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7 Effective Strategies for Boosting Your Online Presence

The vast sea of the internet is home to approximately 5.16 billion users worldwide. And while this may present a huge market for businesses, it also presents a visibility challenge, especially for those starting out.

Brands that fail to capitalize on developing their online presence end up missing huge opportunities that dent their overall ambitions and success.

Offering solid, high-quality products is not enough these days. Having a credible online presence is what gets you over the line. It brings the desired visibility to your products.

But how do you improve your online presence, especially when considering the competitive nature of this domain?

In this article, we’ll look at some of the best and most effective strategies for boosting your online presence.

But first, what does your online presence mean?

What is My Online Presence?

Your online presence simply refers to the way you or your brand present yourself on various platforms across the internet. These platforms include anything from websites to social media platforms or online directories.

There are many benefits of online presence for businesses. For instance, having a strong online presence will help you build your reputation, increase product visibility and reach a larger audience.

Here are some of the most effective strategies you should consider to build your online presence.

Optimise Your Website For Search Engines

You might have heard this repeatedly, but optimising your website for search engines is one of the best strategies for boosting your online presence.

Search engine optimisation involves a variety of techniques that websites use to make them rank higher on search engines.

These techniques include using special keywords strategically, changing the website structure, and improving the content.

According to a survey, SEO can reduce the cost of customer acquisition by 87.41% compared to digital marketing. SEO is a big factor that can help you boost your online presence.

Fortunately, there are world-class SEO service providers that will help you improve your site’s traffic.

Obviously, this point applies to those with a website. If you don’t have a website, you should make it a top priority to get one, as it can greatly improve your online presence.

Other than showcasing your products and services, a website also helps customers get a better sense of your personality through testimonials. Besides, how else will you appear when someone searches for your business’ name online?

Regularly Update Your Website With Fresh and Relevant Content

Updating your website frequently is a great way to enhance your online presence. As mentioned above, this fits perfectly as an SEO technique. But most importantly, it also helps provide value to your visitors.

Customers like to share their experiences with other people. And updating your website with fresh content  improves the visitor experience meaning that they are more likely to share that content and return to your website.

Remember, about 88% of online customers are less likely to return to a website after having a bad experience. So having fresh and updated content slightly enhances the customer experience.

After all, no one wants to come back to a site that’s stuck in the past. But remember, it’s not just about putting out new content – it has to be relevant, engaging, and resonates with your audience.

Although you might have research techniques to come up with relevant content, consider using a VPN to help you access geo-restricted content. A VPN helps you bypass restrictions on content that would have otherwise been unavailable on platforms such as YouTube.

This can be particularly useful for businesses needing international news, market research, or other online resources.

Consider Social Media Marketing

Not everyone believes in the social media hype, especially the socially aware Gen Z. But having a solid social media presence allows even the smallest of businesses to interact with the world.

Besides, many people in your target market are using social media to research their next purchase. Fortunately, you don’t have to create profiles for all social media platforms — just those with which your audiences engage most.

Collaborate With Brand Ambassadors and Influencers

Have you ever heard of influencer marketing? This concept involves partnering with people who have a large following on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

These people use celebrity status to ‘influence’ their following on certain matters, including lifestyle, sports, and fashion. Influencers have built up a loyal following of fans and followers who respect their opinions and trust their recommendations.

Using such influential people can prove profitable for your online presence as they allow you to gain many potential customers in a reasonably short period.

And not only that, but influencer marketing can help you gain trust and credibility with audiences.

Build a Positive Reputation (Even With Negative Reviews)

A positive reputation is almost always related to a solid online presence. Testimonials published on a website can be a great place to start. However, brands tend to shy away from including negative reviews as part of their testimonials.

It’s possible to turn negative reviews into assets that help build a positive review. Respond to the negative reviews in a professional and timely manner. Show empathy and understanding for the customer’s situation. Make follow-ups with the customer and show that you care.

Document all these experiences and include them in your testimonials. Remember, negative reviews can happen to any business, but how you respond to them can make all the difference.

