If your brand is not online, it may as well not exist

Most businesses big or small keep looking for new ways to grow by leveraging on marketing strategies and knowledge, or technology or machinery to scale up their operations to reach a wider audience. Digital technology can help in this regard by offering many benefits that help the business retain and expand its cutting edge. Successful enterprises are embracing an online presence because they realise that not doing so could make your business obsolete. 

The pandemic has precipitated those businesses which were offline to quickly set up an online presence during the lockdown period when customers could not visit brick and mortar outlets; thus, most savvy businesses have already joined the e-commerce trend. With just a few clicks, you are accessible to millions of customers worldwide. This is the biggest reason to know the value of why a business needs a website.

Go online or perish!

It is a no-brainer that any business must have the most basic of online presence – at the least, a user-friendly website providing information about the business considering that, for example, 88% of consumers in the US research online before making a purchase—whether that purchase is online or in-store. Internet business statistics from Statista reveal that 1.79 billion people bought goods and services online in 2019, up from 1.66 the previous year. 

By diversifying your delivery channels, you ensure the customer can access your products or service via the medium they prefer. Having the confidence to understand the value of your product/service offering and having your finger on the pulse of your target customer group should help you decide just how you could monetise your offering.

It’s all about the brand

Brand-building is key so that when customers know your brands they can search for it without delay and then decide whether they want to connect via the website or social media like Facebook and Instagram. Branding your store allows you to build a customer base of people who know and trust you, who expect certain levels of service or quality from you, and who will tell their friends and family about you. 

However, businesses need to make it easy to find them, which is why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is needed to ensure your business is at the top of the search results and the content should be linked back to your website. Having an email form for customers who visit your website allows you to capture name, email address and contact number for later marketing and promotions.

Hype it up

The next step is promotion – this requires some marketing savvy and knowledge of customer trends. The popularity of social media is growing as a platform on which you can build your brand. Whether you do it as a package or in some other avatar which is popular in your product/service segment is a critical decision you will need to make. 

Engage the customer

There are fun ways to engage with customers while building goodwill and loyalty to your brand. A referral programme works well in this regard, such as a ‘member get member’ programme that incentivises people to support and promote your business. A programme of this kind also generates word-of-mouth publicity and personal testimonies from customers which is an endorsement more valuable than paid advertising. Once you have a loyal customer base, cross-promotional marketing by partnering other brands is another avenue to boost revenue.

Customer care is the icing on the cake

Customer is king, which makes the delivery of your brand’s customer care a critical reason why customers will want to return again and again. To ensure that your customer response process is infallible, you need to establish a standard operating procedure for your team so that there is no room for delays which could lose you a customer. Needless to say, winning new customers is a lot harder than retaining existing customers. Luckily you have a wide variety of choices to achieve this and an initial automated response is the way to go as it buys you time to respond to a query. 

Easy steps to go online

Getting online: Finding your online niche. The first step is to decide what sort of online presence your business needs to connect with customers. In some cases it would be a website, social media like Instagram or Facebook, or even a chatbot to answer customer queries. This client facing presence has to be attractive to engage customers and entice them to spend time interacting with your product and service. This interface will be the frontline of your business

Online discovery: Discovering and honing in on your target audience. In order to attract customers, your online strategy must consist of fun promotions and baits to reel in the customers, after which you can supply them with and content to improve prospects of the customers wanting to know more about your products and services. This is the customer discovery process and a critical decided of whether you generate repeat customers. 

Engagement and conversion: Engaging with your customers and retailing. While setting up an online presence, you would also need to look ahead and imagine the e-commerce model that works best for your – whether your business will conduct online sales or cash on delivery, etc. There are many options for businesses and having a standard operating procedure will ensure everything works smoothly like clockwork.  

(The writer is Chairman of hSenid International.)