Make the best of your firm’s online presence

In today’s digital world, all eyes are locked onto a brand’s every move. All businesses want to stand out. Unless you take your time and fully think through your digital ideas and plans, you may not be using your online presence to your best advantage or even worse, you may stand out for the wrong reasons!

Does your firm have a plan to target the correct audience, increase your communications and gain brand credibility?

Creating a physical plan is a great place to start. Not planning your social media content, using irrelevant hashtags, reusing the same content on all your social media channels, and creating too much content and noise are some of the easy mistakes when marketing your brand on social media.

Take time to consider your target audience e.g., their generation, gen z, millennial etc. Think about how you want your brand’s text to read. Whether it should be friendly, funny or professional and what kind of content may appeal to your target audience. Educational videos, graphic designs discussing your services, testimonials, blogs, podcasts, posts targeting your client’s pain points are all options to consider when making a monthly or weekly content plan.

The SOSTAC system can help you plan your content.

Situation Analysis – Where are we now? Asses your current KPI’S, performance, analyse competitors and market trends.

Objectives – Where do we want to be? Use the 5 S’s. Sell, serve, sizzle, speak and save.

Strategy – How do we get there? Consider target markets, objectives, your sales sequence and integrations with other businesses.

Tactics – How exactly do we get there? Who you will communicate with, your content plan and contact plan.

Actions – The details of the tactics. This will include responsibilities and structures, processes and systems, internal resources and skills and external agencies to help with content creation.

Control – How do we monitor performance? Use KPI’s and website analytics, user experience reviews, conversion rate optimisation and consider your process of reporting statistics.

Does your website represent your firm well?

A good website helps to establish your brand by letting the audience know who you are and what services you can provide. A website provides reliable information to potential clients, which helps set your firm apart from competitors.

A poor website can cause potential clients to leave quickly and not fully read what services you offer; they may even avoid contacting you. Having noticeable buttons on your website such as “Contact Us” or “Sign Up” makes it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. Having options to submit forms, social media share buttons, event promotions or read more’s are all examples of Call to Actions that can be used throughout a website.

A slow website can cause people to leave before the page even loads. GTmetrix and Pingdom Tools are some tool options you could use or give to your web developer to test the speed of your website and make sure it’s working well.

It’s also important to ensure all the information on your website is up to date and current including contact information, services you provide, testimonials and any facts and figures about your firm.

Show off your up-to-date website! PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are a useful tool for bringing new visitors.

PPC ads are when you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. They are affordable, they effectively drive traffic to your site, increase conversions and could help grow your firm. You want to make sure your adverts are directing to your homepage or services page. If your PPC advert lands a potential client on a confusing landing page, then it  will be a waste of money for your firm and visitors will leave quickly. It’s important to track your spending on your PPC ads and take advantage of negative keywords so your ads do not show to the wrong audience, wasting more of your money.

There are so many ways you and your firm can optimise your digital presence. Remember you don’t have to do it all – plan and think about where you target market is going to look for you -. A good website and consistent social media content is a great place for you to start…what are you waiting for?!?