In our previous blog post, we talked about approaches to take when setting up your corporate website. Now it is time to tell the world about your existence.
The following sections will look into ways you could heighten awareness and the visibility of your business on the digital sphere.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO, refers to the process of improving the visibility of a web site in search engines via unpaid or organic search results.
Standards for SEO change all the time, but as the Search Engine Market is largely dominated by Google, it would be wise to adhere closely to their SEO Standards and ensure that your website is properly Search Engine Optimized. The ultimate aim is to rank well amongst your competitors on Google.
Search Engine Marketing
While Search Engine Optimization might take a while to take shape, Search Engine Marketing is one way to guarantee impressions, at a cost-per-click rate. Platforms such as Google AdWords and Yahoo SEM allow specific ad targeting that is location and language specific. In this way you could potentially garner millions of impressions from all over the world for your website.
Joining online communities
An easy and cost effective way to spread the name of your business would be by registering at online business communities which act as online yellow pages for business professionals.
These communities will be a form of contact when prospects are looking to engage in business services. Likewise, such communities would also be a place to source for new prospects.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing would allow you to tailor your messages specifically for different groups of prospects and clients. This is a cost effective way of getting the word out to as many people as possible when there are promotions or special deals.
One thing to take note of would be the possibility of your email becoming spam. To reduce this possibility, always remember to include “[ADV]” in the subject header as well as provide options for recipients to unsubscribe in the event they do not wish to receive future emails. Being flagged as spam mail may result in your company’s domain name being blacklisted and that would not go well with the company’s reputation.
White Papers
People like free stuff and offering white papers would be one way to grab their attention. It can be in the form of articles or research papers, and in exchange anyone who wants to download the white papers would have to give their contact details. The fact that it can be downloaded for free would alone be a major pull factor, the rest would ultimately depend on the quality of your content.
White papers can be used to rhetorically influence purchasing decisions and generate sales leads in the process. Moreover, the contact details that you have gathered could be added to your database and used for future email marketing purposes.
Blog
In contrast to your corporate website, a blog gives you the liberty to take a different approach with your content. When it comes to writing in a blog, the content you offer must be interesting enough to attract a regular viewership.
Blogs can turn out to be a great platform for lead generation as readers might eventually be interested in engaging your services.
Social Networking Site
Statistics shows that social networking is the number one internet activity. Sites like Facebook have been reported to have over 500 million registered users to date.
Nowadays, almost everyone who has access to the Internet would be on some form of social network. The potential to reach almost everyone in the digital world, would alone justify why you should at least get started on social networking.
To get started, you can first set up business profiles across popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the advantage of using social networks is that setting it up is free. However depending on the level of influence and engagement you want to gain, you might have go into planning social media campaigns. Needless to say, that requires time and monetary resources. To find out more about social media marketing, do read up “Marketing Your Brand Effectively on Social Media”
Allowing your content to go viral
Leveraging on the popularity of Social Networking, you could implement social plug-ins such as “Facebook Share” or “Tweet This” on your website. These plug-ins would allow visitors to easily share web content they like with their friends on their social networking profile.
Alternatively you could also create interesting multimedia content such as videos or presentation slides. If they are interesting enough, it could go viral and potentially reach out to millions of people on the various social networking sites.