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The global Covid-19 pandemic has had drastic effects on normal business operations, forcing entities to close up and confine themselves to the indoors. This has left marketers, product developers, service providers, and many others devoid of their profit-making avenues, particularly those that were dependent on the traditional forms of marketing and business operations such as physical stores and other walk-in facilities. The only way for businesses to survive in this new landscape is through the adoption of digital means of business operations such as online marketing. These digital means can sustain business operations, making use of online interactive resources and advanced transport systems such as air transport.

Such a move is quite feasible considering that air traffic remains largely operational during the outbreak, as does the essential service providers such as power and internet services. To top it off, the internet has already been established as a rich marketplace with billions of users (potential clients) connected and active globally. It’s also the cheapest and most effective marketing tool that businesses can utilize easily to grow their businesses without needing any physical interaction with their clientele.

In this article we will discover various ways to improve your digital prescence:

• Discover Your Brand
• Getting Started with a Website
• Types of Websites
• Benefits and Purpose of Email Marketing
• Social Media
• Blogs

Discovering Your Brand

Any business seeking to establish an online presence needs to form a powerful identity that consumers can resonate with and easily recognize. This will help you to grow as a business and compete with other players already operating in your niche. Let’s take a look at 3 main aspects of any brand that can help you to develop and establish your own;

1.  The Importance Of Understanding Your Brand

Understanding the importance of the brand itself is a key starting point for developing it. This is simply because it helps you set goals based on what you intend to achieve with it. As such, businesses need to develop a deeper understanding of their brand with regards to how it helps people, change lives, or generally make a difference in society.

Once you fully grasp what your brand represents and strives to achieve, you can work on improving its benefits as well as ensure that it stays better than similarly-functioning brands from your competitors.

2.    Target Audience

Every brand attracts a certain type of consumer with certain features common across them all. As such, it’s very critical for every business to say aware of such characteristics such that they can develop a more appropriate target audience. Knowing and fully understanding your target audience will help you to further improve and customize the product in a way that will appeal to its loyal customers.

3. Your Product

Your product is the most important element of your business. it determines the success of your overall brand since the market will automatically associate them. As such, always ensure that the product fully addresses a significant need and, most importantly, the product should always perform as it is designed to or as it is advertised to avoid disappointing the market. Once a product is tarnished by bad performance, it’s nearly impossible to recover the brand’s good image, even if you later improve and perfect the product.

Getting started: Your Website

The first step in every online journey for business is developing a website. AB Digital is one of the leading website developers that can unlock a whole new avenue of opportunities to grow your business online.

Benefits And Purpose Of A Website

The popularity of business websites stems from the numerous advantages that they offer for both small and large enterprises. Let’s take a look at some of the main advantages that you can expect from your business website;

Unlocking new markets; with the majority of the global population now having easy access to the internet, websites have become the ultimate business platforms that can tap into this huge market. Businesses can easily market their products without border limitations and make use of efficient and modern transport networks to deliver their products to customers in all corners of the continent.

Instant Market Reach; The internet operates instantaneously, meaning businesses can communicate with all stakeholders without delay. This can be marketing communications or important business updates. Websites enable businesses to create mailing databases, subscriber notifications or post easily viewed updates on their page which are instantly and easily accessible to consumers.

Easy & Cost-Effective Marketing or Advertising; Websites enable the use of digital marketing and advertising means that is highly effective, easy to deploy, and very affordable such as Google and social media ads.

Types of Websites

Due to the varying nature of businesses and organizations across the globe, websites come in different types to accommodate and every one of them. Here are the common types that you can take advantage of to grow your business online;

E-Commerce website

This type of website focuses on conducting product/service transactions for consumers. Customers can buy directly from this website with several convenient features such as payment gateways like PayPal, etc.

Business Website

Business websites are designed to represent certain businesses in multiple ways. They offer all the typical business features that you would normally get from a physical ‘shop’, from consultations, inquiries, customer services, recruitment, feedback, and even product/service sales.

