Making sure you start your new business off right
Congratulations on starting a new business. Whether you’re coming out of the gates small, medium, or as a large scale enterprise there is one consistent necessity – online marketing. In the age of digital transformation antiquated forms of advertising are not a reasonable investment for emerging companies, but haphazard spending on the digital alternative can also leave you with no ROI. Thankfully there are new school benchmarks (of guidelines) for new businesses to follow. Here they are.
4 Most Critical Digital Marketing Steps to Take For Your New Business
1. Make Sure Your Website is Ahead of its Time
The last thing a new business should do is launch a website that will require a major update in a year from now. A new business must have a website and cloud hosting service that is instantly scalable, ready to adapt to unanticipated traffic growth in addition to the evolution of consumer usage. This isn’t where we tell you about mobile optimization – that’s a tip we would have offered about 5 years ago. Instead, we ask that you step back and take a whole new look at your website, whether it’s a work-in-progress or has recently been “completed”. Is the currently established framework ready to adapt to the evolving way consumers engage businesses online? Google (more on SEO below) certainly expects you to.
Two weeks ago the search engine giant announced a new ranking algorithm that has been designed to judge websites based on UX – how users perceive their experience when interacting with your web pages. This is such a huge development that Google is actually giving businesses a heads-up – you have until 2021 to get your website affairs in order. This is somewhat scary for existing businesses who have depended upon old architecture (read: developed one year ago or more) to gain traffic and earn revenue. The good news for you, is that you’re essentially starting from scratch. Google’s warning may require that you scrap current elements from your new site design – but adapting prior to launch will give you a leg up on the competition. Consider the following in your new business website development:
- Optimize your new site for voice search (Google Nest, Amazon Alexa, Apple SIRI)
- Offer a location-specific experience (when serving numerous geographic markets) to factor in geo-targeted offers in addition to language and cultural nuances.
- Offer users the option to change display and usage settings to better match browsing preferences. Examples include the option to switch browsing to dark mode, or to perform an internal voice search. Your developer should take note of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to keep up to date on these expectations.
Let’s get your new business website design back on track. Click here to get started.
2. Start SEO Today, the Right Way
We led with this one in our recent article about digital marketing for a new product launch and it is certainly is important for your overall new business strategy. You want to launch your new business website with all of the SEO-boxes checked, which include the following:
- Institute site wide HTTPS
- Score more than 70/100 on this Google site speed (a ranking factor) test.
- Remove the risk of duplicate URLs through canonicalization (especially important for new eCommerce businesses)
- Add original, relevant, and useful (to consumers) textual content that is supported by media (a combination of images, graphics, and video) to all important pages of your website.
- Apply targeted keywords to semantically support the content for every page of your website.
- Install Google Analytics and verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools and BING Webmaster Tools.
- Build and submit your XML sitemap.
- Launch your site free of bad backlinks to keep your spam score low.
- Set up and complete your Google My Business page.
Confusing? Unless you’re an expert SEO, then yes. But that’s what we’re here for.
3. Build Your Social Profiles
Modern word-of-mouth is online, and predominantly found on social networks, namely Instagram and Facebook. However, you also need to have the other primary social profiles for your new business, including Twitter and LinkedIn. Consumers expect any legitimate business to have all common social media profiles, and they tend to be suspicious of those who do not. For them it’s a way to validate your new business, and also provides them with a direct communication channel that they may prefer to email or a phone call. It’s also a good idea to stay on top of new social networking trends in case they apply to your business – which in 2020-21 may require that you set up a TikTok business profile. You must be active daily on these profiles, sharing your own content while engaging with others. No new business can afford to skip this ongoing step. But once again, you have help if you need it.
4. Get a Digital Launch Partner
Each of the three steps above leads us to the inevitable conclusion – finding a digital marketing partner is critical to launching your new company.
There will never be a more important time to devote all of your efforts to business operations and serving your new products/services to new customers/clients.
If you attempt to DIY your digital marketing you will draw focus away from where you need it to be. Don’t let that happen. Instead, launch your new business with a partner who will take on all of your online marketing initiatives. This includes website development or updates, SEO, and social media in addition to PPC, email campaigns, and more. Contact Strategis Consulting Group today to discuss your unique needs.