Startup Guide: How to Establish Your Online Presence

Whether it’s a startup or a well-known corporate, businesses rely on marketing strategies to effectively generate customers and widen their reach, which can turn into profits.

In this digital age, information, and communication travel fast. With this, building a strong online presence is a must, especially for businesses or entrepreneurs who are just starting up.

That’s why social media and online marketing have become some of the best ways to reach your audience quickly compared to others.

However, it’s important to note that identifying the right channels and content is the key to effective online marketing.

If you’re looking for practical tips on how to jump start your online marketing, this is the article for you. Here’s a guide on how to establish your online presence effectively.

How to Establish Your Online Presence

Put up a website

Having a website is one of the best ways for your company to make its presence known in this digital world. Unlike traditional marketing, websites have a wider reach as they can get your company’s message across to your target audience no matter where they are.

When designing a website, make sure to have your goals in mind. Don’t just build a website for the sake of having one. Instead, let it complement your business operations.

For example, retail stores may want to have a credit or debit card processing system on their website for online expansion.

Remember, your goal is to have an online presence that caters to your customers and helps you achieve your objectives so, it’s best to design your website that meets these criteria.

Make your presence known

Once your website is running, make sure to promote it. This means you have to submit your link to search engines so that when customers search for a solution to their concerns or pain points, you can come up in one of their searches.

Mastering search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary to help your business rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Firstly, on-site SEO deals with creating educational content that touches the pain points of your buyer persona and what your solution has to offer.

For better reach, make sure to use popular keyword searches in your content, and include internal and external links.

Meanwhile, off-site SEO dabbles on the technical side, such as having your website set up correctly with a simple URL structure and quick loading time.

To establish credibility, make sure you include backlinks in your content. With this, you can become more visible online and generate leads from search result pages of search engines.

Know where your target audience is

Another tip to establishing your online presence is to locate where your target audience is most active. By showing up in online channels where your target audience is most active, you can build a strong online presence to attract your customers.

For starters, you can create a Facebook Business page aside from your website. In this way, you have another avenue for reaching your audience and promoting your services or products.

Moreover, your Facebook Business page allows you to communicate with your customers through Messenger, giving it a more personal touch that can nurture trust between you and your customers.

To reach your target market, you can also consider creating profiles on other social media channels, such as Instagram and LinkedIn.

Determine where your target audience is to help you decide which social media platforms you can include in your marketing strategy.

Engage with your target audience

Be active in the proper social media channels by interacting with your audience and regularly posting engaging content.

Social media has become an essential tool to keep in touch with your audiences and keep up with the trends in this day and age.

You have to engage with your subscribers and followers with conversations within your industry. This can help your business cement credibility and foster trust by leaving online footprints for potential customers researching your company.

Create a simple and clear brand identity

One of the golden rules of marketing is to create a simple yet distinguishable brand identity. Regardless of how much content you produce or how many design revamps you do for your website, it all comes to moot if your target audience can’t recognize your brand.

In industries where competition is fierce, you have to make your brand stand out—you have to create a brand identity that is easily recognizable across different platforms.

Consider creating a personification of your brand. This requires knowing your buyer’s persona through market research.

Doing this can give you an idea of how to build a brand identity that has an easy recall factor and can connect with your audience.

More than that, you can help them put a name to their problems and quickly identify the solution they may need, which you may be offering.

This clear branding can help customers relate to your company, encouraging them to engage with you and your call-to-actions, may it be signing up for your newsletter or as simple as following your social media.

Consider investing in online advertising

Another way to go about your online presence is to invest in online advertising. With online advertising, you can have your ad appear on the front page and as a top result instead of having your potential customers skim through numerous pages before reaching your website.

For effective online advertising, identify what you want to promote and who you’re promoting it to. Once you figure this out, you can promote your campaigns in the right online channels.

Make sure to employ creative content that will capture your audience’s attention and encourage them to engage with it instead of scrolling past it.

Aside from that, you reach out to influential social media users to help you promote your brand. These social media influencers have a lotof followers and subscribers who rely on their honest reviews and promotions before buying a product. With their help, you can widen your reach and get the word out about your brand. 

In Conclusion: Website, social media, and online marketing have become some of the best ways to reach and widen your audience.

Because of this, your social media and website can accelerate your startup’s growth. However, you have to ensure that your website and social media accounts align with your objectives.

Most importantly, keep your online presence customer-centric to better cater to your audience. Read more business articles from our guest authors at SugerMint. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn