Introduction
Marketing your business online in Nanaimo and all over Vancouver Island is becoming more and more important every day, and every year. This also goes for our customers outside of Nanaimo and all over the lower mainland, Canada, and internationally. With COVID-19 hitting and making storefronts harder and harder to access, online marketing has never been more important.
With COVID-19 keeping travellers coming into Nanaimo, it has been noticed by locals and travellers alike that the downtown of Nanaimo has been very quiet during the weeks and weekends for shopping customers. In order to stay in business, a lot of businesses have been looking for other methods than brick and mortar customer shopping experiences. This is where an online store or website for your business becomes incredibly valuable. This has been a reality for all business owners all over the world.
Nanaimo is a beautiful place and very attractive to tourists, so for the most part businesses have done well in the old city quarter and downtown due to multiple customers coming from other parts of the country with an intent to spend money.
With un-foreseen COVID-19 restrictions, the foot traffic has been hit hard for brick and mortar storefronts and businesses have been forced to look for online COVID-19 friendly solutions to keep customers coming in.
Marketing and advertisements online activity has sky rocketed since COVID-19, and even with the large increase of businesses using online advertising it still remains highly profitable and a solid option for any business owner.
Registering your business in the right places online isn’t easy for everyone, and often this job is contracted out to an online website & marketing development agency like ourselves here at Increase Web Design.
Don’t worry though, if you can google and have basic online knowledge you too can follow along and finish these 5 easy methods of getting your business marketed and advertising online.
1. Register Your Business on Search Engines
If your business isn’t registered in the right places online, you are missing out on so much quality advertisement traffic that you could be converting from leads into customers!
Registering on the search engines allows your business to be optimized in the search results and as a result, you will be more easily found on the search engines and have more traffic and customers!
All you have to do is fill out each form and register, then get your business verified on each confirmation process. It can be done usually by phone or e-Mail.
Register your business to the following Search Engines:
Google Places allows your business to be more easily found on Google search and Google Maps. All you have to do is fill out the form and register, then get your business verified through their confirmation process, which can be done either with a phone call or snail mail. Yahoo! also has a big database of businesses called Yahoo! Local. It’s free, and is certainly worth the few minutes it takes to set up. Microsoft’s Bing has a similar service that’s easy to sign up for.
2. Embrace social media
Social media isn’t just for staying social with your friends any family, it’s also a strong tool for staying social while representing your business!
With Facebook, you should always have a Facebook page and add as much information as you can, and invite all your friends! From your Facebook page, you can make engaging posts and promotions right from Facebook.
Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are always good ideas too. They are solid networking platforms, and each have their own strengths.
3. Start a blog
A blog not only shares your insights and thoughts on things. It can be used to promote your business culture. By writing helpful posts such as this one, it promotes your search engine optimization. WordPress can be a solid choice, and it is the platform that Increase Web Design is built on and we use it for all of our clients because of it’s sheer strength with how flexible it can be.
5. Optimize Your Content for Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization can be time consuming, confusing, and hard to see the results you want. It can be a long process of testing and optimizing to get higher in the results.
The best thing you can do is write blog posts targeted to various topics with helpful content that will help your visitors.
6. Join a relevant online community and contribute
Every business has a niche community that shares their interests. Join local communities that align with your business interests and get active in the community. Provide quality comments, posts and content and users will build social respect for your business.
Don’t post spammy comments or topics with your business advertisement all the time though, this can actually hurt your business reputation.
Summary
Overall, there are so many channels for your business to be successful online. Customers are looking more and more online for the products and services they need, and it is just part of the times and the future. Businesses constantly need to pivot and stay relevant with the times in order to succeed and stay successful. If they don’t, they will be left behind.
If you or anyone you know need online services, we at Increase Web Design are happy to help with a free consultation.
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