Updated Website

Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of you and your business. How do you want them to feel upon seeing your site for the first time? Will they get a strong, professional sense from your site’s content or will they see a mishmash of information with no flow or purpose? If your website is poorly written, this diminishes your credibility to customers very quickly.

It’s important to maintain a fresh and current website design. The use of color and images should be minimal but intentional, guiding the reader’s eye to what’s important. An overabundance of color can be distracting and lacks professionalism. When it comes to web design and content, keep it classy, simple and thorough.

You should also consider making your website mobile-friendly. Of the 307.2 million internet users in the United States, 282.48 million of them access the internet from a mobile device. If your website isn’t fully functional for mobile users, you are missing out on a significant portion of your target audience.

Local Visibility

When local customers search for businesses like yours, the first search results are a Google My Business listing (GMB). There is probably already a GMB listing for your business, but it may have inaccurate information. After proving that you are authorized to act on behalf of your business, you can access your GMB profile to correct errors and add more thorough information. You can also stay on top of public Google reviews. As another benefit of claiming your GMB listing, Google has the option of using the platform for a variety of promotions. The majority of your customers probably live nearby, so it’s important to claim your listing to bring it to the top of the search results when your neighbors are looking for what you offer.

Social Media Presence

On average, people spend around two and a half hours on social media each day. Actively promoting your business through social media will allow you to meet your customers where they are. To maximize your brand reach, you should consider maintaining an active presence (a minimum of three posts per week) on one or more of the following sites:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok

Social media has a multitude of potential benefits for your company, but fundamentally, these platforms can help you (1) engage with and retain current customers and (2) generate new customers in the following ways:

Engage With and Retain Current Customers

Social media is a valuable resource that you should use to connect with current customers. These customers have already joined you on your business journey, so they are at least lightly invested in what you have to offer. Use your social media platforms to pique their interests, whether through informative posts, giveaways or sales. No matter what you post, make sure it adds value to their lives.

Often, current customers are your most effective use of social media. Social networking is just that, a network. Each of your social-media-using customers has their own network of people they share their lives with online. When loyal customers share your social media posts within their network, your network of potential customers gets much larger. For this reason, creating shareable content can be a lynchpin for expanding your business.

Generate New Customers

When potential customers are doing their research about your company and others like it, there’s a good chance that they’re digging for information. This includes checking out your social media platforms. This is an important reason to keep your pages updated (remember, aim for a minimum of three valuable posts per week). In addition to your regular posts, you can also sponsor posts to be delivered to a targeted audience’s feed. By targeting your desired customer base through social media posts, you can place information about your business directly in the hands of the people you want to see it.

The internet can be a powerful force for sustaining and growing your business. Whether digital marketing is unfamiliar territory to you or you simply want expert help to get a leg up on the competition, ZipLocal is here for you. Our digital marketing experts will create a strategy that looks at the bigger picture and helps you achieve your long-term goals for growth and customer satisfaction. Contact us today for a free website review or for more information about how we can help your business grow. Let’s work on this together.