Getting your business online is a great start, but how do you make your business stand out?
You might be surprised to know that the UK has the most advanced e-commerce market in Europe.* 95% of UK households now have access to the internet with 45 million daily users. With those figures, it really is a no-brainer. Your business needs to be online.
But once you get online, how can you make your business stand out from the crowd? Here are 5 tips that will help your business stand out online.
1) Engage with your customers
Being online gives you the opportunity to engage and chat with your customers in a way that isn't possible with a flyer through their door. Ask them questions, respond to their comments, encourage them to get in touch with you.
You might be thinking that sounds like it would take a lot of time. You do need to set aside time each day to do this, but there are automations you can use to help. For example, you can set up FAQs and auto responses on Facebook Messenger. If you are in the service industry with back to back appointments all day, set up an auto-response to let them know you are treating customers through the day and will respond as soon as you can.
Customers love a personal touch, and engaging with them through social media is a great way to make your customers feel special. Look at this guy, taking a 5 minute break and getting some good chat in with his customers online!
2) Keep it fresh
There's nothing worse than finding a business online only to discover they haven't updated their website in a year and their last social media post was 6 months ago. If you are going to be online, you need to keep it fresh.
Every business and industry will be different when it comes to how often you can share new content. Often it comes down to time and resources, but at an absolute minimum, you should aim to share 1 new piece of content each week. The good news is that it doesn't have to be brand new content every time.
You can re-use videos and images that you have shared before. New customers might not have seen it before and it will be a good reminder for anyone who has already seen it. Sometimes just a refresh of your banner images is enough to keep things looking new for your customers.
3) Think like your customers
Your business website and social media is not your personal soap box to tell the world what you think. It is your way to connect with customers, to give them what they are looking for. How do you know what they are looking for? You need to think like your customer.
To do that, you need to really know your customer. A customer persona is a good way to do this. Once you know who your typical customer is and where they go online, you need to think about what they like and create content that appeals to them.
Do they prefer images or videos? Catchy slogans or straight up say-it-how-it-is? Are they looking for a bargain or will they pay anything to solve their problem?
Think like your customer and make sure you are serving your customers needs through your content.
4) Matchy Matchy a.k.a. brand consistency
Branding is very important online. You want your customers to instantly recognise your content and that means you need to be 'matchy matchy.'
Do you have a brand logo, colours and a font? Yes? Great- use them. No? You should think about getting a brand identity. It is the easiest way to be unique and stand out.
Matchy Matchy is really just brand consistency. If you have a website and social media profiles, they should all look like they are part of the same family. They say your eyebrows should be sisters, not twins and the same applies to your online profiles. They don't have to be identical, but they should look like they are related.
If you are looking for a good example of this, you can't look past Coca-Cola.
But even the giants can slip up. Can you spot the mistake above?
5) Size your images correctly
Did you spot the mistake? Coca-Cola forgot to size their banner image correctly for their Facebook page! Where everyone...don't leave us hanging coke!
When it comes to images, rarely does one picture cover every channel or platform. If you want to look professional and stand out, make sure your images are the right size for where you are using it. Sprout Social have a handy size guide that is automatically updated every time social media platforms make a change. Bookmark that page!
There are lots of free design tools that can help you to resize images for social media. My favourite is Canva; there is more functionality with the paid for version, but the free account is pretty good.
Do you need help?
Do you need help getting your website or social media to the next level? An audit is a good place to start. Ivyhill Digital can do an audit of your website, social media or both to see how well they are performing and provide an action plan of improvements.
Maybe you just need a chat to check you are on the right track? Book a 1:1 consultancy session for only £45 for an action plan to help your business stand out online.
Get in touch, I would love to help your business today,