Do you run your own company, or are you thinking about starting one up shortly? Either way, you’ll have a million and one things on your mind in terms of making a success of it, and keeping the cash rolling in. One key part of your business plan should be a strong digital strategy. We’re in a world where most people are going about their lives online, and you need to get yourself a slice of the action. Going digital could be one of the best things you do – and you don’t need loads of funds to make a success of it. Here are some things to get you thinking about transforming your venture.
Brand up your business
Before you embark on creating a digital face for your business, you need to make sure you have a defined company identity in place and strong branding. You want customers to be able to identify who you clearly and easily, and for your image to become something that they trust, remember and come back to time and time again.
So, get yourself some design work done. You could get a specialist graphic designer in to help you out with this. They can create a logo, corporate colors and get your tailored-made tools for web and social media use. Or, if you’re looking to do it all on a tight budget, then you could always try your hand at some design work. You can also find apps online to help you out. Make an online logo, for example.
Go live with a website
Once you have all the design work done for your branding and image, then you should start thinking about a website for your business. This is going to become your online store window. That means it needs to look sharp and really hit the mark with your customers. Good websites may look simple, but they take a fair amount of work to get them right.
It means you need to set aside some time to work with a website developer to come up with some great ideas for your site. Once you’ve mapped out a structure for your portal, then you need to go about coming up with a content strategy. This means you need to come up with some text, for product and services descriptions and so on, and some amazing visuals to really sell into your market.
You’ll need to keep your text short and sweet, in easy to digest chunks, with lots of illustrative images to make visitors want to delve further. Think of some catchy straplines too and add in some examples of what you do and what your customers think.
If you’ve got the cash and resources, you may also want to think about getting some video content made to add to the site. But keep it short and snappy – and make sure it gets across your key selling points, and why customers should choose you. Most of all, make your site easy to navigate around, somewhere people enjoy being – and hopefully parting with some money.
And don’t forget SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization. You should talk to your website designer about this. You basically need to ensure your online storefront is visible in the busy online marketplace and when people search for goods and products that you sell, that your company appears in the organic listings. No point in having an amazing website if nobody can find it!
Selling online
As well as all the great features already outlined for your website, you need to take it all one step further if you’re planning to sell directly to your customers online – in other words, clients selecting what they want, ordering it and getting it delivered to them.
A good starting point is coming up with a clear list of the products and goods that you want to sell and then arranging them into relevant categories on your website. If you’re selling clothes, for example, you’ll want to separate men’s and women’s jackets from shoes, etcetera.
Then you need to think about how you are going to present your goods. Customers are pretty demanding when they shop online these days. They want to really be able to get inside a product, have a good look at, so there’s no shock when it turns up on their doorstep. So, get some great interactive photography done, where site visitors can zoom in and out, move images around and so on. It may take a bit of time and money, but it could mean the difference between a sale and no sale.
Once you’ve got everything ready, get your website designer to work closely with you to get everything uploaded onto your site. Then it’s time to look at how you are going to process sales online. You will need to install a payment gateway, which basically takes money from customers, gets transactions authorized and creates the financial link between you and the client. Alongside this, you’ll obviously need all the right arrangements in place with your business banking.
Getting social
Alongside your amazing website, you also need to build your company’s presence up on social media. So, if you haven’t done already, got your business on all the major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You’ll want to have some really good photos and company descriptions in your profiles descriptions to get people hooked.
Then you need to get busy posting some great content, that your target market will love. Use your profiles to promote goods and promotions, but try not to just bombard people with direct advertising. You want to get people talking and interacting, so you need to be creative. Plus, you need to keep posting regularly. Link up your socials with your website too, so your posts are shared. If you love all this and you start getting some great results, also start blogging on interesting topics of expertise and interest to your clients. It’s all good company-awareness building.
