Hello, I’m Naomi Burgess and if you’re reading this post, then you’re aware of how beneficial the Internet can be for you. But if you’re not aware of its benefits for your business, I’m going to tell you all about them.
Truth about Online Business
Despite the Internet’s tremendous presence in our lives, almost 40{71f0b96d7fb9125465257c4beabfd4b54654a6dcc01d6b761d78baf7e14996ab} of UK businesses don’t have their own website or even any online presence. If you’re one of them, let me ask you this – why not? The online sales contributed almost a billion GBP last year to the UK economy, and that number doesn’t appear to be decreasing anytime soon. A very significant number of your target audience’s members are likely to be spending at least 6 hours a day online – don’t you want them to spend at least a fraction of that time browsing your products? Today, people don’t walk around the streets looking for a shop sign – they browse the Internet, looking for those shops.
Hire Someone Online
If you’re still skeptical, consider this – how do people find out about good products? The most effective method of advertising is the word of mouth; in today’s digital age, this is still true, except the word of mouth has become online comments and customer reviews. And how can people talk about your business on the Internet if you’re not on the Internet?
If you find the Internet a little bit intimidating at first, that’s absolutely fine. There are a lot of professionals today who would create a website for you – and they’re not too pricey. Your first website shouldn’t be too over-the-top – a basic one would do just fine, and there many freelancers available who would be able to make it. For a larger fee, you can hire a website manager (more commonly known as a virtual assistant) who can manage your website on a daily basis while you spend your time developing new products.
Online Marketing
If, despite what I’ve explained to you, you’re still unsure about whether to create a website for your company, you can start by creating social media accounts to interact with your customers. If you already have one or two, you can start there, by for example letting your followers know that you’re launching a business. If you have a reasonable number of followers, they might retweet (or repost) your announcement for their followers to see, and so the word about your business would spread. Marketing is still marketing, even on the Internet, and social media is just one marketing tool you can use to create new marketing channels for your company. In fact, it’s probably one of the most important marketing tools today – at least 80{71f0b96d7fb9125465257c4beabfd4b54654a6dcc01d6b761d78baf7e14996ab} of the British population have two social media accounts if not more. Don’t be intimidated by the large number of social networks available today; like with building a website, you can hire a Social Media Manager, or a Digital Consultant who would assess your business and conclude which social networks you should use to promote yourself.
Consider V.A’s
Virtual assistants can also manage your social media on a daily basis. I understand that it takes a lot of time to create products, manage finances and engage in other business activities, and, while technology makes it easier to deal with customer enquiries right away, a person who is still new to social media might prefer to concentrate on other aspects of running a business. A virtual assistant can help you with replying to social media customer enquiries, for a small fee.
Company Website is recommended
However, no matter how helpful social media can be, I would still strongly advise you to create a website for your company. For starters, clients are more likely to trust a business that actually has a website listed on their social media profile. Also, websites allow you to enable safe electronic payment methods, which would also serve as reassurance to your prospective customers. Finally, you can link your social media profiles with your website so that the customers can learn more about you just by clicking on a Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram icon on your webpage.
I should say that I’ve only managed to write about a short list of reasons why you should go digital; there are a lot more benefits to it, and I’m sure that you’ll learn them fairly soon after you get online!