Leverage the Power of Email Marketing

Some people would like to believe that the good old-fashioned email has been out fashioned by new channels, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

HubSpot statistics estimate that there are about 4 billion daily email users. That’s almost 50% of the population checking their emails daily.

This presents the ideal opportunity to develop your online presence further. And don’t just look at the sheer volume of the target audience. The return on investment (ROI) is undoubtedly eye-catching. Every pound spent on email marketing campaigns yields back an impressive £28.

Consider Paid-Per-Click Marketing

Paid-per-click marketing, also known as PPC, is a type of marketing that requires you to pay advertisers each time a user clicks on their ads.

If you’re unfamiliar with paid-per-click marketing, think of it as a way to drive traffic to your website or landing page by placing ads on search engine results pages (SERPs), social media platforms, and other websites.

Why is PPC effective for boosting your online presence? It allows you to target specific audiences with laser-like precision. You can choose the keywords, demographics, and even the location of the people who see your ads.

Many marketers today use this strategy to create awareness and boost their online presence.

Final Words

Having an online presence is key to growing your brand’s awareness and actualising more traffic. Some strategies to boost your online presence include working with influencers, optimising your website for search engines, leveraging e-mail marketing, and using social media marketing tools.

All in all, you’ll have to identify areas of weakness on your business’ marketing side before committing to a specific strategy. Nonetheless, we recommend trying any of these techniques to boost your online presence.

3 Tips to Reduce Mistakes in Businesses

Many business owners would agree that making mistakes at any stage of business development is inevitable. As with most things, the best course of action is to reflect upon them and devise a solution.

It is easier said than done, but there are specific tips and tricks you can take right now to prepare. Remember that everyone makes mistakes, but if you know how to turn them into successes, you will prosper in the long run.

1. Data-driven Decisions

You should ground your business decisions on factual and verifiable data. Of course, sometimes it is unavailable, and you have to rely on your intuition, but try to make it as rare as possible. Moreso, mark such occasions as higher-risk investments and pay close attention to results.

You can avoid such situations by utilizing the resources the Internet provides. It’s an endless repository of valuable data, but you must know how to get it. For example, data scraping efficiently gets data on global prices, user reviews, and competition. But if you go scraping any website without adhering to its data-sharing rules, you will attract negative attention.

Another way is to use APIs. They allow two consenting parties to share data on agreed terms. For example, if you run a website and want to display currency rates in real-time, you can ask for an API from businesses that monitor such data. It will fill your website with useful information and drive more organic traffic to it.

Lastly, data-driven decisions often require collaboration among teams. The marketing department can track metrics like CTR and revenue; meanwhile, the SEO team can analyze what ads perform better on selected keywords; finances will tell you what you can expect in returns and how resistant your strategy is to market volatility.

To summarize, companies implementing data-driven decision-making perform much better than their counterparts.

2. Organic Marketing

Ads and PPC campaigns are effective, but they have limits. You may spend extra on ads to receive little-to-none online attention wondering where it went wrong. In reality, ads are everywhere, and paying for some time on Reddit does not necessarily translate into sales. It’s especially important to implement quality control procedures to ensure you don’t waste money on channels that are not converting.

Organic traffic can become a stable source of income when done right. Firstly, you must know your audiences and their desires. If you tap into actual needs, people will come to your site out of shared necessity. You also have to illustrate your service advantages clearly to outrank the competition.

SEO and social media marketing are two excellent ways to secure organic growth. The former will ensure your website ranks well on Google SERP, and people will visit it instead of going elsewhere. Simultaneously, you can use social media to forge brand awareness and get in direct touch with potential customers.

Furthermore, creating an engaging social media post costs nothing but your or your employee’s time. If you get a viral topic on a subreddit with millions of users, you will get better metrics than paid channels.

3. Investing in Employees

Employees are the backbone of your business, and if they are not motivated, you will struggle to get good results. A stable salary is not the only thing you can offer them. Specialized training will help them learn valuable skills they can use in life. The best outcome is to retain employees that utilize training to grow professionally and contribute more to your business’s longevity.

However, even if you are satisfied with how things are, you should consider additional training like cybersecurity. 82% of data breaches involve human error and are preventable. Moreover, putting customers’ data in danger can irreversibly damage your reputation.

