Countless business owners believe that consumers know about them simply because they’re online. While this would be awesome in so many ways, this couldn’t be any further from the truth. There’s a darn good reason why a small handful of brands flat-out dominate the first page of Google SERPs. Said businesses enhance their online presence by optimizing their content. You can do the same and build your online presence too.
Furthermore, they optimize their content on a regular basis. These days, it doesn’t really matter if you’re an eCommerce shop or a brick-and-mortar store. This is because 98% of consumers use the internet to find a business in our current age. This figure alone is more than enough reason to improve your brand’s online presence. Without further adieu, here are eight tips that will help build your online presence and overall brand.
1.) Make a website to start building your business’s online presence
The first step towards building your business’s online presence is to develop a highly optimized website. Your website is the heart and soul of your online presence, so it flat out needs to dominate. Your marketing efforts, which aim to drive traffic to your site, would be in vain if your site is subpar. Think of it like tracking down the end of a rainbow only to find an empty pot. Your website needs to be a pot that is overflowing with gold. If you design your website well, you’ll find that it will do most of the heavy lifting for you. This is especially true if you construct an inbound strategy geared towards guiding prospects through the buyer’s journey.
However, a website is far more than a means to convert prospects into customers. It is vital that your website makes an indelible first impression if you hope to build your business’s online presence. Furthermore, your site should showcase your brand’s personality and vision, and boost your firm’s credibility. A well-crafted website can also connect you with your target audience, establish trust, and forge customer relationships. Lastly, the primary objective of any website is to help you stand out from the rest of the crowd.
It is critical that your website features a few essential elements if it is to attract, engage, and retain customers. A few of these elements include:
- A clear description of who you are
- User-friendly experience
- Strategically placed CTAs
- Overall aesthetically pleasing
- Showcase customer testimonials
- Clearly displayed contact information
- Numerous means of communication – email, social media, phone & live chat to name a few
2. Create value to improve your online presence
Creating and providing value for your customers is all about improving their experience with your business.
Providing above-average customer value benefits your business in numerous ways, such as:
- Gaining your customer’s trust and increasing your brand loyalty
- Encouraging word-of-mouth marketing
- Increased likes & shares across social media platforms
All of the above benefits are great ways to build your business’s presence online.
According to Hubspot, we create value by being customer-centric and focusing on our customers rather than solely on selling.
There are countless methods you can employ in order to create value. Here are my top 5 tactics:
- Provide relevant & informative content to your customers. This not only helps serve your audience but also improves your online presence.
- Develop a buyer persona to determine your customer’s pain points. Once you identify their pain points, you can then help them relieve them.
- Understand and push your unique value proposition (UVP). Tell your audience what value your product or service provides.
- Identify elements where your business can provide more value in comparison to your competitors.
- Develop loyalty program. According to Hubspot’s loyalty report, “73% of customers said they’re more willing to recommend a company with a loyalty program” and “79% are more likely to repurchase.”
Another means to create excellent value is to offer free advice! You can do this by guest-starring on a podcast, writing guest posts on popular websites, and responding to questions & comments.
3. Build your business’s online presence by personifying your brand
Brand personification is a marketing technique where you give your brand a personality.
The ultimate goal is to increase the connection between your brand and consumers. You can make this happen by giving them human qualities to which they can relate. This makes it far easier for consumers to naturally connect with your brand. Furthermore, it’s a projective technique based on human relationships. This means that the more personal you make your brand, the better its relationship with the audience.
When you personify your brand, focus on authenticity and ensure an accurate illustration of what your brand represents. This is essential since most consumers believe that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support.
This means that your work shouldn’t appear as something it’s not, consumers will see right through your charade. This in turn destroys any trust and undermines your brand’s integrity. Instead, you need to look within. Ask your organization to help create stories that reflect your brand’s personality, values, goals, and beliefs.
Integrate your chosen personality into all of your marketing strategies. This includes your website, social media, and blog. It’s also helpful if you craft a logo and other brand elements that work together and suit your personality.
4. Leverage your SEO to build your online presence
SEO is a method to build your online presence and increase inbound organic traffic. There are two core types of SEO: on-site and off-site.
Off-site SEO
Off-site SEO involves any actions taken to improve the ranking of your site off of your website.
Improving your off-site SEO also helps improve users’ perception of your overall website. The primary method to improve your off-site SEO is to earn backlinks from authoritative websites, pages, and bloggers.
If you’re a local business, make sure you have a Google My Business account. This is a huge game-changer since your business will show up on Google SERPs.
Google My Business increases your brand’s visibility by using high-ranking keywords that place your business in the map pack. It essentially merges all your Google platforms, such as Google Maps & Google Reviews.
On-site SEO
On-site SEO involves anything you do on your site to improve your website’s organic rankings. This includes using relevant keywords, including internal & external links, and creating relevant content that is on point.
There are a number of technical elements that impact your on-site SEO. Some of these include mobile responsiveness, load speeds, and UX structure.
5. Be active online to improve your online presence
One of the easiest and most effective methods to build your business’s online presence is to be engaged.
For instance, post content to your website, blog & social media accounts on a regular basis. Join forums that revolve around your niche, get involved, and noticed by others for the helpful content you offer. Engage with others in your community and subscribers and always reply to their questions with haste.
Social media is a great way to engage with your community and increase your online presence.
Here are three tips if you’re coming up short with ways through which to engage with your community:
- Share relevant, useful, and engaging content on all of your platforms
- Curate useful and exciting content created by others
- Showcase your expertise, praise, and thanks by adding comments to other posts
Making use of a social media scheduling tool, such as Agorapulse or Buffer, can help you stay active and save time. Social media schedulers allow you to schedule posts, manage your overall social media process and improve your efficiency. This, in turn, allows you to focus on your business while maintaining a regular and consistent online presence.
6. Build relationships
Forging meaningful online relationships with others in your industry can seriously help you improve your online presence. Such relationships allow you to establish strategic partnerships with podcasters, influencers, and bloggers. Furthermore, these relationships can lead to feature opportunities, which is clutch in terms of off-site SEO. If you really strike it rich, a podcaster may even ask you to guest star on an upcoming podcast!
7. Produce stellar content
We all know that content is king, so knock out some phenomenal content that your audience will devour. Doing so is a great way to quickly build your business’s online presence. If you produce homerun content, then people will share it via social and it will climb the SERP ladder. Online content is also a great way to promote your business and generate an inbound sales funnel.
8. Analyze your results
The only way to tell if your content is crushing it is to analyze the data. These days, you can find just about any sort of data or metric that you can dream up. All you need is the right set of tools in your toolbox. These tools can help you figure out how your website is performing: whether people are bouncing and from which page, if you CTAs are converting, and most importantly, how well your content is ranking.
Most marketers start off reviewing their results once every three months. If your results are satisfactory, then you should continue what you’re doing. You should still keep tabs on the results of your content at regular intervals though.
Closing thoughts on how to build your business’s online presence
Having read this post, you should have a rough idea of how to build your business’s online presence, including, but not limited to:
- Tricks of the trade to improve your website ranking and position you in Google’s Map Pack
- How to give your brand a personality and build strong, meaningful customer relationships
- Ensure that when 98% of consumers search for a business online – they’ll see you.
Lastly, quit sitting around. Go and act on these tips!
