Thriving in a world where online presence can decide the fate of your business, it may seem hard to keep up with your competitors. With so many social platforms available to exhibit the products or ideas that you are selling it’s easy to get confused as to how and where to be. You don’t want to be one of those seasonal news feeds that people just scroll through. If your target customer is online and comes across your advert, it should be such that is able to grab their attention. Let’s be real here, in this fast moving world most people’s attention span for adverts is really low. So for your business to blossom you need a great online image that can speak for itself and stand out among your competitors. Here are some simple ways you can take your game to the next level:
Being good for business:
Yes, you were not born with superpowers to do good business, but this is a skill that you can acquire.
Treating your customers as well as employees with the utmost respect and compassion is a must. It may seem like stating an obvious fact, but there is a difference in believing a fact and actually practicing it. Gain your employees’ confidence, offer rewards, and appreciate their work and effort (we all need a little recognition from time to time). This will help you earn loyal employees and will result in long term customers. Going that extra mile for your customers may seem evident, but practice the same ritual when it comes to your employees as they are the ones dealing with clients and customers more closely than you on a daily basis. This will earn you extra credits in a quantifiable manner in the long term.
Tackling holdups:
Admit the fact that not everybody is going to be happy all at once and there will be ups and downs. The success of your business at the end of the day will lie in how well you and your employees handle the glitches in business. Always make sure to answer customer grievances ASAP as you never know how bad it can hurt you in the long run.
Social media interaction with customers:
You want to be subtle while asking for a review, a video blog featuring genuine customers, practically anything you can get your hands on that depicts the usefulness of your products. Your customers have to be willing to provide a review, do not in any way force them to provide a review, bug them constantly, offer enticements or pay them to do so. Since social media is a part of almost everyone’s daily life provide your social media links to your business site and your customers will definitely bless you with reviews there. Once you have good enough reviews you can take the next step.
Ask for reviews:
Ask your customers if you can put their reviews for use on your site with their name and initial and if they would be willing to take it further and provide their testimonials through video which you can then use for business promotion. Try to build a great customer base via social media as the interactions will attract more customers and display your honesty in business. This will also keep you and your employees in check and stop you from slagging off the right track.
Let them know you are on Google+ and Yelp:
If you have a start-up, then you can use Google+ and Yelp to get a better ranking in Google with Search engine optimization. It sure sounds great to have top ranks in Google when potential customers search with keywords relevant to your business, but make sure not to seem vulnerable or desperate by constantly using your Google+ or Yelp to get customer reviews. We all know the saying that,” Rome wasn’t built in a day” so your traffic is not going to spike up in a day, but it will happen eventually will your constant online presence. The key here is to be consistent and patient. Once you have good reviews to feature, place them in the most easily noticeable spots on your website. Take a look at how Cartridge Ink has placed their review links prominently and you will get a clear idea. If you can have a 4.5-4.8 /5 just from a thousand reviews you can guarantee you have the trust of your customers. It takes about 50 milliseconds for users to decide whether to stay on a site or leave so you have to have a great design on your site to hold their attention for at least 1 second. If you have an F-patterned website where the language is read from left to right, it’s best to have all your testimonials on the left side of your site.
