Six Steps To Help Small Businesses Thrive in a Digital World

As a small business owner, you’ve come up with a creative idea for a product or service and have considerably invested in business start-up and production.

Promoting your business is the next vital step, but the knowledge and resource challenges this implies make it difficult to envision effective marketing solutions without shelling out huge amounts of money.

Chances are, if your business profile hasn’t gone digital, you are not reaching your customers and the chances of your business suffering are increasing. Raphael Lapointe, director, Digital Product Management for Yellow Pages Group, shares six easy steps that can highlight your business’ distinctive personality and help you attract more potential customers:

1. Go digital. For many people, if a business doesn’t have an online presence, it doesn’t exist. New consumer culture and behavior makes being on the web indispensable. Although having your own website is optimal, there are also many free online listings that allow small businesses to post their online profile. Web sites such as YellowPages.ca, Google, Yelp, and Facebook feature businesses’ names, address and phone number at no cost.

2. Go mobile. More customers are making purchase decisions as they go, through their mobile device. At the very least, make sure your online site is optimized for smart phone compatibility.

3. Be relevant. Local buyers want to know who you are and what you do. Pertinent content like pictures and videos will make it easy for them to choose you over your competitors. Also make sure that your basic information like business hours and phone number are up to date.

4. Include video. Four out of five online consumers say watching a video improves their impression of a business.

5. Be there first. A majority of consumers will click on one of the first three results generated by an online search, making it important for your business to appear at the top of the page. Develop a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy that will improve the visibility of your webpage when potential buyers search the web.

6. Get results. An increasing number of digital advertising and marketing solution companies offer a variety of turnkey solutions in order to boost local businesses’ digital presence. Invest in a start-up package and see how these tools improve your visibility.

More information about marketing and monitoring tools for small businesses is available at www.YellowPages360solution.ca.

Source: www.newscanada.com