It’s best to seek professional help to identify the best cybersecurity training. Maybe your employees need to secure their BYOD devices or learn about business account security using a professional password manager.

Simultaneously, everyone should learn to identify Phishing emails and how to upload information to Cloud in an encrypted form. Cloud computing has been gaining traction for quite some time, and if your employees learn how to utilize such services securely, you can avoid building and upkeeping expensive server networks buffing your network security at the same time.

Final Words

Admitting and learning from mistakes will be one of the most valuable lessons. Some unavoidable mistakes come from miscommunication and human errors, such as inputting the wrong data in an excel sheet. Others, like cyber incidents, can be neutralized by preparing beforehand.

Ultimately, it’s about identifying possible risks and implementing solutions before accidents happen. Moreover, standing up to your wrongdoings conveys an image of responsibility, which is the best outcome of the worst situation.

Why You Shouldn’t Pause Marketing in a Recession

You’ll be well aware that there is currently a global cost-of-living crisis. Most countries are approaching recession (if they’re not already in one) and it’s projected that none of us will really be much better off until late 2024 at least.

It’s understandable that you might be thinking of pausing your marketing during this recession. You could be doing this to cut your own internal operating expenses, or you could be doing it because you don’t have faith in customers being able to continue purchasing your products.

But this is a mistake in your thinking.

Here’s why…

Customers Are More Price Sensitive​

During a recession, customers are much more price sensitive. As they have to start watching their spending a lot more, they naturally turn to deals.

If you continue to market and advertise your products or services, you can gain a competitive advantage. By positioning yourself as an affordable option, not only will your customers be more willing to purchase repeatedly from you, but will be more likely to recommend you to others they know. This is because people want to help the people they care about get by during economic uncertainty.

You likely already know that word-of-mouth marketing is king. Tapping into this during a recession will not only help you to survive it, but could potentially offer you a level of revenue you hadn’t even experienced pre-recession.

If you’re smart with your marketing and your pricing, your business will thank you.

Your Competitors Will Be Slowing Down

So because of the points we’ve already discussed surrounding recession, the worries of spending money on marketing is not just in your mind. Your competitors will be worrying over the same things.

It’s almost a guarantee that half of your competitors are going to slow their marketing down throughout this recession, because they’ve got it backwards in their head about what they should do.

If you’re lucky, all of your competitors will be slowing down.

So maybe you should too, right?

Wrong!

If all of your competitors are slowing down, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to further double down on your marketing.

Don’t underestimate the increase in market share you can make by doing this. If customers are finding that your competitors can’t keep up with supply, or aren’t showing up in their feeds often enough, they will quickly move on.

And if you’re there, waiting to invite them in with open arms, they’ll jump at the chance. Especially if you’re pricing in a way that helps them while still turning around a profit for you.

Mobile Usage Is At An All-Time High​

A recession does not stop users from being on their phone all of the time. In fact, it doesn’t even stop them from spending, it just reduces it.

So a recession isn’t really enough of a justification to stop your marketing, since your users can still be more easily reached than ever before.

If they see an ad or your posts enough on social media, or if they receive emails from you into their inbox on a regular basis – they are likely to purchase your products or services.

Your customers do not become immune to good marketing during a recession. They just become more hesitant.

By continuing your marketing, but focusing on valuable content as well as astute repricing practices, you’ll still make sales and could even grow your audience base.

Brand Awareness and Customer Loyalty Becomes More Important

Brand awareness and customer loyalty is important to a business in any period, regardless of the economic conditions of the market.

But in a recession? They become MUCH more important.

By increasing your marketing efforts throughout a recession, as we’ve discussed, you can increase your brand awareness and bring on new customers as your competitors will be slowing down.

But what about the opposite? What if YOU’RE the business that’s been slowing down?

Well, it’s not good news, unfortunately.

Regardless of your current popularity, sooner or later your business will decline in brand awareness. By not showing up and being seen to your customers, eventually they’re going to forget about you and focus on their competitors.

This also means customer loyalty decreases during this time.

What’s the consequence?

It’ll be harder for you to regain market share once the economy improves.

