How to Build a Strong Online Presence for Your Local Business

If you want your local business to attract customers, you need to have a strong online presence.

Everyone’s online, and customers are actively looking for businesses like yours all the time. In fact, 97% of customers search for local businesses online before deciding to make a purchase. 

So, what’s the best way to attract the right customers online?

You have to know where to build your online presence, and you need to publish the right content. Of course, there’s a lot that can go into this.

Before you just start setting up online channels and posting on social media, it’s important that you carefully consider how your online presence will be developed. This involves understanding what channels and tactics will have the greatest impact on your business. 

This guide explains everything you need to know to achieve this. 

1. What is an Online Presence?
2. How to Establish a Strong Online Presence
3. Tips to Improve Your Online Presence

What is an Online Presence?

A business’s online presence refers to its representation and visibility on the internet. This covers all the digital platforms and channels a business uses to promote itself and reach its target audience.

An online presence typically includes a company’s website, social media profiles, online directories, review sites, blogs, and other platforms where the business interacts with its audience.

A strong online presence is crucial for businesses in today’s digital age. It allows them to reach a broader audience, engage with customers, and effectively promote their products or services.

How to Establish a Strong Online Presence

Building a strong online presence can involve many different processes and areas of focus. Here are some of the main steps any local business can take to develop its online presence. 

It’s important to note that your online presence should depend on your target audience and your specific local business. 

However, the following steps will help any kind of business achieve an impactful online presence.

1. Start With a Strong Website

Your business’s website is the cornerstone of your online presence. It serves as the central hub where all your online activities come together. It’s the digital face of your brand and the platform where you have full control over your messaging, design, and user experience.

A well-designed and user-friendly website enhances your credibility and becomes the main destination where you drive traffic from other online channels.

Visitors across your social media profiles, online directories, or search engine listings will likely click on your website to learn more about your business. 

Your website allows you to make a lasting impression, showcase your products or services, and convince potential customers to take action. It allows you to provide comprehensive information, display your portfolio, feature customer testimonials, and drive conversions.

To set up your website quickly and easily, consider using a powerful website builder. These intuitive tools provide user-friendly interfaces and pre-designed templates that you can customize to match your brand. 

With the right website builder, you don’t need advanced coding skills or a large budget to create a professional-looking website. It streamlines the process, allowing you to focus on creating compelling content and engaging visuals that captivate your audience. 

2. Establish and Manage Online Listings

Creating and managing online listings for your local business is vital in building a strong online presence – especially for marketing a local business. 

Online directories such as Google, Yelp, Facebook, Better Business Bureau, and others connect potential customers with businesses like yours. 

Having a presence on these platforms increases your visibility and makes it easier for customers to find you when they search for products or services in your area.

Consistency and relevance are key for online listings and Google Maps SEO. Ensuring that your business’s information, such as your name, address, phone number, website URL, and business hours, is accurate and consistent across all platforms is crucial.

Managing multiple online listings can be time-consuming. With a tool like Braxy Hub, you can easily manage all your online listings from a single platform, ensuring consistency and saving you valuable time. 

3. Develop a Strategic Social Media Presence

Social media marketing for your local business is a powerful way to build and strengthen your online presence. Social media platforms offer incredible opportunities to connect with your target audience, showcase your brand personality, and drive engagement. 

Choosing the right social media channels that align with your audience’s preferences and behaviors is essential.

You can achieve a couple of different things by strategically leveraging social media marketing.

Firstly, it allows you to increase brand awareness by reaching a broader audience and exposing them to your business. To captivate and engage your followers, you can share compelling content, including eye-catching visuals, informative articles, and entertaining videos. 

Social media also provides a platform for direct communication and relationship-building with your audience. You can respond to inquiries, address customer concerns, and show that you value their feedback, fostering loyalty and trust.

Social media also offers opportunities for lead generation and driving traffic to your website or physical store. You can promote special offers, exclusive discounts, or upcoming events to incentivize potential customers to take action. 

