Developing a “Total Online Presence” –Why your business needs this to survive
By Brad Tornberg, E3 Consulting Partners, LLC.
It seems like developing a Total online presence is like eating Elephant – where do you start? For a startup it makes sense to first develop a strategy that defines your differentiation – your unique advantage and you ideal client. Once you have this then you can begin the process of tactical marketing to get your message across.
The most important thing you can do is to try to get people to know you. Like you, trust you, try what you’re offering, buy what you’re selling and then repeat the process and refer you to others. This is the new paradigm in today’s sales cycle or what John Jantsch calls the Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.
The issues I typically hear are how much time and how much money will this take and I don’t have a lot of either. So the advice is always the same –do something, do it now and do it often. Keep a calendar and stick to it! Remember that small victories are still victories.
Simple tools such as Mailchimp and Unbounce will allow any level user to create a landing pages and create an email campaign that can collect names that opt in from the call to action generated. This content can be reused in ads for Facebook and Linked in and other sites. Simply create the landing page, go to bitly.com to create a shortcut link to your email and now you can create an email and put the link in the email to create a call to action. Remember the call to action needs ot be compelling (something for free – a free book, whitepaper, site visit, consultation, etc.) This is how they get to try out your special service or product – the try portion of the cycle.
Blogs are easy and free. WordPress makes it very simple to sign up and create a blog. The blog is crucial because the search engines reward content and if it’s original and pertinent you will rise naturally in the search engines. The blog is something that can be opted into with your above campaign and gives people a place to land to learn more about you and your business products and services. Blogging is something that needs to happen on a calendar like other marketing activities. You don’t have to be a writer. Use Google alerts and other listening tools to monitor or listen for certain key words and each day you will receive a summary of those pertinent articles or posts. You can repost, retweet or even comment on subjects that are in your sweet spot which makes you relevant and the search engines reward relevance by providing visibility in the rankings so you will be found by those who are looking for you.
My next post will be other tactical ideas to use in helping develop a total on line presence. Feel free to send me your thoughts and Ideas!
