6 Simple Ways to Increase your Online Presence | Simplemachine
Digital marketing comes with endless benefits. Aside from giving you access to the more than 3.5 million global internet users, online marketing services are necessary for brand credibility, lead generation, customer support, and sales. In fact, according to one HubSpot study, taking your business online increases brand credibility by 4% and can double your leads within a year.
With these advantages in mind, a majority of small and medium businesses (SMBs) are already operating online in one way or another.
How to Increase Your Online Presence
Assuming that you’ve already taken the business online, the next step is to establish your authority and make your presence felt.
Below, we discuss simple ways to do this. But, before we get there, perhaps we should begin by defining what “online presence” means. In digital marketing, online presence refers to the sum of actions and interactions taking place between consumers and a business entity online. It, therefore, encompasses all the searches on search engines, social media interactions, mentions in forums, and any other means through which consumers interact with your brand, products, and services online.
There are six primary ways to boost your online presence:
- Get a professional website for your business
It’s possible that you already have a website. But is it the right website for the business? Business websites need to be designed with the business in mind and developed for optimal performance.
Some of the standout features of a professional business website include responsive design, striking visuals, impeccable SEO, and extremely fast load times. Responsive design can help improve your online presence by boosting your traffic and overall performance on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Visuals are necessary for first impressions. The digital consumer takes microseconds to decide whether or not to stay on a web page. Professional images can convince them to remain on your site.
The need for SEO and fast load times is self-explanatory. SEO improves your performance on search engines, increasing your traffic and lead generation potential. As for load times, raising your speeds by just one second increases traffic by 7%.
- Boost your traffic with paid ads
Paid ads have been around for nearly as long as the web has been in existence, and for a good reason. Ads keep your brand on top of consumers’ minds while at the same time providing a one-click step to your website, products, and services.
The even better news is that you have multiple paid advertising strategies to choose from, with two options standing out – search ads and display ads. Search ads, as the name suggests, appear on search engine result pages alongside organic results. In Google, you’ll find them at the top and bottom of organic results. Display ads, meanwhile, appear on Google’s partner websites.You’ll often come across them when browsing popular sites.
You’re required to pay for leads or conversions resulting from the ads, but you stand to benefit immensely. According to Google Benchmarks and Insight, AdWords ads reach 80% of global internet users, and a search ad in the first position gets an average click-through rate of 7%.
- Reinvent your social media strategy
A majority of SMBs are already on social media, which is a good start. However, many have yet to master the art of using social media to grow a business. There are three main ways you can use these networks for business growth – use them to boost your visibility/brand awareness, to generate traffic, and to engage your customers.
To increase your visibility and brand awareness on social media, you should aim to reach as many users as possible. This can be done by accepting as many friends and followers as possible on the more popular networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Additionally, frequently post on your accounts and get into the habit of sharing photos and videos of your company. To generate traffic on social media, leave outbound links in your posts that take users to your website. Engagement essentially means actively chatting with your followers on a daily basis.
Where possible, you should consider using social media influencers for brand awareness and to drive engagement
- Blog, consider guest blogging, and leverage influencers
Blogging is one of the most underrated online marketing services. Many marketers do it, but very few genuinely believe in it. If done well, blogging has the potential to turn around your online fortunes. It increases your visibility, can improve your ranking on search engines, and plays a vital role in traffic generation.
You need to be creative and consistent, however, if you want to maximize the returns of your blogging efforts. Instead of just articles, include other types of content on your blog as well. In fact, high-quality photos and videos are better at attracting and retaining visitors compared to plain-text posts. The rule of thumb is to publish at least two posts per week.
To generate more traffic from your posts as well as penetrate into new markets, consider guest blogging services and blog influencers.
- Grow your audience with email marketing
Email marketing is easy to set up and is currently the strategy with the highest return on investment, generating $38 for every $1 spent. In comparison, paid advertising, which is considered quite profitable too, generates $2 for every $1 spent. That alone should tell you how important email is to your overall digital marketing strategy.
But it doesn’t end at revenue. Email marketing is also one of the best sources of leads and can significantly boost your traffic. Consumers who’ve already read your emails may choose to search you by your brand name; something search engines value highly. These direct searches can quickly translate to better ranking, leading to more traffic. Email recipients can also click on links within the email message to visit your site, further boosting your traffic.
You’ll also be glad to know that email contacts convert at a good rate. Most businesses consistently post conversion rates of 5% or more per year.
- Measure and improve your performance
Finally, and most importantly, any online presence campaign requires regular measurement and consistent improvement. Otherwise, you’re heading nowhere.
The metrics to track typically depend on the type of campaign you’re running. But since the end goal is to grow your online presence, common sense dictates that you focus on metrics that can help you determine whether more people are learning about and interacting with your brand. As such, the following metrics should be prioritized: increase in search traffic, increase in direct traffic, improved social media engagement, a surge in blog traffic, new email signups, new leads, and new customers.
Fortunately, there are many free and premium tools out there that you can use to quickly and effortlessly track a wide range of metrics generated by any online marketing services.
Boost Your Online Presence with Our Online Marketing Services
With many years in the industry and a team whose combined experience spans decades, Simplemahine is the go-to online marketing services provider in North West Arkansas. Contact us at 877-524-6325 today for web design, SEO, social media, lead generation, Google AdWords, and many other online marketing services.
