When was the last time you searched for details for a product or service on your phone contact book? Can’t remember… Right?
When was it that you searched on the internet? Maybe, a few hours ago.
That’s the power of going online with a business irrespective of nature and size, a business must have a strong online presence. This is extremely important especially, for the small business units functioning within a limited region. It becomes much harder to tackle the local competition and this is where an online presence proves to be valuable.
The internet world itself has evolved too much than what it was during its initial days. The discovery of social media platforms, those were just a medium for entertainment and instant contact with one another; this facility of touching one another virtually has proved to be a massive success for businesses worldwide.
Today, companies don’t just have an attractive, informative website with complete details; they also have established their presence on the social media forums that suit their requirements the best.
Talking of the online presence, the number of small businesses going active online has increased especially after the pandemic situation. This is because social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (In the case of visually rich businesses) are the best mediums to express and exhibit the very latest that these businesses have to offer.
Again; the narrowing business competition has called for an online era that can only be growing further.
Living in such a viral environment, anybody who is doing business and thinks that online promotions and activities are a waste of time and money must have self-declared of being happy with no new business opportunities.
As mentioned, small businesses are keener to have an effective online presence for more than one reason- helping them towards getting to their goals and re-setting them at a higher level for the future.
Enquiries for small business SEO have risen tremendously in the last few years; especially after the vast spread usage of mobile internet search facility and individual applications dedicated to all kinds of brands; big or small.
Here are few essential pointers that explain the importance of online presence especially for the success of small business entities:
Makes a Business Presentable and Accessible:
Being online with your business enables you to stay up 24×7 in the virtual form, any potential client searching for a product or service similar to what you offer is most likely to find you in the search results and there you have an opportunity to make instant profits. Moreover, being on the social media platforms helps you create a theme for your business and make it more presentable without spending a bomb.
Building a Unique Brand and Audience:
Unlike in the physical store format where the promotional scope is limited; social media pages present another special occasion where you can shout out the offers and new launches. Even being a small business unlimited scope to promote your business. Don’t forget the festive seasons, your business anniversary and can attract new customers, hence growing your clientele…. Smells like Success. Right?
Did you know: 78% of consumers love brands that use social media network
Reviews:
Collecting positive reviews is found to be a very effective way to promote small-scale business. For most, reviews have worked as a word of mouth promotion, encouraging the buyers’ decision making and getting fresh business just through past customer experience. If you use customer reviews and ratings for search engine optimization for your company, you will gather huge traffic on your website.
Ways to strengthen the online presence for your small business:
Following are essential ways to have a successful online presence that helps small and medium-sized businesses to flourish.
Go Mobile:
Having a mobile application, especially for a small to medium-sized business unit is inevitable nowadays. A website, no matter how fancy and good with its functionality cannot suffice until it is mobile friendly. Its usability has to be according to the mobile screen setup and thus getting the technicalities right is important.
This is only possible when the company opts for a reliable SEO agency; SEO for small business may sound like a simple, basic project but it has its own challenges based on several elements such as the keywords to be focused on, the buyers’ persona of the target audience and the demography that is to be catered to.
Stronger Content Marketing: Use Keyword:
Try sharing your story in a way that interests people to know further, content marketing has many ways of promoting your business. Agencies performing digital marketing for small businesses have risen in their numbers; especially after the COVID spread; businesses are functioning in the virtual world. Meetings and other procedures are being conducted on Zoom and other online platforms.
Digital marketing for small business units is enabling greater interaction with their clients, not just that; it has opened a broad gateway to attract target audiences from all over the internet. It has also helped in bettering the user experience as almost every action is taken online through the swiftly maintained website or an ultra personalized application.
Build Trust and Reliability:
A big number of 56% of customers aren’t interested in buying if the provider doesn’t have an online presence. This is how important it has become to go live with a website and maintain it along with the additional facilities such as chatbox, subscription forms, review corners and of course an app for instant accessibility.
SEO for small business runners has picked up the pace, as they need to have a particular focus based on their niche audience and more importantly, the location that’s bringing them the chunk of the business. Varied SEO implementations also enable an organic presence and optimizing targeted keywords according to the niche business pushes the company website upwards on the search engine result pages.
Conclusion:
So, maintaining a basic website isn’t enough to stay in the competitive world of business today, it is only fair to keep updating the website and adding support to it through social media pages and applications in order to get the best yields of small, yet an effective business brand.
Author Bio
Kiara McColl is a content manager at Clickmatix digital marketing agency, where she gets to do what she loves doing- writing and managing content with smart digital marketers in the company. She also has expertise in web marketing, search engine optimisation, social media, affiliate marketing. Her strong passion for technology always drives her to explore the changing trends in the digital industry and making people know about it through her blogs.