An online presence is your gateway to direct interactions with your audience. Your branding and colour scheme should be consistent across all platforms to ensure brand recognition.
Give us a call today : 01142 054500
The Importance of Investing in an Online Presence
An online presence is your gateway to direct interactions with your audience. Your branding and colour scheme should be consistent across all platforms to ensure brand recognition.
Websites
Websites are essential for your business to stay current and relevant. This can be the very first impression a potential customer/client sees so it is extremely important to stay on brand. The very first and most important step in building your website is deciding what the main purpose of your website is. Use ecommerce to allow your customers to purchase your products. On the other hand you may just need to educate and inform your audience on your business which is equally as valid. Don’t feel like you have to spend huge amounts of money to make a really fancy site. Focus on the functionality and ease of use first to ensure your users receive the best possible experience. Then as your budget increases, you can develop the site to become more visually appealing.
Social Media
Social Media platforms are a mostly free way to target specific audiences. They are free to set up so it’s a no brainer to set one up – even just to introduce your business, state your contact details and link to your website. The best thing to do when starting a new social media account is researching your competitors. View their pages to see the sort of content they post. What type of content gets the most engagements (likes, comments, shares)? Once you start posting, dedicate some time to engaging with your customers and clients e.g. replying to comments on your posts and even commenting on their posts, helping increase brand awareness. On top of free content, you can pay to ‘boost’ your posts which allows the post to reach a larger audience.
Mailchimp
Other online applications to consider are Mailchimp for running email campaigns. Mailchimp has a built-in design function that allows you to create your own templates (changing colours, images, text ect.). Although you are limited by the free account, you can still store up to 2000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 2,000. You could also consider writing blogs such as this one which can be sent via Mailchimp and uploaded onto your website.
Analytics
Once your online platforms are set up, it is very important to monitor analytics. Measuring the success of your campaigns using analytics, outlines both positives and areas of improvement on your platforms. Facebook has a built in analytics feature that monitors engagements on posts, page likes and how many people the posts reach. You can also use this feature to perform a comparison between your own page and your competitors.
An example of not utilising the hundreds of online resources appeared very recently with the Arcadia collapse.
Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, which includes household names Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins, has collapsed, putting around 13,000 jobs at risk. The group, which has more than 500 stores across the UK, fell into administration after a last-minute multimillion-pound rescue deal involving Mike Ashley’s Fraser Group fell through over the weekend. Its collapse will see Deloitte appointed as administrators in the coming days and is set to trigger a scramble among creditors to gain control of the group’s assets. A firm goes into administration when it becomes insolvent; in effect when it becomes unable to pay its debts.
We think this is a direct impact of the lack of investment in digital platforms. It would be almost impossible for the businesses impacted to measure up to the ever increasing competition from younger firms such as Asos and Boohoo. They didn’t adapt to the current situation and it has been said that this could have been the final nail in the coffin for Topshop and the rest.
If there is anything to learn from this huge mistake: if you want to be successful in the current climate, your business cannot afford to be outdated, utlising digital platforms is essential.
Please don’t hesitate to contact one of specialist today to discuss further. We are also here to help .