Media website

This type of website typically offers news and current affairs. It is designed to host various media forms and graphics such as videos, audios, and photos.

Educational Website

As suggested by the name, this website often offers study material such as books, audios, videos, and games that enhance learning. They are used, therefore, for educational purposes either for student resource access or to offer online courses, etc.

Benefits and Purpose of Email Marketing

It is to reach out to those individuals who have given you their email addresses and are interested in the product or services the business is providing. It also serves as a reminder to them to back to the website for more information and to buy the product.

E-mail Marketing

One of the most effective uses of the internet in marketing is via e-mail. Businesses can build email databases collected from interested internet users and provide regular updates on the products or services on offer.

Benefits Of Email Marketing

Leads Generation; E-mail marketing generates a lot of business leads hence significantly boosting the business operations and increasing is revenue.

Lower Costs; E-mail marketing is a much cheaper means of marketing as compared to other traditional marketing means that require physical interaction and lots of resources to implement.

Increase In Sales; The increased engagement with clients via email marketing is guaranteed to yield an increase in sales as the business gains more publicity within the market.

Social Media

Social media has also become one of the most effective marketing platforms on the internet. The majority of the global population with internet access is also available on various social media platforms.

Benefits And Purpose Of Social Media

More Business/Product Exposure; With so many people using social media, it automatically becomes a powerful marketing tool that can boost the exposure of products or businesses to millions of users. This will surely generate new business.

Instant Results; Social media offers instant broadcasts and contact with potential customers. An ad posted on Facebook, for instance, becomes instantly visible to everyone on the platform which makes it an effective communication tool whether for advertising or informative purposes.

Promotes Client-Business Interaction; Customers often feel reassured whenever they can directly communicate with product or service providers in real-time. Social media enables this through business social media accounts, blogs, etc. this helps to boost consumer confidence in your brand and hence increases business performance.

Picking The Right Social Media For Your Business

Since there are multiple social media platforms, it’s always important to pick the right one that best suits your business or brand. The business has to look at the product they are offering and consider which platform best suits them. Each of all these social media platforms offers unique features that can promote particular aspects of any business. For instance, Instagram can be used to promote art or design work while LinkedIn could be used to advertise job vacancies.

Blogs

Blogs are fast becoming commonplace for businesses that wish to establish a strong online presence. These are online platforms through which businesses can launch discussions on any particular topic relevant to their operations and get a chance to interact with the online community. Let’s just take a quick look at some of the key benefits of a blog for your business;

Client Interaction

Blogs provide the perfect opportunity to interact with your clients and the whole online community. This enables you to grow and improve your products or services by inviting client feedback and ideas on how best you can serve them.

Boosting Search Engine Rankings

The more you blog, the more you provide search engines such as Google with new content to offer online surfers. When potential customers search for a similar product, there are high chances that your product will appear on top of the list because of the frequent blogging.

Business Growth

Potential customers who read blogs tend to share it with others or recommend their friends if whenever someone seeks something that you provide. The blog can also be used to address issues related to your products and then generate leads to your products or services from there.

Is a blog right for my business?

Wondering whether blogging is for you? Many businesses have grown their client bases through simple blogging. What more, blogging can be done professionally using SEO principles that can significantly boost your website rankings and site traffic. You can also outsource the blogging to professional content creators who can help you to generate engaging and relevant content for your blog that will keep your audience interested. In short, YES a blog is right for your business! whatever you do or offer, it will always work in your favor and promote your operations!

Conclusion

As we wind up, it is time for every business to jump on this bandwagon and embrace the role of websites in growing and sustaining business operations. The concept of a ‘global village’, commonly referred to as globalization, is very real and, therefore, demands a new approach to business operations that takes into account the whole global population as a viable market.

The recent global health pandemic also further highlights the need to adopt digital means for running businesses which cannot be affected by such disasters. The internet can easily change the fortunes of any business in this regard and, as a cherry on top, it can significantly cut the operational costs in all aspects, from marketing to management. What are you waiting for? Get started on your online journey and unlock your full business potential today!