Scour any high street or shopping mall year after year and you’ll no doubt see the visual impact that online shopping is having on the retail industry. Barely a year goes by without some big chain falling to the power of the internet.
However, the need for businesses to begin showing a presence online isn’t just affecting retail, but many other business types too. Therefore, if your company is still to get itself online, you also could be missing out on thousands of potential paying customers as we speak.
Being Online Allows You to Undertake Marketing Campaigns for Free!
Gone are those days of lackluster marketing campaigns such as mail shots, cold calling, and leaflet distributing, now people want to see businesses online as they scroll through their social media feeds.
The great thing about this is that you can market all potential customers and interact with current ones all without eating into your budget. Starting an account on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter costs you nothing, and if you do want to take out other business adverts and further space, the option to do so is considerably cheaper than doing so through any other avenue.
With customers of every age, status and demographic scrolling through their social media feeds a couple of times each day at least, the potential to get your company known on this avenue alone is one no business should ignore, no matter how big or small your company is.
Just make sure that once you’ve established your presence here, keep yourself up-to-date with the marketing world. As Certus know only too well, digital marketing changes all the time, so for it to work well for your company, you need to be able to keep up with these changes.
Being Online Allows All Customers to Find You and Discover What You Offer
If you operate from a physical building and expect customers to come to you, you’ll most likely have a specific geographical area and the odd few clients who venture from slightly further afield. How much of this business though could you do online?
By offering your services online, as well as at one specific place, you widen your customer base by districts and even possibly by countries! However, these need not mean employing qualified IT Technicians or extensive graphic designers, there are many websites that you can start building for free, albeit just paying for the domain name.
This way you have free reign to design your very own unique website which promotes precisely what you do, and you can add to it whatever helps your customers connect with you quickly. Look at adding live chat options, message boxes to fill in and FAQ’s sections. This way, they can deal with your company online and, if they want to or need to, still have the option to visit you if necessary.
Gone are the days when people felt they had no choice other than to venture out and visit a business for their goods, services, and advice – if they can get it online they will! Furthermore, if your company doesn’t offer such services online, customers may begin to look elsewhere to those that do.