How to Take Your Business Online and Be Discovered

There are two ways to take your business online.  One is being online for the sole purpose of ecommerce – selling directly through the internet. The other is establishing a presence to advertise your business.

To simplify, a business is either online for sales or leads.

Understand your customer’s wants.

Building an online presence is about driving traffic to your business, but the interaction is about your customers. You have to know what your customers want when they visit your online sites. When is comes to social media marketing, content is what will drive the leads and sales, but it isn't just content. It is specific content targeted to your audience that is relevant to your business.

Choose the right networks.

Understanding your customer’s wants will also tell you which online medium will be best to reach them. You don’t need to be on every network, but keep in mind that just having a profile for the sake of having a profile is not a good idea. An inactive profile can hurt your online reputation.

Which networks you choose to focus on will depend on the content your audience wants and the best place to broadcast the content from.

Advertising online.

Realize that you don’t have to choose between organic and paid advertising. The best method of advertising is effectively combing the two. It doesn't take much paid advertising to be effective; you don’t have to spend every cent you make on advertising. Also, organic isn't really free. Organic advertising takes a lot of time in that you need to know what you are doing, be flexible and realize that last week’s method may not work this week, and that you will have to rethink your method regularly.

Develop a marketing plan and define how much time and money you are willing to spend.

To put everything in a tidy package: