Five Digital Tools to create your business’ online presence
We all know that being visible online is crucial for any type of business. Whether it’s an online business, brick & mortar, or service business, the same rule applies: being visible online is vital.
However, it’s easier said than done as the competition is fierce and all businesses are competing for outstanding online presence. Well with that being said (or written), there is no other way than to meet the competition head-on and make sure your business stands out. In this blog, we are going to focus on services businesses which have not established proper online presence yet.
We have gone through a range of digital tools to help with boosting online presence and here are our top 5 digital tools for service businesses.
- Website — Wordpress, Joomla or Site123
First things first. The most important part is that potential clients can find your services through Google or other search engines. Now that’s going to be a challenge if you haven’t got a proper website to present your business. So let’s start by creating your own proper business website.
If you only need a basic website to portray your business then Weebly, Wordpress, Joomla or SimplyBook.me can easily fulfill your needs. Not only do they provide free templates but they are also super easy to work with, even for the non-techies out there. The only thing you need to know is how to drag and drop, add some beautiful images of your work along with a copy describing your business.
Voila! You have an online website, waiting for new clients to find you. That brings us to the next point, how are potential clients going to find your website? Well, that’s where Google my business comes in.
2. Google my business
By adding your business profile to Google my business you make sure that people find your business when they are searching for your type of service offerings in Google Search or on Google Map.
Let’s take an example. A lady enters “Massage Brooklyn” into Google Search and Google will show, Brooklyn massage businesses on a map, on top. So that is where you want your business to be. Firstly on that map and secondly if people click on your business you want them to see your business profile like that:
This is your time to shine, enter information about your business, add a link to your website and insert some beautiful photos. You can claim your Google My Business profile page here.
3. Seamless Experience with SimplyBook.me
We are guessing that you have heard about omnichannel solutions and seamless client experience lately. Those seem to be the buzz words at the moment. Well, we kind of understand why. Providing a seamless experience for the client is so important to try to convert each lead to a sale. So how do you do that?
Yes, you make sure that no matter where your potential client is, whether online or on-site, they can always easily find a way to purchase your services. So if we apply this to your online presence, then it means that if a person enters your website they should easily be able to buy your services right then and there when their interest is at its peak. This is where a booking system comes in handy.
According to a study led by GetApp 70% of people prefer booking online. So by offering people to book your services online through your website, you are far more likely to close a sale.
The best way to offer your clients the possibility to book online is to implement a booking system. A system like SimplyBook.me is easy to set up, you just enter your services, service providers and their availabilities and your clients can already start to book your services online.
The SimplyBook.me system can either be inserted as a widget on to your current website or if you don’t already have a website then we strongly recommend you to use SimplyBook.me as your main website.
SimplyBook.me offers around 20 different templates to choose from and you can customize them as you want, with colors, logos, images, etc, to reflect your brand image.
You can sign up for free and try the system with all features for 14 days. Just follow the steps below and you will be all set up in a few minutes!
Please note that you can insert a link directly to your booking website on your Google my business profile, enabling people to easily book your service right through Google.
4. Unsplash
A picture is worth a thousand words. We all agree on that. Who doesn’t love beautiful photos? So if you are like the rest of us, make sure you insert professional photos to your website as well as all social media posts.
We recommend Unsplash as they have a wide selection of high-quality photos and they update their photo gallery content weekly. On top of that, they also offer a free photo library for you to choose from.
5. Hootsuite
Last but not least we will discuss how to be present on Social Media. Whether we like it or not people spend hours on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. and those people are your potential clients.
So in order to be present online, it’s not enough to have an online website you also have to post good quality content regularly on social media. A great way to organize your social media content is to use a tool like Hootsuite.
Hootsuite is a social media management tool which helps you to keep track and manage all your different social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. It allows to schedule your social media posts ahead of time. So, if you are super organized you can take 2–3 days and create all social media content for the month and then distribute the posts for the following 30 days…how cool is that!
Another sweet fact about Hootsuite is that you can monitor what people are saying about your brand and hence it gives you the chance to respond instantly. Using a system like Hootsuite will facilitate your social media management to a great extent, check it out here.
Those are our five favorite digital tools at the moment. We encourage you to try them out and also let us know if there are some other cool tools worth mentioning.