Social media platforms also provide valuable insights and analytics that can inform your marketing strategies and help you optimize your efforts over time. 

By developing a strategic social media presence, you can establish a meaningful connection with your target audience, boost brand visibility, and drive business growth.

4. Build an Email List

Building an email list is a valuable strategy to strengthen your online presence and establish direct communication with your customers. 

Email marketing allows you to reach out to your audience right in their inbox, providing personalized and targeted messages that drive engagement and conversions. 

Studies show that email marketing has an ROI of 4,400%, making it a highly effective tool for businesses.

By growing an email list, you can nurture relationships with your customers over time. You can send them updates about your latest products or services, share exclusive offers, and provide valuable content that keeps your brand top-of-mind. 

Unlike social media algorithms that control the visibility of your posts, email ensures that your message reaches your subscribers directly, giving you a higher chance of engagement and conversion.

Consider using Wishpond’s email marketing platform to streamline your email marketing efforts. Wishpond offers a comprehensive email marketing solution that allows you to create visually appealing emails, segment your audience, and track the performance of your campaigns. 

5. Be Where Your Audience is

When building a strong online presence for your local business, it’s crucial to understand and align with your target audience’s online behavior. 

Instead of trying to be everywhere, focus on being where your target audience is. By identifying the digital channels they frequent, you can tailor your efforts to reach and engage with them effectively.

Being on the right digital channels is more important than developing a large presence on the wrong ones. It’s about quality over quantity. 

Being where your audience is increases the likelihood of connecting with them, building brand awareness, and driving conversions. It allows you to focus your resources and efforts on platforms with the greatest potential to effectively engage with your target audience. 

6. Try Online Advertising

To further strengthen your online presence and reach a wider audience, it’s worth considering online advertising. 

Transitioning from organic reach to targeted paid advertising can significantly amplify your brand’s visibility and drive valuable traffic to your business. Online advertising offers a range of options and platforms to suit different budgets and goals.

Platforms like Google Ads and social media advertising on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram provide powerful targeting capabilities, allowing you to narrow down your audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. 

By utilizing online advertising, you can strategically place your business in front of potential customers who are most likely to be interested in your products or services.

By incorporating online advertising into your overall online presence strategy, you can expand your reach, engage with a broader audience, and achieve measurable results for your local business.

7. Consider Working With Influencers

An effective strategy to boost your online presence is to collaborate with influencers. By partnering with influencers, you can tap into their engaged audience and leverage their influence to expand your brand reach.

When considering working with influencers, it’s important to identify those whose values align with your business and target audience. Look for influencers whose content and expertise complement your products or services. 

By collaborating with influencers in your niche, you can tap into their established trust and authenticity, which can translate into increased brand awareness, social proof, and, ultimately, customer acquisition.

Building relationships with influencers can be mutually beneficial, allowing you to tap into their engaged audience and providing influencers with valuable content or special offers to share with their followers. 

8. Focus on SEO

SEO is one of the most powerful marketing strategies for local businesses. 

SEO involves optimizing a website’s content, structure, and keywords to improve its visibility on search engine results pages. 

By implementing effective SEO strategies, a local business can increase its chances of appearing in relevant search queries, attracting targeted organic traffic, and gaining exposure to potential customers. 

A strong online presence through SEO boosts brand awareness and establishes credibility and trust among customers. 

Therefore, investing time and effort into SEO is essential for any local business looking to thrive in the competitive online landscape and reach a wider audience.

Tips to Improve Your Online Presence

Now you know the basic steps to building out your online presence. However, there’s a lot you will need to do to ensure your presence has a maximum impact. 

Here are some of the best tips and tactics for enhancing your online presence. 

Create Valuable Marketing Content

You might have an online presence on many different channels, but this isn’t really useful if you don’t publish excellent marketing content.

Your marketing content is what makes your online presence engage your audience and achieve its goals. Without this, your online presence won’t actually do anything. 

