Why all local businesses should have a strong digital presence
Ok, so you have a local business. Good for you. It’s maybe the result of heavy thought and the sum of everything you dreamed of. Your exquisite cafe, vegan restaurant, grocery store or cozy hostel is ready to roll, and you can’t wait to have the place packed with avid buyers.
You even spent some remaining budget on flyers that were delivered to mailboxes on the neighbourhood and a small jingle on the local radio.
Now’s the time where you think: “Ok, the store is open and packed with inventory, customers will rush in after seeing the brochure/listening to the radio ad. It’s just a matter of days to reach stardom.”
Is it?
How about that HUGE group that always has the phone at arms reach, never leaves home without checking email and social network feed and spends hours looking for new trends on the surroundings? Do they even stop, put down their phone and look at your colourful brochure?
As a local business owner you should never solely rely on offline visibility like the mailbox brochures and the radio ad, among others. You desperately need to bring customers to your door, so the best way to do it is to show up where they are most of the time and say “Hi, I have a great product for you. Come over”.
Those avid customers, waiting to spend money on your spot are on facebook, instagram, google, tripadvisor, and a bunch of other social networks and curated listings sites.
Even before planning to have a website — a solution that normally comes with a price tag — there’s a handful of tools that provide a solid digital presence. These are the most effective ones that will get you in front of your potential target segments, get their attention and maybe convince them to come by your door. The majority of them are even free.
Just looking at the big names, options are vast:
- Google MyBusiness allows thorough company description and USP, its products, direct contacts and even geo-localisation. This will then be used by Google on all of its poducts. Think about Search, Maps, Google Plus, etc. It’s all about content and useful information, here.
- Facebook has one major advantage: Almost everyone’s there and heavily using it. Just make sure you create a corporate page. Yes, I still see businesses showing up as individual profile pages, you know, the ones you befriend…and then I cry a lot.
Sad things aside, an attractive facebook corporate page with interesting, fresh content and product showcase is a plus, and also works as a temporary landing page while there’s no budget for a responsive website.
Bottomline, there’s no reason not to have a bunch of tools working to drive customers to your storefront. You also need to have a great product and an awesome service, of course. There’s no tool or strategy that will work if you don’t have a great product and deliver it in the most exceptional way.
Something to explore on a future post:
When you start paying for digital advertisement, you need to fully adapt your content and creatives to the channel you are investing in: Google shows results based on people’s actions (search); Facebook tries to create the need, by showing something based on one’s interests. Definitely opposite approaches for the same goal, that work well together.
Luis Soeiro
