Showing posts with label business visibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business visibility. Show all posts

Friday 25 January 2013

Is Your Business Easy To Find?

No matter how high the standard of your services and products, if your business is difficult to find, new custom will be hard to come by. The internet has made it easier than ever to find business details; from contact details to product prices, customer testimonials to company history. If your business information is not easy to find, access to your competitor’s material is just one click away.
When you want to improve your organisations visibility, hiring a marketing consultant is one option.


However, there are simple steps you can take yourself to make it easier for your customers to find you online and off:

Improve your website – In the year 2013, there’s little chance you haven’t got a website for your business, but a website is pretty useless if customers have a hard time navigating to find the information they require. Ensure that your website has an easy-to-use and professional design with clear menus and legible font faces. Incorporate sharing functionality so users can easily send page links to other web users via email or social media networks.

Get started with social media  - Not every business has the budget for an in-house social media marketing consultant, but establishing Facebook, Twitter and Google+ profiles for your business has become more important than ever. When a customer wants to keep up-to-date with company news and offers, social media is one of the first places they will turn. Facebook is a brilliant tool for displaying opening hours, product images and testimonials to your customers, old and new.

Utilise business directories – You may consider the Yellow Pages a thing of the past, but with deliveries made to homes across the UK each year, it still remains an essential directory for any business. YP advertising can be costly but today there are thousands of free-to-use business directories online. Both for local and nationwide marketing.

Encourage reviews – Much like business directories, review sites offer a brilliant (and often free) space to detail your company information, as well as encourage positive reviews from your existing clients. For the hospitality sector, TripAdvisor is a must use. Small businesses can maximise on local review websites as well as Google+ business pages.

Signage – Make your business easy to find in the physical world. Consider clear signage or striking shop faces for your small businesses. Add concise directions and an accurate map to your website too. Google Maps have made it easy to provide a detailed map on your website, whilst listing your postcode makes it straightforward for SatNav users.

Improve your SEO – Search engine optimisation is a complex process; with ever changing search engine algorithms it can be hard for a novice internet marketer to keep on-top of what really works. However, SEO is an essential element in making your business easy to find online. When used effectively key phrases in your business content can help your company to appear in online search listing for queries relating to the services and products that you offer.