In this day and age, if you're not on social media or popping up on Google, you basically don't exist. But, marketing yourself or your business online can seem overwhelming. With so many platforms and types of content where do you even begin?
I've worked with quite a few small businesses, as well as my own personal business, to develop and grow a digital presence. The process might seem overwhelming but the first three steps are very simple and always the same. Let's talk about them.
1. Do an Online Audit
Start by simply googling your name or your business' name. What comes up? Are you the first result? Are you even on the first page? What social media platforms appear? Which competitors appear? Take note of all these things and save them for later.
Next, check your different social platforms? Which platforms do you have accounts on? How many followers do you have? How often are you posting? Do your accounts have the same usernames? How about profile picture? Is one more popular than the others?
With this information, you can assess what your digital footprint currently looks like and what appears to be working. You can't improve and grow if you don't know what state you're starting in.
2. Develop a Buyer Persona
Do you know who your clientele or audience is? If you don't, it's going to be hard to market yourself. Take some time to think about who is or who you want to be engaging with your content or buying your products. Get specific, even give the person a name!
For example, let's come up with a buyer persona for a cleaning service. The cleaning service is a local company with about ten cleaners on staff and they want to target families. We'll name the target client "Messy Mary." Then, we'll start to come up with a persona. Who is Mary? What does her daily life look like? What does she like? What does she hate? What are her goals? What are her weaknesses? Think about all these things and start brainstorming.
Let's say Mary is a 33 year old mom with a husband, three kids and a dog. Both her and her husband work full time, and her kids are young so they can't help with housekeeping. Mary is way too exhausted from raising three kids and working to deep clean her house but she wants a calm, clean environment to come home to after a long day.
That's a buyer persona! You can make a bunch of these or just a couple but the idea is that now you have a specific person in mind to market towards. Mary is too busy to clean so maybe our next ad reads "You already have enough on your plate, leave the cleaning to us." Maybe we post on Facebook because we know that's where moms in their 30s are. It is a whole lot easier to talk and market towards a specific person than to throw buzz words out towards a vague audience.
3. Pick a Few Objectives
Finally, decide why you're growing your digital footprint. To increase sales? Build a community? Increase name recognition? Increase follower-ship?
Different techniques, content, and platforms will help you reach these goals so you have to get clear on what you're trying to do so you don't waste time, money and resources just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks.
For example, let's go back to the cleaning service. The owner has 10 cleaners but notices that they aren't all that busy so they decide they'd like to increase their clientele. The owner also enjoys sharing cleaning tips and talking to people in the comments of those posts. Two good goals for them would be 1. Increase clientele and 2. Build an online community.
Now that we have goals established, we can work towards them with different online marketing techniques.
All three of these steps will take less than an hour total and will get you on the right path to grow your digital presence. These are completely doable all on your own, but, if you're having trouble or would just prefer for someone to do it for you, I'm here for you! You can fill out my contact form or shoot me an email at lily@lilywigglemedia.com!
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