Before you start building your digital presence, it is important that you have a clear idea as to what you’re aiming to do by taking your business digital.

This can translate to answering one golden question- “What does social media mean for your business?” breaking it down further – “What do I aim to achieve by taking my business digital?”

To answer the question- What does digital mean for your brand? Let’s follow a simple procedure wherein we first understand the relevance of social media and website, followed by how these tools can be combined and used to benefit your business.

However, the very first step requires you to define your ‘why’ and in this case, it means you need to set your Business Goals then support them with your Digital Marketing Goals.

Breaking it down to Social Media, Website & SEO, and a glimpse of Content marketing in this blog.

1. For Social Media-

Before you jump onto making accounts on all the social media platforms, it is important that you have a definite goal/vision as to what you aim to achieve from this effort.

To do that, first read up the overview of social media platforms here. Once you know the basics of the social media platform, start building your presence on these platforms and see how customers respond to your efforts.

But what do I mean by social media presence? One way to answer this question for your brand is to look at your competitors or industry leaders. For example- If you’re a builder, study how your competitors are using the platforms.

Here, the most relevant way to use social media is not to aim for a large following on social media accounts, instead the aim is to generate quality leads who’re interested in your properties. Social Media Followers in this case might only be a vanity metric. By which I mean not all your social media followers are going to be your customer. Use social media with an ultimate motive.

When I say study your competitors, don’t blindly follow what they are doing. Know what their motive is to run that ad or post that particular piece of content.

A great example here is- Honda Activa runs an ad on and a few days before Gudi Padwa because they want to make a brand appearance in front of their prospective customers who’ve been looking to buy a scooter on Gudi Padwa.
Social Media Ads are to be seen as a more specific version of the traditional ads. You can run an ad on the same occasion if you want to make a brand appearance. If not, simply post wishes on your profile to wish your customers in good faith.

Sticking to the builder’s example, you might want to spread awareness about a new project that you’re currently working on in order to sell those properties to interested people. Hence making an image with a message for Gudi Padwa and connecting this with your project in a smart way will help you generate leads of people who’re looking to book a property on the festival day.

Bottom line- Have a motive or a target before you run ads on Social Media. Have a plan as to how will you leverage the use of social media listening and monitoring to convert leads into customers.

With plug and play, learning about your customers by using social media listening and monitoring, you can be on top of the game.

2. For Website & SEO-

If the website is a showroom, the content you put up is the Billboard that will get your customers to visit the store.

If you’re a Service Provider,

If you’re a psychiatrist specializing in a certain field and want to be known for the same, start writing articles and publishing them on your website. Put up content that you would want to read up on if you were your customer. Link your social media accounts, your contact information on your website. You can publish an article on a recent trending issue and then run an ad on social media drawing the people to your website to read this article.

Content development will need a strong plan to succeed and I will be covering this topic in-depth in the blogs to follow. Read about why you need to have a website and how it can be used to your benefit here.

If you’re a product manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer,
Have an e-commerce website for your customer to make purchases from. Then use social media to spread awareness of your product and lead the prospects to your e-commerce website to make a purchase.

Having a website doesn’t guarantee that you will sell your product. Running ads to promote your product is as important as breathing for the human body. Keep your advertisement costs in mind when you’re deciding the final cost of your products.

Promotions here could mean social media ads, discounts for customers, affiliate marketing payments, etc.

You can decide if you want to sell your products on Amazon too. Make sure you don’t give away control over the pricing of your products if you’ve given your products to a 3rd party store. Because if the 3rd Party stores decide to run discounts to sell your products because of competition, your customers will get used to this low price and then will hesitate to come up to the original price of the product making your products irrelevant in the market.

Conclusion

There are many ways in which you can promote your products on your website. I will be covering this topic in my blogs as well. If you want to read an in-depth version of this topic, I will suggest you refer to Hubspot’s Blog. In my next blog, I will be covering how to execute digital marketing at the ground level. And I promise to be covering some really interesting topics this month. So make sure you’ve subscribed to my newsletter.