What is your brand footprint and how to improve your online presence. Small business and brands should understand how potential customers search and find their business footprint online. Many times its not what you want showing about your business or product.
How to figure out what people are finding when they search for your business online. Improving it and taking advantage of the great and free tools available to get your more of the right types of customers.
Hey everybody. Welcome back. My name is Vince. This is Breakthrough Code, and this is another one of our quick tips for businesses and entrepreneurs. Today, we’re going to be talking about our digital footprint or our online presence, brand presence, basically your business search results when you search for your business name. Now, why is this important? Because these are the websites, social media sites, business listings, and any number of online properties that are representing your business online. Some you may have set up, some may have been set up for you and you’ve forgotten the passwords or even how they did it, or when they did it. And others are just done by like robots online that are constantly picking up new businesses and listing them online then asking if you want to pay for this business listing. But this applies to primarily local businesses who might have listings out there and also entrepreneurs that are selling digital products online as well.
Now these sites and online properties are your ambassadors online. Whether you like it or not, they’re the ones representing you when someone searches for your business because they were referred your business, or they want to check out how valid you are online before they go and pay you money or go visit your business location. And if they’re not saying what you want them to say, they’re working against you. Sometimes they were set up years ago, but they might not have been updated or maybe you set them up at different times and then now your business has kind of progressed or changed, evolved, or even advanced to a level, but these properties online are still representing you from several years ago or not in the light you want them.
So these are your 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week sales representatives as well. So they’re either working for you or they might be working against you if they’re not done correctly. So the first thing you can do to get an idea of what I’m talking about is search for your business name, or maybe you’re an entrepreneur who has a product, an information product, or something, search for your business name or the main product that you’re delivering out there just by itself in the Google search bar, go in and do that and take note of what comes up. Now, if that’s not enough or you don’t see that because you don’t have a strong enough presence online, then if you’re a local brick and mortar, enter in your business name plus the city or suburb or location that you’re in and see what comes up then. What you should see is your website, it should be the number one result that you see for your business name or your brand online.
Secondly, you probably see a spattering of social media sites, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, a couple of other, Twitter, LinkedIn, these are the kinds of properties that tend to come up if you are setting up your business and controlling some of these social media sites. You can also see some business listings or yellow pages. Depending on the kind of business or entrepreneur and what you have going out there, you’re going to see different sites out there. Some might be the YouTube channels. Some might be podcasts. There might be a blog posts that you have out there. Whatever it is, if you just search for your business name or the business name plus your city, you’re going to be very interested to find they might not be properties or websites or listings that you control. So an important way to look at your digital footprint online or your brand presence online is as a little bit of a network of sites, a digital constellation of the assets, business listings, websites, whatever you want to call them that are representing you online.
In the center, you should always see your website. Now that is the business home for you. It’s very similar to having a retail business store. So this is the place that people should get your business card, your business brochure, your calls to action, your business description. It should be the home for your business online that is the end all be all of the representation online. Now around that, you’re going to have your little smaller constellations of representation online for your digital footprint. Those things are like your social media websites. Now, some people use social media sites more than others. Some are primarily Facebook and nothing else. Others use Instagram or Twitter, or maybe their LinkedIn page more or Pinterest or any number of social or other sites that are out there. Then you should also maybe have some of your contents channels.
Now some of these are already done on social media sites, but some people tend to use YouTube videos or Vimeo videos, and some might even have their stuff listed on a podcast. They might do blog posts. So they might be on Medium or any number of other blog and article aggregators out there. And then you might have places like business listings. So if you’re a brick and mortar, there’s business listings galore that you can get for free out there and you should have those set up with your business name, address, phone number, et cetera out there. There’s also things like Chambers of Commerce and affiliations that you have with an organization. If you’re a professional organization or a trade, there’s a trade organization that you’re involved with. Those are things that you want to be affiliated with. And there’s authority sites that you might have in your industry or the niche that you’re in, that you want to be listed on as well.
So once you do a business search for yourself, you’re going to find out some of these properties, I call them properties. Some people call them listing. Some people call them sites. They’re representation. There’s your digital footprint online. So take note of what those are, and then there’s also others that you may have set up, but they’re not really showing up for you. So you want to take into account all the ones that you have control of, and then you want then to try to figure out a way to get control of the other ones. Now, if they weren’t set up for you because it’s like a bot or something set it up, there’s not a lot of control that you can, so go and try to get the free listing for that. If not, someone on your team or somebody else might’ve set that up for you.
