Warning: You Are Losing Money if Your Small Business Isn’t Embracing the Digital Age

As a small business owner, you are pulled in many different directions, you are wearing multiple hats each day, and you are trying to make money. However, what if we told you that you are losing money if your business isn’t embracing the digital age? What does this even mean? Your business should have at least these three things: a fully operational website, an attractive and reputable brand, active social media presence, and a vanity toll free number.

First let’s discuss the ways to realistically accomplish the online portion while still having time to run your business. Remember, once you’ve defined your brand you can move forward into updating your web offering and utilizing your social networks.

Updating your web offering:

Part of what sets the digital age apart is what your business looks like when customers or potential prospects view your business online. If you believe that by having a website you’re finished with your online marketing, you are mistaken. Today most people view a potential business through a handheld device, whether that is a smartphone, or a tablet. If your website does not have a mobile version you are making it difficult for those that find your small business on a device to interact with your company. This defeats the purpose of your small business being online in the first place.

Utilizing your social media networks:

Many small business owners are so busy that they can’t even consider having the time to promote their business online through social networks. Unfortunately, if you are not on social networks as a small business, you are losing out to your competitors who are online.

Take an hour and define your small business’s goals, describe your target audience demographics. Then you can combine these results with your USP (unique selling proposition) or value statement of your brand with your visual identity from your website. By compiling these you now have all the information you need to communicate clearly just how you want your business represented.

One of the most important factors of being successful in your social media efforts is to maintain complete transparency. By being open with your audience about how you run your business, what you provide for current customers, and how knowledgeable you are in your field, your customers will then be able to trust what you say on the social media networks.

Then it’s just a matter of hiring a freelancer with whom you communicate with to represent your company online. You can advertise for a social media expert, or hire a copywriter to create a week’s worth of social media messages. Ask him or her to include supporting material that would be helpful to your customers, such as videos’ and related articles that support your message. You may even have them create an article a week on any topic you would write on if you had the time. Then you can have them input the materials you approve once each week into a program that will spread your message to multiple social network sites on a scheduled basis.

Take your USP offline:

Finally, be sure that all of the branding and messaging you’ve established for your online offerings is backed up with offline marketing actions. One of the least expensive means of doing this is through the use of vanity numbers.

Vanity numbers help small businesses advertise in a way that is easy for customers to remember. By using toll free numbers, you have the best means of tracking how successful your marketing messages are performing.

Services that offer 800 or toll free numbers also provide metrics of where those calls originated from, when they were received and the length of time the call lasted. This is an easy way to figure your ROI and level of engagement from your social media efforts. See the many benefits of toll free numbers and use the free tool to create toll free numbers that spell something memorable about your small business.

By leveraging the time of others who specialize in these fields you can inexpensively stay on top of your marketing in the digital age, yet have time to still run your business.