Here’s a guide to help you develop an awesome content marketing plan to help your online presence achieve great results.

Understand Your Target Audience and Their Online Behavior

Creating valuable marketing content can make all the difference when it comes to building a strong online presence for your local business. 

But here’s the catch: your content must be valuable, engaging, and unique to stand out in the vast digital landscape. It also needs to fit into your marketing funnel based on your audience’s online behavior.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and consider what they truly need or want. Whether it’s informative blog posts, entertaining videos, or eye-catching visuals, focus on delivering content that addresses their pain points, educates them, or simply brings a smile to their faces. 

Be authentic, tell compelling stories, and showcase your brand’s personality. Remember, valuable content in the noisy online world is the golden ticket that attracts potential customers and keeps them returning for more. So, put your creativity hat on and let your marketing content become the voice of your local business in the digital realm.

Be Active Online

Being active online is essential in building a strong online presence for your local business. 

Think of it as the daily exercise routine that keeps your digital muscles toned and ready to conquer the virtual world. 

But here’s the twist: being active doesn’t mean simply existing on social media or having a website—it’s about active engagement and meaningful interactions.

Start by choosing the right platforms where your target audience hangs out and shows up consistently. Share relevant content, promptly respond to comments and messages, and participate in conversations within your niche. 

Actively seek out collaborations, partnerships, and guest posting opportunities to expand your reach and establish credibility. 

Remember, being active online is not just about shouting into the void—it’s about creating genuine connections, building relationships, and nurturing a community around your brand. 

Use Automation

In the fast-paced digital world, using automation can be a game-changer when it comes to building a strong online presence for your local business. 

It’s like having a reliable assistant who handles repetitive tasks, freeing up your time to focus on what truly matters. 

Just remember, automation should enhance, not replace, the human touch.

Start by identifying areas of your online presence that could benefit from automation, such as social media scheduling, email marketing, or customer support. Utilize tools and automation software that streamline your processes. 

However, remember to balance automation with genuine human interaction. Personalize your messages, respond to comments and inquiries authentically, and show your customers that there’s a real person behind the screen.

Automation can be a powerful ally, but your unique voice and personal touch will truly make your local business stand out in the digital world. 

Keep Up With Your Competition

While carving out your unique identity is important, you can’t afford to ignore what your competitors are doing. Instead of simply imitating them, use their strategies as a source of inspiration to propel yourself ahead.

Conduct thorough competitor research to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and tactics. Analyze their online presence, from their website to their social media channels, and identify areas where you can differentiate yourself. 

Stay updated on industry trends, monitor their content and engagement strategies, and learn from their successes and failures. 

Personify Your Brand

A great online presence should feel human and relatable. Customers don’t want to feel like they;re dealing with a brand; they want to feel like there’s a person behind the brand. 

So, think of your brand as a person. What qualities, traits, and characteristics would it possess? Is it playful, witty, or professional? 

Once you have a clear vision, infuse this persona into every aspect of your online presence, from your website design and tone of communication to your social media content. 

By personifying your brand, you create an emotional connection with your audience, making them feel like they’re engaging with a friend rather than a faceless entity. 

Monitor the Results and Optimize

It’s not enough to simply establish your online presence; you need to track and analyze the data to make informed decisions. 

Set up analytics tools to monitor key performance indicators like website traffic, conversion rates, and engagement metrics. Dive deep into the data to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. Use A/B testing to experiment with different strategies and measure their impact on your online presence. 

Continuously evaluate the results and be open to making tweaks and refinements along the way. By staying vigilant and adaptive, you can optimize your online presence to better align with the needs and preferences of your target audience. 

Summary

These are the fundamentals of building a strong online presence. Of course, the channels and tactics you use should be unique to your brand and audience. 

Once you know what online channels are most valuable to you, make sure you’re consistent and use these channels to the best of your abilities. This will help you develop a strong online presence that attracts more customers and grows your business. 

Looking for more tips and actionable marketing advice? Check out some of the guides below.

Related Content