Get the logins for those, get those all under your control so that you have control or someone on your team has control of all of those accounts. Now, once you control of all those accounts, make sure that you have consistency across all of them. Primarily you start with, what does your business name look like? Is there a consistency of the way that displays across the entire breadth of all of the different accounts you have? You might’ve done it differently before. Try to get a consistency of how your business name shows up. Next, make sure your name, address, phone number are all set up and they’re consistent. So might be an old phone number. Maybe you move locations. Those are not going to help you in the long run, either in Google search or for your brand footprint. Then you’re going to want to make sure that your who, what, and how of your business are distinctly displayed on all of these. Now, what is the what, who, and how of your business, or how, who, and what of your business, however you want to put it.
It is who you’re serving. That means your ideal customer or avatar. Now a lot of people say, “Well, whoever wants to pay me money is my ideal customer.” And that sounds great and that’s funny to say, but it’s not necessarily true. Now there’s differentiations across for your ideal customer, either from price. Maybe you’re a discount provider, or maybe you’re a premium provider. Right there, you’re going to have to say that distinctly description so that people know who you’re trying to serve.
Then it’s the what of your business, what are the products and services you’re offering? So now that you know your who, then what are the products that you’re serving? A premium product, a discount product, a particular type of restaurant, maybe you’re a certain type of plumber, dentist, attorney, maybe you’re an entrepreneur delivering a particular type of information product, or in a particular way that they need to understand. So that is an additional differentiation that needs to be in your who, what and how.
Now the how is how you’re delivering that. Maybe it is a done-for-you service, or maybe I’m a coach, maybe I’m somebody who has a particular process or a plumber who does it a particular way, a dentist who does a particular procedure in a particular process or method. All of those should be displayed out in your description across all of these, your constellation of digital footprint that is out there. It’s also a great way to differentiate yourself from your competition. This is what some people call your unique selling proposition or your value proposition. It is in the how you do it. So once you have your who, what and how, then you kind of want to have some calls to action.
Now I’m going to have a separate video that’s going to go into some marketing terminologies and marketing ideas so that you can understand things like avatar, calls to action, making an offer. But for now, just think about the calls to action. If you were to visit this online constellation of your digital footprint, what are the messages? What are the actions asking some of your customers or clients to take? Are you asking just to call you if they want? Is your phone number just displayed out there and you’re hoping someone takes action on that? Are you providing a free initial consultation? Are you asking them to sign up to an email list or visit your social media property so they can get more information or join a group or something? Think about the calls to action that are being made other than just displaying a phone number and a email sign up or an email form.
Those are the basics that were done several years ago. And that’s something that is one of the foundations that people just expect you do, but to differentiate yourself and make sure that the customer reaches out to you once they find you, think about the calls to action that you’re doing, and then make that consistent across all of your online presence.
So we’re finishing up our quick tips. So yes, this takes some proactivity. This takes doing some things that maybe feel like “I don’t really know how to do that”, or “I’ve never done that before, someone else did it”, but it’s very important for you as the business owner, as the lead in your business, to start taking a more proactive control to the marketing and how your business is being displayed. If you leave it up to somebody else, it’s going to be left up to how much they care about your business.
And most of the time, no one’s going to care about your business or what the results are for your business more than you are. And another way to think about it is that imagine in your city or wherever you’re at or wherever your ideal customers are at, if you could just put up billboards everywhere. Wouldn’t you take a little bit extra time to make sure that that billboard went up, it looked a certain way, and if that was just free to do, or it took just some time and thinking, and maybe some people to help sometimes wouldn’t you take a proactive attempt to making sure that you plastered billboards and signage everywhere you could to get your ideal customer to come and spend money and help you grow your business? That’s what digital marketing has to it right now. There’s so many free assets out there.
So many free listings, so many free websites, whatever you want to call them, that you can display your business on. Just take a little bit extra time and work on the consistency of your name, address, phone number, URL, make sure those are done, then make sure your who, what, and how of your business are set up on all these digital billboards online. And then lastly, you can provide great calls to action so that you can make sure that they’re taking certain action that you want them to so that they can become a customer.
In other videos, we’re going to be going over some of the marketing concepts that I really enjoy talking about. Some things like how to funnel people in. How to make the offer. How do you do a value ladder, which means you’re taking them in from your lowest priced or free offers all the way up to your premium offerings. So thanks for watching. This was a brief overview on some of what your digital footprint online presence, brand presence, can look like online and how you can start taking control of that and understanding how you can utilize that to help grow your business. Please like, or subscribe if you like the video and also don’t forget to leave a comment about something that was very helpful to you or something that you’d want me to cover next time. Take care, and we’ll see you next time.
