If you own a brick-and-mortar business, having a strong online presence from social media to blogging and search engine optimization will help you build advocates for your brand. The key here is to stay on top of the latest digital advertising campaigns as it becomes a crucial ingredient to your success to maximize offline sales.
So how can you use your online presence to increase in-store sales?
1. Build a Quality Website
A quality website is easy to navigate, functional and motivates the visitor to do business with you. Hours of operation, location, and contact details should be easy to find. Buttons linked to your social media accounts should also be present. Make sure that customers have quick access to solutions to their queries or problems. Definitely, everyone wants to look at something that is visually appealing.
It must be noted also that your website should look good in all browsers and designed for optimal mobile viewing. It should also have no spelling or grammatical errors, no blurry images, and, no loose ends.
If you do it right, your website can be the best marketing tool you have.
You might also consider hiring a web designer to build it for you. Sure, it will be costly, but well worth the investment.
2. Use Email Marketing to its Fullest Advantage
If you want to build strong customer relationships, it is vital to have an effective tool to communicate with the people who matter most to your business. Email marketing provides you a platform to keep in touch on a consistent basis, can trigger powerful responses and strengthen brand recognition with new and potential customers.
One of the most popular uses for email marketing is to create and maintain excitement for upcoming promotions. Hold social media contests, share insights about new products, offer exclusive discounts to your followers. Coupons, promotions, and similar exciting announcements for your physical store can bring customers your way. Offer a discount or prize to anyone who follows you on social media. Give them a reason to visit you both in the store and online.
It is essential to learn how to do email marketing right, so you can reach your target audience and keep their interest. This can be a powerful method for expanding your business and when you have a limited marketing budget, here is where email marketing can be of big help.
3. Build an Online Community
In building your online community, it all starts with great content. But you need to know what your audience wants first before you can deliver appealing content. Content that isn’t about you, but about the community.
If you are making online content, you have to get active also on social media in your niche. Good content is spread by your community on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. On your social media accounts, you can share the content of others, create and share your content, answering questions, asking questions, connecting with relevant people.
Promote your launch all over your website, and through email. Ask your growing group to help you widen the network by inviting their friends. Giveaways are an excellent way to encourage them.
New connections are the most obvious benefit, but a strong online community can also attract customers and keep your business competitive.
What did I forget? I’m sure there are more keys. Stay tuned next week for Part 2. Please feel free to comment below to share your thoughts.
