Starting a business has never been easier thanks to the accessibility of the internet in modern life. By the same token, it has never been more difficult to keep a business afloat and competitive in what many economists would call an oversaturated commercial sector. Unless you have innovated something completely unique and practical that people cannot live without, chances are you will have heavy competition and need to get the American consumer informed and connected with your budding brand. The internet is fertile ground for the savvy business leader to grow but only with the right tools, engagement strategies, and a little bit of help from designers, marketers, and networkers.

Building Home Base

An attractive, efficient, and optimized webpage should sit at the top of a new business’ priorities. As a “home base” for your business on the net, your webpage will allow your business to grow through other networking means. Since mobile devices have finally surpassed desktop internet access, this means that webpages that are outdated or poorly optimized to allow mobile access are essentially missing out on engaged customers — the average American consumer will typically only give a webpage a few seconds to load before abandoning the site entirely from frustration. Having a functioning website is only half the battle as the very colors, format, font, and layout of your webpage can all contribute to the way a consumer views your brand — having bullet points rather than paragraphs, cool colors rather than vibrant ones, and easy navigation all contribute to a consumer’s view of your business. Hiring professional website development services can ensure that your webpage is both optimized and attractive; this early investment can set up a launch platform to take your business to new opportunities on the net.

Engaging on the Net

Blogs and social media sites ought to be treated as an opportunity for businesses to directly engage with consumers. Estimates suggest that 70% of the total United States population is plugged into some kind of social media site with over half using two or more networks on a regular basis. Nearly half of all contemporary business choose to use social media sites to engage with consumers with the average marketing agency stating that as little as six hours per week on social media campaigns had a significant impact on lead generation, consumer engagement, and overall profits. Linking a blog or social media page to your business’ webpage gives interested consumers a platform to learn more about your company. The social media pages themselves can be utilized for promotional campaigns, customer feedback, answering consumer questions, announcing new products, offering special deals, and so much more. In this day and age, businesses who choose not to build up their digital infrastructure might as well close their doors early.

Harnessing the Internet’s Most Powerful Tool For Your Own Gain

A whopping 93% of all online experiences start with a search engine inquiry. A report released by Google back in 2012 stated that their search engine completes 100 billion searches in a single month. Thanks to everything from online reviews, blogs, articles, and everything in between, many internet savvy consumers opt to research products before choosing to buy them — these consumers are already engaged and interested in a particular product and thus can have their spending habits curved if done correctly. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. Rather than introducing consumers to tired pay-per-click advertisements that typically go ignored, SEO services specialize instead in creative content generation that utilizes keywords that are likely to be entered by consumers interested in your business’ product or service. The content generated by an SEO marketing agency is often informative, entertaining, and tends to influence the spending habits of a consumer according to the average marketing agency. SEO has been proven to be three times more effective at lead generation than social media sites according to studies. Partnering with an SEO marketing agency could be the very difference between success and failure in the dynamic business world.