Think about it. Customers were loyal to your business, until you stopped showing up and weren’t helping them with your pricing models. If they were loyal to you, they’ll be loyal to the competitors they replaced you with.

Except your competitors never stopped helping them and showing up, so now they have no reason to switch back.

This is not good. You thought you were doing best for your business and swallowing consequences in the short-term, but actually this is more likely to result in consequences in the long-term.

Not many businesses can swallow long-term consequences. Would you really want to risk it?

Customer Behaviour and Preferences Shift​

Customer behaviour and preferences shifts all the time, even if its slower in some industries than another.

In a recession, this is doubly-true and can be observed very soon into the event.

Customers move towards better pricing as we’ve already discussed, but they also move more towards being loyal to a brand.

This is because in a state of economic uncertainty, they naturally like to reduce the uncertainty they face personally. A big part of this is choosing one brand for a particular product or service, and then using them as regularly as they need to.

What else does customers want during a recession?

More money!

So there’s an opportunity here for your business to conduct paid surveys and more market research in general, to tap into the shifts in behaviour and preferences amongst your customers in real-time.

Not to mention if you offer them a small sum for their time in a survey, you’ve not only got actionable information from pre-existing customers, but you’ve expanded upon that customer loyalty by giving them money. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you that money back by buying products with it, meaning you’re gaining more than you’ve lost.

By staying engaged with your target audience and remaining top-of-mind, you can not only weather the economic downturn but emerge from it in a stronger position

Now Is the Time to Ramp Up Your Marketing, Not Slow Down​

A recession is scary for consumers and companies alike. We understand that. But, unfortunately, it is not the opportune time to slow down on your marketing. In fact, you stand to lose far more if you slow down marketing during a recession, due to the long-term consequences this can result in.

Ramp up your marketing with an affordable agency that has the know-how to keep your business front-and-center of your customers’ minds and give them valuable, consistent content.

Web Design Concepts You Must Learn in 2024 and How to Apply Them

Perhaps the most effective tool you have for changing consumer behaviour is good design. Certain web design ideas can entice customers to buy more of your goods and services and spend more money.

Here are some numbers to support that:

  • 75% of people use a company’s website design to determine its legitimacy.
  • If a site’s content cannot show well enough on smartphones or the appearance was unappealing, eight of 10 users would quit using it.
  • When asked which visual components on a corporate website they appreciate most, 40% of respondents replied photos, 39% answered colour, and 21% indicated video.

In 2024, pay attention to how to satisfy your customers’ wants and keep them happy with your website design. You can turn leads into purchases by delivering an exceptional user experience consistently!

We will talk about current web design trends in this post so you can know which ones to follow, match the higher expectations of your visitors, and improve the usability and appeal of your website.

Before We Proceed…

Trends change and even come back stronger than before. There are some, nevertheless, that endure for a long period and to which everyone who wants their website to be successful should adjust.

A Well-Maintained and Current

Did you know that 94% of a website’s first impressions are based solely on its appearance? Of course, this does not imply that you should obsessively monitor every new collection of trends in web design for each new year and constantly change your website to reflect them. It is more important to be careful not to undervalue the importance of website design since you will lose a ton of clients if you do!

That is a lot if you take care to make your website look polished and well-maintained. Consider that visitors can tell the difference between a webpage that has not been updated in ten years and one that complies with modern web design guidelines.

Incredibly Quick Website

One of the primary factors that discourage visitors from engaging with a website further is related to slow loading. If a mobile website takes longer than three seconds to load, 53% of visitors will quit, according to Google Consumer Insight. Furthermore, it transpires that this issue results in a revenue loss of up to $2.6 billion annually.

Contrary to popular belief, creating a fully responsive website fast and affordably is not as tough as it might seem. For instance, regardless of the package you choose, any website produced via the top 10 website builders is instantly responsive.

5 Design Forms of Websites That Will Be Popular in 2024

Keep up with trends to meet the always-evolving requirements and wants of modern users, whose expectations are rising. This entails functionality, beauty, and usability while also benefiting your company.

