Digital Presence is More Important Than Ever.
Picture a world without in-person contact. “Brick and mortar” stores are now closed. No more flashy business cards, print ads or billboards to tell people what you have to offer.
How would businesses function anymore?
This was the case of COVID-19, where businesses had to adapt overnight. Organizations with digitized processes had easier transitions. Those that are late to digitization are following suit. Your digital presence is essential to your thriving business, and is no longer a “nice-to-have”.
The overall objective of building a digital presence is to increase your business growth, and prepare for success in the long run. Businesses add value, and it’s about getting to your community in the most effective, and secure way as possible. Let’s talk about digital presence, why it matters, and what you should prioritize.
From a Salesforce survey, 85% of customers do research before engaging with your business online. That’s why visibility is key to building your brand. Digital touch-points of your company are your customer’s first experience with you. This happens before they speak to someone on the phone, or buy something from your store. First impressions matter, right? Treat it as the best method to welcome your customers.
What Makes a Digital Presence?
What are the parts that form your digital presence? Here are the top 3 greatest ways to start improving your digital presence.
Website
The website is more than just a glorified business card – it’s a way to acquire customers, build loyalty, and collect analytics data for your business. Beyond that, there’s also the option of tailoring your website to your customers needs – may it be an online help-desk, or eCommerce. It’s the centre of where all your digital strategy meets.
Social Media (Instagram, LinkedIn etc.)
This is a way to reach into your customer base, and meet them at a platform they’re familiar and receptive to using. Note that selecting which social media platform to use also depends on your target demographic. Are you selling a product/service to a business professional? LinkedIn. Got a fashion brand that you’d like to showcase visually? Choose Instagram. Here is an article where you can learn more.
Business Location Listings (Google My Business)
This provides at-a-glance information, and is especially useful for when you are on the go. When you establish a better digital presence overall, the better visibility you will have on when customers research your potential service.
Top-Level Goals for Digital Presence.
In the post-Covid era, what are the most important top-level things to focus on? Once you have the above as a foundation, here are things that you may have to think deeper about:
Customer Engagement
It starts from noting where your customers are, and the best way to reach them. It’s quite difficult to win people over if there’s no-one to listen to your message.
If you have a B2C product, one way to engage with customers in a meaningful way is Instagram. It’s highly visually and there are a variety of additions There’s an unlimited amount of ways to engage with your customer, and it’s up for you to decide the best fit for your company.
Once you have that connection to where your customers are, take a look at your customer experience. You want to aim for a seamless and convenient experience.
eCommerce
Take Shopify’s case for Lindt, the chocolate making company. Just in time for Easter, Lindt was able to launch eCommerce in Canada. They implemented a process for a shopper to place an order and select the nearest store location. Then, the information is received by the manager, where they can then prepare the items for the shopper to pick up. As a result, they enabled local delivery, added more accessibility with new language capabilities. This built a convenient (and safe!) platform for their customers. That’s the power of eCommerce!
Digital Brand
How do you tell your story, and convince customers to go with your brand? You have that brilliant business idea. Now you need a brand to match!
According to Lucidpress, an average increase of 33% revenue is attributed to brand consistency. This means that developing a cohesive and persistent digital presence online has a payoff. You are building your relationship with a customer to make yourself recognizable for the next time they’ll want to do contact you. Websites like Canva and others have emerged as design tools for everyone to be able to create graphics for their business.
TLDR:
Given the above, how you engage your customers online is critical to the success of your business. It’s not something you should put off to the future – it’s something you can start today.
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