Developing a strong online presence is crucial if you want your business to flourish in the digital age. Social posts can quickly amplify your brand awareness, and a website with a great user experience (UX) can help you convert leads into sales.
Investing in digital marketing can help your business grow, too. According to data visualization group Statista, 3 billion people use sites like Facebook every day. Additionally, the latest Hubspot Marketing Report shows that 29% of marketers use content creation strategies to boost their business’s marketing goals. Failing to take advantage of digital marketing will leave you a step behind the competition and may stifle growth in the long run.
Creating a clear online marketing strategy needn’t take up all your time or derail your budget, either. You can use scheduling tools to create social media posts in advance and leverage artificial intelligence to improve your marketing team’s productivity. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are cost-effective advertising, too, as you’ll be able to promote your site on your social sites for far less than the cost of TV or magazine adverts. Social media calendars can streamline your marketing efforts and help you find new markets to flourish in.
Working with Agencies
If you lead a small business, you’re likely wearing multiple hats at the same time. As well as acting as the CEO, you probably produce financial reports, lead sales calls, and have a hand in your firm’s recruiting efforts. While this can be rewarding, it can mean that you have limited time to complete essential marketing tasks like creating social content or keeping track of performance analytics.
As your business grows, consider reinvesting some of your profits into hiring an external agency to complete some of your digital marketing for you. Most top agencies offer services like:
- Strategic planning;
- Higher quality content creation than in-house teams offer;
- SEO-Optimized digital content;
- Regular publishing schedules;
- Audience engagement;
- Innovative and adaptable marketing;
- Content audits.
The perks of working with a dedicated agency shouldn’t be overlooked. Hiring the services of a well-organized, dependable marketing agency can give you peace of mind, too. Seeing branded social posts get published regularly can be a real relief as a busy business owner, and you’re sure to notice the uptick in engagement and sales. Effective marketing teams will audit their own efforts and take steps to streamline their strategic planning, too. This means that you can expect to see your brand awareness grow and make use of emergent technology without having to pay for costly programs yourself.
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Building a Website
Creating a website for your business can seem like a huge undertaking if you run a small brick-and-mortar shop. After all, most of your business likely comes from folks walking through the doors and perusing your wares. However, a website isn’t just another place to sell your products — it lets consumers know where to find you. The pros of establishing a website for your small business include:
- Helps Customers Find You: A website advertises your address and opening hours. This can be fed into search engines like Google, meaning folks can plan a visit to your store from further afield.
- Attract New Customers: A well-made website acts as a portfolio for your business. Alluring design can be particularly useful if you want to showcase a new range of products or are running a discount for folks who buy your wear online.
- Awareness and Credibility: Data collected by Google shows that 51% of consumers start their search for new products online. As a result, you must provide product information and prices on your site if you want to land more sales and grow your business.
Building a website is easier today than ever before, too. Rather than trying to create your site from scratch, work with web development software that will do the heavy lifting for you to help you build a powerful online presence. The best web hosting/building services today include:
- WordPress
- Webflow
- Shopify
- Squarespace
- Wix
- Weebly
- Prestashop
Each of these platforms has unique strengths and weaknesses. Shopify should be a strong contender if you want to host an e-commerce site to back up your brick-and-mortar sales, while Squarespace, WordPress and Webflow offer a range of powerful blogging tools to help you create content quickly. If managing these platforms feels overwhelming, you can also outsource an offshore or nearshore team to handle the setup and ongoing support for your online presence. Once you’ve built your site, you can start drawing traffic toward your platform by properly leveraging social media for your small business.
Leveraging Social Media
Harnessing the power of social media can be a real boon for your growing business. Social posts can quickly expand your brand awareness and require a fraction of the costs associated with advertising on TV or in magazines. You’ll be able to reach a wider audience while advertising on social media, too, as viral social posts can reach thousands of people overnight. Additional reasons to use these tactics and tools for marketing your small business include:
- Stronger Positioning: 94% of business leaders say that social media helps them overtake the competition and maintain their piece of the pie. A quick scroll through social media can also help improve your competitive intelligence efforts.
- Improved PR: Connecting with your customers on social media is a great way to build positive relations. Social media PR can help you build a buzz around an upcoming product launch and help you control the narrative surrounding your brand.
- Crisis Management: In an ideal world, you’ll always be able to deliver your product on time and without any faults. However, when a crisis does strike, a strong social presence can give consumers a much-appreciated heads-up. Excellent communication can protect your reputation and help your firm grow even when facing a setback.
- Social Commerce: Social sites like Instagram now allow you to sell directly to consumers through their platform. This capability gives you another digital storefront and can generate increased revenue for your firm. Sixty-eight percent of marketers also say that they use social sites to keep customers up to date with new products and services.
The advantages of using social media for a business far outweigh the drawbacks of building a presence on a social site like Facebook. You can quickly capture a larger piece of the market segment for your brand when selling on social media and will be able to take control of your brand image when creating engagement-worthy content. Just be sure to create high-quality content that meaningfully adds to your customer’s lives. This is key, as people are likely to hit the “unfollow” button if you post nothing but promotional content and try to hard sell on social media.
Build your digital presence today and watch your small business thrive!
Utilizing Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has boomed in recent years. However, as a small business owner, you’ve likely seen examples of generative AI gone wrong and may be hesitant to use tools like ChatGPT or Dall-E yourself. When using AI, avoid common errors like publishing entirely generated content. You can start avoiding these mistakes today by:
- Finding data points yourself to mitigate the risk of hallucinated/inaccurate statistics;
- Establish strong editorial policies to ensure all generative content passes your quality control;
- Avoid sharing misinformation produced by generative AI models that specialize in deep fakes;
- Staying up to date with regulatory requirements in your field to avoid sharing private data or legally protected content.
Be clear about your expectations when giving your marketing team access to generative AI programs. Programs like ChatGPT and Copilot can significantly enhance your productivity but shouldn’t be over-relied upon. Tempering the use of generative AI programs is key, as most consumers can still detect AI-generated content and will quickly turn to other brands if they suspect your online advertising is over-reliant on generative AI. Alternative ways to utilize the technology successfully include:
- Hyper-personalize your advertising materials for folks who buy from you online;
- Improve your understanding of social media trends by using AI to gather and analyze trending data quickly;
- Using chatbots to offer 24/7 support and answer FAQs;
- Leverage predictive analytics to get ahead of the competition and empower your next marketing campaign.
You can also use assistive programs, like Grammarly and Canva Pro, to reduce the risk of human error and enhance the quality of your marketing content. AI assistance can be transformative if you lead a small team that is working with a limited bandwidth. By offering assistive AI tools, you can help folks get their work done quickly and will reduce the risk of mistakes making their way into your final copy.
Final Words on How to Build a Digital Presence and Improve your Small Business’ Digital Strategy
Building your digital presence is sure to pay dividends in the long run as a small business owner. You can enhance your online strategy today by working with a website-building tool to create a presence to be proud of. Follow up on building a new site by effectively leveraging AI to boost your content creation efforts. This will enhance the efficiency of your marketing team and give you new ways to engage with your audience. A strong online presence also helps you find new places to flourish and gives you a better understanding of industry trends. If you’re struggling to execute your digital marketing plan effectively, consider working with a marketing agency that can take on the challenge for you.
Growth Hackers is a forward-thinking small business marketing agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners build their digital presence and enhance their online strategy, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales. We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
