In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at a low cost, no matter the size of the audience – Bill Gates
More than 5 billion people use the internet globally and so is the high number of brands creating and recreating content for establishing their online presence. Ignore the internet and you will ignore your customers. An online presence is key to winning on the internet, and winning in real life!
Benefits of an Online Presence
A business can benefit in the following ways from an online presence:
- 24X7 Business
Once you are online, you are never “off”. Someone, somewhere may search for the products you sell and land on your website even while you are asleep! With a good online presence, you can potentially earn revenue without being constrained by time.
- Brand Visibility
One of the benefits of digital marketing is building brand awareness. People must know that you exist. E-commerce has revolutionised how people buy products. The very first impulse when one is interested in purchasing something is to look it up on the internet.
If you have a particular product to sell, you must aim to rank high on search results when people search for that product online.
- Do Business From Anywhere
Setting up a brick-and-mortar store confines you to your geographical location. You will find it tough to reach customers far away from your shop.
But if the same business goes online, you can serve customers from various geographies. Thus your online presence can free your business from the limitations of geography.
- Customer Engagement
Caught the customers’ attention? Now engage them!
Remember that the person on the other side is a real human being. The person has pains, problems, and desires in his or her life. How will your product solve his or her problems?
Address the grievances and questions of customers, provide them valuable advice, conduct surveys, create engaging content, and make their lives easy. Thus, you will earn their loyalty and become a credible voice. You can eventually build a community of people with shared interests.
- Cost-Effective
Conventional means of marketing such as billboards, TV ads, and print ads cost a lot. If you think of digital marketing vs traditional marketing, digital marketing is a lot more affordable and can give you a much larger reach.
On the internet, you can target specific audiences across various platforms and social media. Analytics will tell you which of your strategies are working and which are not. Accordingly, you can alter your strategy.
As you generate more sales, your ROI will be much greater than it would have been with conventional marketing.
- Scalability
As your business grows, you have to scale up your online presence accordingly. You may be doing well on some platforms while performing poorly on others. Accordingly, you can increase your presence and efforts where you win the most. It takes much less time and money to increase the scale of your presence online than offline.
If you want to scale up your business online, you can even outsource some of your content writing work to a content writing agency. You can compare the content writing prices of some agencies and their portfolio to understand which agency will be the best for your brand.
- Data Analytics
You can track the performance of your strategies much more effectively online. When you put out an ad on a TV, newspaper, or radio, you never know if the ad reached the intended audience.
But you can get clear data for all the activity which your online presence generates. You can look at the traffic, impressions, clicks, and SERP results of your online content. This helps you shape your content as per the taste and demands of the audience.
You can update, edit, or change content which shows promise but is not delivering the best results. On the other hand, you can delete stuff which generates no engagement. If content is doing great, you can simply keep it as it is.
- Target The Right Customer
You must know who your audience is. Are they young or old? Do they prefer to follow the norm or break it? Are they hip and trendy or elegantly conservative?
The great advantage of online presence is that you have significant scope to customise your content as per the target audience. Every social media platform has a unique user base. You can study your audience to see where you should focus your energies.
- Automation
Nowadays, there are many tools which allow you to automate your online content. For example, you can use automation tools on social media to automatically post content at a scheduled time.
You can use analytics to decide the time of your content delivery. Automation can be used for email marketing, crafting content for WhatsApp Channels, and chatbot marketing. With automation, you can maximise your reach with minimal investment.
Platforms for Building Online Presence
Here are some platforms you can target for building your online presence:
Google Ads: It is one of the most important tools for a small business. You can target Google platforms such as YouTube and Search to show your content to potential customers.
Facebook: Advertisements and content on Facebook can tremendously increase your presence and visibility. You can also use it to engage with your customer and resolve their problems and queries.
Instagram: It is one of the best platforms for looking “cool”. Instagram is very popular among millennials and Gen Z. If your product targets young people, you can’t miss out on Instagram.
X: Formerly Twitter, X is a very popular social media platform. If a tweet becomes viral on X, it can skyrocket your popularity.
An online presence can make you rich over the long run. Be it social media or Google search, your business can achieve tremendous success across platforms. Initially, it involves a lot of hard work, but the final result can set you up for a lifetime of happiness and prosperity.
