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In this modern age, a significant digital presence is more than a pass-time exercise. It is strategically vital for every business that wants to experience growth.
In contrast, most businesses treat digital aspects as an appendix and do not appreciate them. Such elements are critical to business development and ensuring sustainability over time.
So, let’s analyse the importance of well-defined online penetration and real-life instances for companies.
Either succeeded or failed to grow, depending on how different companies handle the online presence.
Brand Visibility: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
A neighbourhood coffee shop whose owner offers the best in town coffee brews sounds familiar, right?
You may even have the best local offerings, but more is needed. The other coffee shops attract more people than yours.
Why?
Because they are visible more than you are online when someone types “best coffee shop near me”, registrants with a higher digital presence give their competitors a run for their money.
They have built and optimised a website for their business and registered the company on Google.
They are also updated with pictures and videos posted on their active social media page, which aids in attracting clientele as well.
However, you would prefer a sleep mode while your café is close to several potential customers.
Problem!!!
Everything depends on brands’ visibility at this age and time. Most people are brand-aware after contacting them through media or television advertisements.
It is essential to have a business or a product with a digital presence for a potentially expanding audience. Alongside every small-scale retail outfit, bigger businesses as corporations are more than just existing structures.
If potential clients cannot locate you online, a significant component of your business growth plan needs to be included, regardless of how small or large your enterprise is.
For instance, consider Nike. Although its brick-and-mortar outlets are well known worldwide, its strength lies elsewhere.
Nike is always within consumers’ reach, thanks to its full utilisation of social media and search engine optimisation.
It’s one thing to be in the conversation; it’s another to be in the conversation.
Online Customer Engagement: Building Relationships That Drive Growth
Imagine that you run a boutique offering carefully crafted jewellery.
You’ve created a splendid website and occasionally post on social networks; however, the resulting sales leave much to be desired.
What’s wrong?
You do not regularly induce your customers’ activity. Your digital presence should not be just about posting photos and collecting likes. It is about talking to people, helping them, addressing their concerns and feedback, and providing them with something.
Loyalty is fostered through engagement.
When it comes to real life, make an effort to engage with customers. Perhaps greeting them and inquiring increases the chances of their return.
The same goes for the internet. A well-planned and executed customer engagement campaign through social media, email marketing or live chat support.
Creates a bond that induces customers to stay loyal and become company advocates.
Brands like Glossier have done this well. They have built their entire empire by engaging their customers, accepting feedback via their social media handles, and soliciting their fans when making new product decisions.
Consequently, they do not only sell their products; customers are also subscribers to the brand’s experience.
Engagement is essential in every business expansion strategy, as it builds loyalty and relations around the brand.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The Pathway to Organic Growth
Consider the last time you needed a service, and you went online to search. Did you carry out your query without looking beyond the first page of search results?
Most people do not.
This means that if your business does not appear on the first page of the search results, it may be missing a great opportunity to organically attract visitors to your site.
A standard case is that of a small neighbourhood eatery that may have the best food but is always empty of customers.
Any local Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy will fail to produce a site that ranks well for queries such as ‘the best restaurants in Australia’.
Instead, that traffic will go to the advertisers who have built good sites with strategic keywords, appropriate geo-tags, and positive ratings for that region.
There is more to SEO than its technical aspects.
As a marketing strategy, it entails ensuring that when users are looking for something you provide, they are blocked from seeing any of your competitors.
For example, Airbnb was initially just an ordinary company but devoted considerable resources to optimising its content for different search engines.
This was smart because they ensured their images were at the top of the lists for narrow terms. So, they are now the epitome of success with a more extensive business empire than even the hotels they had fought with.
Social Media Strategy: Where Conversations Drive Conversions
Social media growth is even applicable to local companies.
Let’s say you run a yoga studio.
By constantly updating your feed, posting clients’ before-and-after pictures, or even conducting classes via Facebook or Instagram, you can attract new customers and keep the old ones. These changes would all be lost without social media and its potent benefits.
But more than just posting regularly, businesses need to tailor their content to their audience.
Your Business development strategy needs to stipulate the aimed objectives, if any, for each relevant platform and what your audience would relate to in terms of content.
Online Reputation Management: Trust is Everything
To illustrate, picture a future consumer who is quite eager to buy a product but, for one reason, decides to check the reviews beforehand.
They turned up some unfavourable reviews and noticed you had yet to comment. That’s a lost sale right there.
A good reputation can be a blessing when in virtual space, while a bad one can be the worst curse.
This is why it is necessary to learn about reputation management and associate it only with risk, including reputational attacks.
It’s on the other level, and companies like Amazon know this. Everything revolves around customer reviews. They tend to bovine the negative and make their customers feel that their opinions count.
This behaviour encourages the development of trust, which is not universal and is a part of every business’s growth strategy.
Customers trust brands that reach out to them, especially when they need to fix a problem by having an online reputation management strategy. Customers are less likely to view your business as anything short of being trustworthy and customer-centred.
Final Thought
In the digital presence business age, companies that need to consider their online reach will remain stagnant.
A comprehensive online presence enhances a brand’s visibility and interaction with potential customers and helps create a positive image.
Identifying trends and following them is not enough; a strategy for business expansion is needed.
If and when businesses accept this fact, they will start experiencing the benefits of growth in a controlled manner.