The main website design concepts you should pay attention to are listed below:

1. High Accessibility of Websites

In 2024, the emphasis will be more on attending to what consumers need and want, with a larger emphasis on accessibility, as per James Thurlow-Craig, managing director but also chairman of the UK’s top web design studio, Create. This means that your website will need to be optimized for non-keyword input methods like voice recognition, voice control, and virtual reality.

Users should be able to find the things they desire and complete the checkout process as quickly and easily as they can. This is what is meant by a wonderful user experience: a straightforward user interface created with the needs of your target audience in mind.

Here are some ideas for improving user accessibility on your website:

  • Use headings to arrange your content’s structure and make it easier for users to navigate.
  • Provide accurate alt text for photos so screen readers may be used by individuals who need to understand what the image represents. Additionally, this is crucial so that users will at least understand the significance of the image in the event that it does not load in time.
  • Use illustrative anchor links to explain to users where the link will take them.
  • Be careful when choosing colours. Reading the content on your website may be challenging for persons who seem to be colour blind or have other colour deficits.
  • Make your website voice-search and voice-command-friendly.

2. Chatbots

Before contacting a live professional, 81% of customers try to resolve product-related problems, based on the Harvard Business Review. A knowledge base would be used by 91% of respondents if it could meet their demands.

Given the correct tools, today’s tech-savvy consumers genuinely want to help themselves. Because of this, 90% of clients around the world anticipate firms to establish an online self-service gateway.

In addition to having a specific page for FAQs, it is helpful to incorporate chatbots into your website design. Chatbots can be used to create leads, separate cold leads from the ones who are willing to convert and move leads through the sales funnel in addition to quickly answering customer care questions.

By including them in your 2024 web design, you may enchant users and provide them with the quick interaction and response they expect from companies and organizations today.

3. Flat Design

A simple style known as “flat design” is frequently employed in user experience design and interface. To make websites and apps more responsive and load quickly all over a variety of screen sizes, it combines flat iconography and two-dimensional shapes.

The flat style places more emphasis on use, simplicity, and functionality. This is how:

  • To convey visual clues, it makes use of vivid colours.
  • The flat design utilizes two-dimensional vector drawings to portray items rather than lifelike photographs.
  • The simple design avoids sophisticated textures like gradients and drops shadows in order to keep texture usage to a minimum.
  • Flat design avoids using fancy typefaces. Only use straightforward sans-serif fonts since they load quickly and are incredibly easy to read.

Visual trickery like invisible navigation bars with few buttons, simple silhouettes, and sparse features are other important components of flat design in addition to using straightforward shapes.

Minimalism will not be synonymous with black and white in 2024. The layout will become more experimental while remaining natural and straightforward, according to designers.

4. How Important Colour Theory Is

Utilize visual components, such as colours, and other to make your site’s design more emotionally appealing to your visitors.

You might use the so-called “colour theory” to assume charge of the colour scheme of your site design theme. This is a fantastic approach to reinforce your message and persuade visitors to act right away.

People evaluate goods within 90 seconds of first viewing them, and 90% of that assessment is based only on colour, according to QuickSprout. The worth of your company’s brand and website will be seen differently by your audience depending on the colours you choose for them.

There are numerous ways to employ subdued colours to evoke certain emotions. For instance, your website may utilize vibrant colours to inspire elation and enthusiasm while also encouraging users to buy.

There are approximately 10 million colours available, which is a concern. So how do you choose the ideal colour scheme for your website? The following hues will be popular in 2024.

You might also want to think about creating your site’s colour scheme and design around the following nuances:

  • Luscious red
  • Digital lavender
  • Verdigris
  • Tranquil blue
  • Sundial

Understanding colour theory is crucial if you want to create the ideal colour schemes for your website in 2024. It will assist you in conveying the appropriate emotions and a story. Relying on the narrative you wish to convey to your audience, you can elicit various emotions.

5. Additional Interactive Components

Make your website fascinating and aesthetically appealing in order to capture users’ attention and persuade them to explore it. There are numerous ways to increase the interactivity of your website. However, the trends for 2024 are micro-animations and intelligent videos.

Micro-animations can help direct visitors’ attention to important content or lead them to subsequent action. It is a wonderful approach to inject some humour into your design.

