Building an Online Presence: Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

Let’s take a little adventure with our friend Tommy:

When Tommy was in high school, there was a brand of shorts that was wildly popular. This was in the late ’80s early ’90s, and the company, famous for hand sewing durable board-shorts, was known to everyone in the beach community where Tommy grew up and presumably every beach community in the country. In the decades that followed, he moved away from the beach and moved on with his life forgetting about the brand that he could not live without in his youth. A few years back Tommy saw a pair in a surf shop while vacationing in Folly Beach, SC and thought, “I loved those shorts! I will look them up online when I get home.”

Then life continued to happen, and he promptly forgot all about these shorts that had meant so much to me, until last month. In the midst of his daily Facebook scroll, there they were! Tommy’s shorts! An eye-catching ad, right in the middle of his news feed prompting him to SHOP NOW. And he did.

While browsing their selection he got curious about how a brand that had meant so much to him in his younger years had just disappeared, and then many, many, too many years later reappeared. It turns out the same family had owned and operated the company since the early 1960’s. In 2014, a couple of guys that loved the gear and were committed to maintaining the high standards for durable products and family tradition associated with the company took over. Something new that they brought to the table was the ability and eagerness to optimize the company’s online presence. And it would seem, at least through Tommy’s experience, to be succeeding.

About a week after receiving his shorts, Tommy got a handwritten card in the mail (yes, he held it up to the light, looked at it up close, looked at it from afar, sideways, and backward, it is actually handwritten). It was a note from a sales rep at the company thanking him for his purchase and included a personalized discount code for his next online purchase. Where tradition and innovation collide. Genius!

Perhaps you have been running your business for years, decades even, and have been successful using the old-school, tried and true marketing and advertising methods. If this is the case, the obvious indicators are probably letting you know that it is time to hop on-board the online and social media marketing train.

It is intimidating at first. There is a learning curve. However, with a few essentials, you can up your online presence and start to evolve with the current and ever changing marketing trends.

Mobile-friendly Website

To maximize your online presence going forward your business must have a mobile-friendly website. According to January 2018 data, the global mobile population amounted to 3.7 billion unique users, and mobile data traffic is projected to increase nearly sevenfold between 2016 and 2021. This may seem like a no-brainer for some, but for the rest of you, take a look around. Every person that you see intently staring at the screen in their hand is looking for websites that make it easy for them to get the information and the products that they need and want. If they can’t get that from you they will very quickly move on.

Social Media Presence

Once you have your mobile-friendly website up and running, you need to start using social media to drive traffic to it – just like with the board-shorts company. I wasn’t shopping for shorts. I was checking in to see how my friend’s new puppy was doing, and there it was, the ad with the little button that said SHOP NOW. The key here is that not all social media platforms are going to work for every business. You have to figure out where your audience is spending their time. This may mean trial and error. However, trying to market to everyone on every social media platform will lead to you spinning your wheels.

Blogging

Building a blog into your now mobile-friendly website is an inexpensive way to attract traffic to your site. It takes time, and you need to offer people a lot of content that is full of valuable information. Again, it takes time, but once you get a little bit of traction, you will start to accumulate regular followers, and eventually be viewed as a go-to source for current industry info. From that point, it is easier to convert your audience into customers.

Start by making these three moves. You can’t afford to dip your toes in the internet waters — it is time to jump in! If you are unsure about where to go once you have your mobile-friendly site, made yourself known on social media, and have a blog up and running, you might want to check out our blog post, How Digital Marketing Can Increase Your Profit Margin.  And if you think putting your online presence in the hands of the pros sounds like a better idea than tackling it all yourself, reach out to the amazing team at SocialSEO for a FREE digital marketing consultation.