MARKETING MATTERS
HAVE YOU CHECKED HOW YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS ARE BEING PROMOTED ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS RECENTLY? LOGAN WEDGWOOD URGES YOU TO DO IT NOW, OR RISK YOUR REPUTATION.
IN THE traditional or core facets of your business (those focused on how you deliver your service or product) you probably live up to your brand promise and encapsulate your values. Those facets have all created that sense of how you like to do business and built your reputation over time.
However, it’s worth considering if this is coming through digitally.
When was the last time you ‘Googled’ yourself or your business? What did you find?
In the modern age of marketing, business owners are faced with a multitude of challenges that they probably don’t even know they have.
If you’ve left your ‘digital you’ to chance, then chances are high that you could have a number of digital channels that are not promoting you as you thought they were. Here are some things to check: • What shows up on page one or two of Google (or other search engines) if you search your name, your business name and your keywords (relating to what your business does)? • Next, review all of your social media channels. Look at LinkedIn and your other business accounts, but also check out your personal social channels – what privacy settings have you used? Use an Incognito window to stalk yourself on your social channels and see what other people see. You might be surprised by just how much people can find – be that by mistake or intentionally. • Now do the same review on your biggest competitors and weigh up how successfully they are controlling their ‘digital you’. This is what you are up against, as customers are more search- savvy and engaged with social media. • Lastly, review your website. Really think about it and what you are trying to achieve.
Your ideal customer lands on your homepage, or a landing page – what do you want them to do? How obvious is this? Typically a user will want to achieve three things: 1. Validate: “Am I in the right
place?” 2. Answer: “Can this business
help me?” 3. Confirm: “What should I do next? What are my options here?” If you leave new customers to flounder around on your website (after working so hard to get them there) they will likely ‘bounce’
“Nobody is going to promote you through digital channels but you. And they’re certainly not going to do so if what you’re sharing online doesn’t reflect their experience of you.”
(leave the site) or discover the old content you haven’t updated in six years. Either way that’s bad news.
Savvy searchers will look at your staff profiles – or your ‘about us’ page – and try to connect with you. Have you updated this information recently? Are you telling the stories there that you want to be telling? Or have you left this information to rot and become irrelevant?
DO OR DIE
If you aren’t deliberately curating your ‘digital you’ it is likely being left to die.
Nobody is going to promote you through digital channels but you. And they’re certainly not going to do so if what you’re sharing online doesn’t reflect their experience of you.
Your ‘digital you’ needs to reinforce the stories you tell in person, throughout all the channels that people use to connect with your business that aren’t simply digital.
Think about it this way: if you haven’t created and fostered an intentional ‘digital you’, your ‘digital you’ is happening by default.
And, in an uncontrolled atmosphere like the Internet, this is a scary thought for anyone who expects to craft a positive reputation in business online.