humans, we prefer not to make a choice than making a wrong one. Consider going over the options you have provided in your Navbar and sub-menus. If necessary, remove all the additional options which are not needed.

Protect Your Customer’s Data

For a successful business, you need to gain the trust of your customer. They should not even have to think twice before sharing their personal information with you or before making a purchase. This is something that plays a major part in building a healthy seller and buyer relationship.

With the rapid increase in cybercrime, every online business needs to prioritize the protection of their customer’s data. Even large organizations like Target, eBay and Uber are a victim to cybercrime. It doesn’t matter if you are a renowned brand or a small business, the need for top-notch security is an all-time necessity for all online sites.

According to research, these ransomware acts are increasing by 350% annually. Out of which 61% of breach victims are small businesses with less than a thousand employees. It is quite simple for cybercriminals to have access to your data. You can always check how the security firm’s publicity highlights this situation and raise awareness.

For any organization with no matter how many numbers of employees have, it’s important to beef up online security. The government is also stepping in to help businesses secure their information. Every customer needs to know their information is safe with you and will not be misused. By having proper online security, you can gain the benefit of promoting yourself as a business that customers are comfortable interacting with.

Run Regular Tests For Digital Presence

To get the maximum benefit from your digital presence, you have to ensure your website’s performance. Every minor detail of your website matters. But the most important one is your site speed. Its importance keeps increasing by every time Google updates its algorithm.

A viewer expects a fast-loading page and even a few-second delay can result in them clicking out of the website. Your Google ranking can also be affected by this factor, as Google wants to deliver the best possible results to its users. This problem can be caused by many things like giant images and videos or server issues. To fix this issue, you can get suggestions from Google’s PageSpeed Insights or HubSpot Website Grader.

Any organization can benefit from conversion rate optimization (CRO). With the help of CRO, you can experiment different versions of your site. This ranges from page layouts, product images, CTA text, button colors, and many others. By testing these different versions, you can find out which one works best for you. It sure does take some extra time and effort, but it’s all worth it.

For example; if someone is looking to increase product sales, conducting a CRO test may help discover a more compelling CTA, which can lead to more future purchases. Many businesses run A/B tests for this purpose. In an A/B test experiment, you can change a single page element. Such as, “Buy Now” instead of an “Add to Cart” CTA. If the conversion rate changes, you can easily give credit to the CTA.

Digital Presence Helps Create Valuable And Information Content

As said by someone, “Content is king”. It surely is and all online businesses can take some notes from this saying. Every small piece of content is present on the internet today. And in the future contributes to the online presence of a site along with the business that publishes them.

The more content you produce, the more chances you have to show up online. Online digital presence is just not about existing. But showing up online in search engines, sites like YouTube, and on social media. When producing any type of content, you need to strategize on what sites or places you want it to show up. Always prioritize those sites where you have a major number of targeted audiences.

Content marketing is the most recommended way to establish a brand and for its growth. You can gain potential customers by producing content that is informative, relevant, and engaging. The content produced by a brand should reflect a purpose. Such as its core value while also adding value to it. By producing high-quality content, you can gain your chances of getting better ranked on Google.

There are many benefits of a better google ranking. You can enhance your online digital presence, attract more sales and increase your brand growth and traffic. Content marketing generates three times more leads as compared to traditional marketing strategies.

To create high-quality content, you can use these few tips. Research keywords data and search trends to understand what the audience is looking for and needs. Being consistent is the key to content marketing. You need to determine and schedule your postings and how often you will post new content in a week or month. Decide on a content format like a guide or blog post. But remember you can always make the most out of both. Read more about content marketing strategy and guest blogging.

Conclusion

With the advancement and increasing use of the internet, the competition in every industry is growing at a fast pace. Use these tips and tricks strategically. It will help to build and boost your online digital presence, create brand awareness and develop a strong reputation in the industry. It’s not an easy task and requires effort, determination, and consistency. You may or may not see results immediately, but over time it will definitely pay off. Check out our latest blog post.