When social distancing succeeds socializing, transforming businesses into web businesses becomes a mandate, and one needs to follow the proper strategy to successfully run the online business.

The global outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has affected businesses enormously worldwide, with many organizations closing their physical doors. During times like this, it is immensely important to create a solid online presence. It enables businesses to engage and interact with a broader audience, helping them understand the needs of their customers and tailoring a quick and relevant response.

A well-planned digital approach lets business organizations consider the bigger picture and foresee their potential performance in the future, which, eventually, improves the opportunities to face the challenges and generate better results in the near future. However, several businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, lack the proper strategies and tactics to flourish their businesses online.

So, here are the proven methods to effectively move your business online:

Choosing a Business Platform

Choosing a platform for your business is an important phase in setting up an online business. You need to have your expectations and goals set before you determine which site or app is right for you. If your business needs blogging and creating content to make your audience aware of your services then your platform will definitely be different from the ones whose business involves selling various products. So, choosing the right business platform is the key as it is your primary point to interact with your audience.

Developing a Website and an App

The first move to getting your business online is to build an attractive website or update it if you already have one. A website should not only look great but also serve the purpose of the clients by providing useful information, be user-friendly, and offer all the details the consumer is searching for.

Keep the website updated by regular posting about your services, rates, types of clients you serve, and delivery times. Also, get in touch with visitors who visit the website, and the people who place orders. There should not be any spelling mistakes, typos, confusion, or links that do not function properly because the company’s trustworthiness is generally known to be almost as high as the consistency of the website and the care you give to the data.

In a world where mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives, you should focus on developing a business app that can be downloaded and accessed through phones. This will indeed contribute to the growth of your business.

Firstly, invest some time in market research and explore the strategies as well as features that your competitors have kept in mind while developing their app. Secondly, carefully manage your funds and monetize your app through various means like In-App Subscription, In-App Purchases, advertising, sponsorship, and partners. Lastly, create a meticulous marketing strategy for your app to let your target audience know about it. This can be done by creating a landing page or making a teaser video.

Active Social-Media Presence

It is of great importance to have your company accounts on major social networking handles like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn because these platforms enable you to attract the audience to your website. It is also believed that a large proportion of social media users are future customers, especially in the present scenario.

Any business seeking to have a prominent presence online should focus on developing a strong marketing strategy on public platforms. Using these platforms to provide engaging content in the form of text, images, and videos will draw users to your business page. Do not forget to link to your website so that customers can access it for more information about your company and possibly buy your products or take service from you.

Promotion of business over social media needs the maximum use of relevant hashtags and descriptions to properly categorize your posts and keep track of your competitors’ move. You can either do these kinds of stuff on your own or can invest in a professional digital marketing team to do the job for you.

Search Engine Optimization to Attract Organic Traffic

In today’s world, for most websites, search engines are the main source of traffic, and optimizing your website with relevant keywords is an important aspect of moving ahead with your business online.

The speed, mobile accessibility, meta descriptions, connection profile, reading level, source reference, quality of the content of your site, and platform should also be configured according to the best practices.

An Engaging Content Strategy

Content strategy plays a pivotal role to create a prominent presence online. This includes when, how, and where you will publish and distribute high-quality content that consistently brings value to your audience.

Your advertising plan is the roadmap leading to all your web marketing. You should be aware of what content will help your target audience make informed decisions and inspire them to take steps to help in the growth of your business.

An experienced content marketer would prove really beneficial for your company as the content is the king. A proper content strategy and methodologies are of utmost importance for your audience to know about your products and services you provide to your clients. So, from a business perspective, it is important to invest in a content marketer.

Stress on the Importance of Email Marketing

Emailing your customers is one of the best ways to connect to them as well as build relationships with them. Almost all big brands adopt this strategy to build good customer relationships. Especially, for a B2B business, email marketing is extremely important.

An effective email marketing consists of sending some worthy information to your customers for free so that they get the hang of your ideas and take steps accordingly.

Platforms like GetResponse, Mailchimp, or Constant Communication may be used to build a partnership with your clients. Also, remember to build a personalized email signature and provide connections to social media in your newsletters, as well as other specific links to valuable marketing items for businesses.

Use Analytics to Make Data-Based Decisions

It is mandatory to have back-up data on the feasibility of each activity.

In order to determine the return of investing in marketing, analytics is a must. It is essential for managing, studying, and understanding metrics, as well as identifying opportunities for improvement.

Analytics tracks any move that a guest performs inside the physical space and social media, which lets you realize what communication efforts pull in sales and what attempts went in vain. There are several methods and strategies that you can incorporate to effectively transform the data into information in everyday marketing activities. You can then analyze this knowledge and steer the campaign strategies towards the effective ones.

Not only this, but analytics is also important for Performance Measurement. Performance Measurement is considered to be one of the best practices for business success. Market innovation models promote the usage of success metrics but, developing performance assessment mechanisms is highly recommended to ensure the indicators are consistent with policy and that the framework operates successfully in measuring, coordinating, and improving results.

Related: 4 Reasons Why Companies Should Invest More in Digital Marketing After COVID-19

Managing Employees Remotely

If you’ve transitioned from an office to a remote set-up, there has to be a change in the form of communication. Be sure you check in with all the employees and develop “best practice” strategies to keep in touch.

It is a challenging step for all businesses, especially for SMBs, to operate remotely. Since remote work is the new normal after the global outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, it is important for business organizations to invest in tools and hold training that is mandatory for the smooth running of the business remotely.

Selecting Proper Hardware and Software

These elements are mandatory for a company to perform. So, if your business consists of audio or visual elements, then it would require a camera, a high-quality microphone, and some software for editing. However, for a graphic designing business, you may need software such as Photoshop. However, for selling items, it could be packaging and mail deliveries, for content marketing business one can choose WordPress, and for anything related to technology, Magento and Drupal are among the top options.

When it comes to moving your business online, there is not a single solution as well as, no online marketing approach can get you instant sales and traffic. It will take time for all of the techniques you consider to incorporate into your business. But as long as you add values to your customers’ lives, your business will continue to grow.

Brainium At Your Service

If you are a new-bee and worried about starting a business online, then Brainium is always there at your service. We can help you choose a suitable business platform and design an attractive website as well as an app for your business. Added to this, our efficient digital marketing team can help you drive traffic for your website with the SEO best practices as well as our competent content marketing team can create engaging and informative content for your website.