Many of today’s successful companies use a combination of offline and online marketing strategies.
In fact, while most of us have seen a significant revolution going in favor of online marketing, offline marketing remained alive and well, and is still an effective tool for building brand awareness. Billboard commercials, magazine ads, branded giveaways (e.g. shirts, pens) – you’ll still come across these things nowadays.
The only problem with offline marketing is that it can be unpredictable and sometimes immeasurable. Various approaches range widely in terms of costs (from absolutely free to thousands of dollars) and the amount of effort that you’ll have to put in – from cold calling, to hosting events, to being out in the streets for material distribution. Furthermore, it can really be hard to tell how much of an audience your efforts have reached.
This is where online marketing comes into play.
Alongside technological advancement, the marketing industry has grown considerably in terms of approach and strategy. People went from window-shopping, to browsing products and services on the Internet. Thus, if you have a business, it makes sense to build a strong online presence.
Why You Should Have a Business Website
Having your own website is vital, not just for online visibility and providing information, but also for giving your target audience the impression that you’re a legitimate business.
With more and more consumers searching the Internet for products and services that they need, and with other companies realizing this and putting up their own business websites, you don’t want to get left behind.
The good news is that having a professional-looking website may be easier to accomplish than you might think.
Once you have an idea of how you want your website to represent your business, you can start creating one. For this, you may want to consider getting a paid hosting service to help you set up and maintain a professional-looking site.
Next, choose a domain name (YourBusinessName.com) and a platform, and then add your content and design. Voila! A new website for your business.
Seeking a Professional for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you’re new to online marketing, or if you haven’t heard about it before, SEO (search engine optimization) is a strategy used in online marketing that affects a website’s visibility in search engines. Simply put, it aims to place your business website on the first page of the search results when someone searches for a product or service that you offer.
That being said, aside from having a website which is dedicated to promoting and expanding your business, you also need to consider boosting your site’s ranking in the search engines. This could, however, be somewhat difficult to accomplish if you don’t have the necessary knowledge.
Promoting your products or services on your site is easy once everything’s set up, but promoting your business website might be something that you’ll want to entrust to an SEO professional’s expertise.
An SEO expert does a lot of things that a business owner might not be prepared to spend a lot of time on, like analyzing and reviewing websites, looking into traffic trends, and studying keyword optimization – not to mention that the latter is also likely to be not as skilled.
Yes, search engine optimization can be learned, but good SEO takes time, and lots of knowledge and skills.
In general, businesses do better by utilizing both offline and online marketing strategies for promotion, lead generation, and boosting sales. Online marketing, in particular, needs to be well-executed in order for your business website to appear professional, gain more traffic, and thus become more effective.
