5 Steps to Create a Winning Digital Presence for your Business

The pandemic has greatly increased the importance of digital presence. As the internet and online services became the only way that many of us could interact, individuals that overlooked the importance of digital presence now respect it, and may depend on it. My experience building Fascinate, a business that creates educational media content related to science and technology, has taught me a few powerful lessons. I’ve laid them out in the following steps:

1) Have a Clear Brand?

It may be helpful to define your brand in a single sentence. Then define it in a paragraph. Then look at how other brands who may be offering similar products or services market themselves. What makes you unique? Why should people follow, support or listen to your brand over others? Sometimes, you cannot acquire these answers immediately. Sometimes you won’t be convicted about these answers until you test your brand’s content in the market.

2) Have a well-Defined Target Customer / Audience

As you’re taking your business online, it’s important to understand specifics. Who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to sell products/ services to? Are they the same person? Consider a brand that sells children’s toys. Although they are trying to excite children, their end-users, about their toys, they will have to ensure that the target customer, likely adults or parental figures of the children, understand its value and how to purchase it. Define your audience with as much specificity as possible, you can always pivot later!

3) Create “On Brand” Content

Once you’ve defined your brand and your audience, now it’s time to get in the “lab”. When marketing content for your brand or business, social media provides a fascinating experimental environment. If something you create resonates with your audience, your engagement will generally trend higher. If not, it won’t.?

In the initial phases of content creation, create as much content as possible, to test your assumptions. You may find that the most-engaged content for your target audience actually is completely different from what you thought. The only way you’ll determine that with certainty is by making data-driven conclusions. Occasionally, it’s important to rebrand or perform a brand refresh if you find things are getting stale.

4) Have a responsive website/landing page / call to action

Now that you’ve defined your brand and audience, and hopefully created some brand loyalty, you’ll want to convert them into paying customers, donors, or whatever else your call to action may be.

Wherever you’re directing your target customers, ensure things are easy to use. Because of the general user-friendliness of websites today, potential customers may get scroll fatigue on your website if you don’t have your calls to action; i.e. carts, order buttons, booking buttons- easily visible and accessible. Put your call to action in the header of your website. For example, my speaker website has a “contact” button at the top of the page.

5) Get previous customers to “fall in love” with your brand and keep coming back.

Now that you’ve gotten your customer/audience to commit to your brand by either following, booking a session on your website, or adding an item to their cart. You should find a way to keep them engaged. The more purchases your customer makes, the more likely they can become “true fans” and continue to support you while providing word-of-mouth marketing to convert new customers on your behalf!

Although it didn’t happen overnight, I followed these 5 steps to build Fascinate and it has paid dividends! Get out there and start executing! Start posting content as soon as you can- as long as you don’t create something completely distasteful, it can always be archived. Don’t be afraid to start out with a rough draft- keyword: Rough.

As a #VerizonPartner, I’m excited to share Verizon Small Business Digital Ready. Verizon is offering free guidance on many of these sources of information via the following link: https://vz.to/3MsJMvQ