Dynamic scrolling is one way that micro-animation can be used. It enables you to narrate a tale while visitors browse around your website. As you take consumers on a trip, it has the power to enthral and truly engage them. In contrast, video backdrops can make your website come to life.

Statistics contradict certain experts’ claims that adding videos will hurt your website’s performance:

  • Users stay 88% longer on pages that contain videos than on ones without them.
  • Conversions can increase by 86% with video.
  • Websites featuring videos rank higher on Google.

Videos are a terrific way to introduce yourself, you can make a video online to describe your services, and explain what visitors may anticipate from you once they get on your page. Videos and animations, however, can consume a lot of bandwidth. Therefore, you would not want to sacrifice the speed at which your website loads in lieu of animated graphics or video.

Find a middle ground between a visually appealing and entertaining website and one that is useful and loads quickly.

Final Thoughts

Giving visitors a web page that prioritizes them is the sole emphasis of the developments that will be prominent in 2024. Customers are finding it more and more difficult to overlook non-responsive websites with old designs. They now demand websites that are not only responsive to all devices but also truly pleasant to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Users’ most fundamental requirements must be met, or you risk losing them. A good and up-to-date website is a commitment that will immediately pay off, for instance in the shape of more regular repeat business.

By following trends in 2024, you can undoubtedly elevate your website design. Consider adopting a flat design for a quicker loading time, optimizing it for voice search, and adding chatbots for a rich UX. Additionally, you can achieve this by using the proper colour scheme to persuade visitors to convert and by including interactive features for a more engaging website.

By combining the appropriate features and colours throughout your site, web design specialists will collaborate with you to assist you to reach your business and marketing goals if you hire them.

Therefore, consider which tendencies your website already follows, which you still need to adopt, and which you don’t. Your website’s design for 2024 can be easily decided if you prioritize user comfort and experience.

What are User Personas and Why Are They Important

A large handful of social media platforms.

Billions of users.

3-5 posts a week to put out across all of those platforms.

MILLIONS of competitors and accounts in your niche regularly posting.

How on Earth are you going to speak to the right people and float past the competition?

What is a User Persona?

A user persona is a template of your ideal customer. This could be based on a prospective target audience or an amalgamation of a few pre-existing customers.

They are a great way to optimise your blog posts for SEO as well as your social media posts. By following a user persona, you’ll have more chances of holding their attention for longer. This is good, because it increases user dwell time on your website; a key metric for SEO in 2023.

Usually, a user persona will have a Name, Job Title, Industry, Goals/Objectives, and Challenges sections, amidst more.

Why is a User Persona Important?

A user persona is used to get an idea of a specific customer in mind. This helps with targeting people that fit the persona across all of your copy and content.

Marketers and sales teams often find that by having a particular persona to target, their writing and marketing efforts end up being tighter, more focused, and often possessing a greater ROI. In fact, one of the top tips for making creative content is knowing exactly who you’re speaking to.

They help an internal team to synergize their marketing efforts by focusing on speaking to the people most likely to buy something from the business.

The result?

A much greater ROI for your time and money spent across your marketing channels and a more confident team of creatives behind your brand.

Nautilus named PPC Marketing Specialists of the Year 2022!

We are delighted to announce that Nautilus Marketing has been announced as PPC Marketing Specialists of the Year 2022 in the Corporate LiveWire Innovation & Excellence Awards 2022!

The Corporate LiveWire Innovation & Excellence Awards 2022 celebrate the success and achievements of firms and individuals that have taken an innovative approach to demonstrate exceptional business performance.

Here at Nautilus, we are feeling extremely proud and honoured to be named the winner of the PPC Marketing Specialists award and to share our excitement with other exceptional businesses in the marketing world.

Seeing first-hand how our digital expertise and commitment to our clients has helped and continues to help, many businesses prosper online has given us great happiness and pride.

This reward is the perfect reflection of the hard work our Nauti Nerds put in on our PPC campaigns and we are proud that our efforts are recognised globally.

We would like to thank our amazing clients for their incredible support since our success comes from them, and it will never fail to make us feel excited to be noticed with such awards.