The Do’s and Don’ts of Building A Successful Digital Footprint

Building a sustainable digital presence should be one of the most important elements of building your business in this digital age. For every business plan, there should be a detailed section where having a well-defined marketing strategy is not overlooked. Included in the marketing strategy should be a well-detailed section of “how you propose to go about building a sustainable digital footprint” for your business. We shared a few tips below:

Do have clearly defined goals

For every social platform you seek to open an account, to every search engine advertising service you seek to deploy, they must be a clearly defined business objective to be attained. For the African Market, the following questions can serve as a guide;

1. What business sector are you into? 
   • Business to Business or Business to Consumer? This will further put into perspective the various digital platforms you may need to prioritise.
2. On what platforms can your target market be found?
3. What are their aspirations?
4. Where are they now? 
5. Where do they aim to be?

The psychological element of marketing needs to come into play here. Being able to anticipate the needs of your customers with your service offerings. 

Being an anticipatory marketer will always bring about a successful digital strategy for your business.

Do you have a “Great” website

These “____” quotation marks were purposefully placed to stress the importance of the word within this context. A great website should serve to meet the following objectives;

1. It should serve as a memorable experience to prospects of the business, think a new customer walking into your office premises for the first time, how will they be received?
2. Relevant company information should be provided with every “click” or “scroll” on the website.
3. Tell your business story. Your website should be an experience to spur your prospects into taking that lead generation decision you want them to.

Do search engines know you exist within your industry

While creating an optimal website by ensuring all search engine optimization best practices are carried out with the greatest precision, is your website categorised within your industry? This aspect is most often overlooked or forgotten by website developers and SEO analysts, and what this does is, search engines such as Google, Bing, Edge will lump up your site with non-industry specific sites thereby having your website come up for unrelated queries related to your niche. 

Take for instance; Pandora Agency is a Marketing and Communications agency that provides marketing services to all industries, healthcare and so on. Therefore our website category should fall under either “Marketing Agency” or “Marketing Services”, but uncategorised it has a higher chance of falling into the Healthcare or any other sector we service, once queries are made.

Don’t ignore business listings

Often overlooked, this gives your business that added boost it needs to gain visibility across search engines. It also showcases your brand as an emerging thought leader in the industry you play in. It is important to note however that you must select business directories that are niche to your industry and are of high repute. Apart from all the aforementioned, it is also a great leads generation avenue for your business.

Don’t ignore the power of content marketing

Content is GREAT in all its forms, but most businesses use it only in its text form and not explore a little further. Data shows as, at 2019, 83% of conversions for most businesses came from video marketing carried out. A highly value-driven content marketing avenue.

Infographics, White Paper, Email, Ebooks, Blogging, Podcasting and so on are many forms of content marketing. Uploading these forms of content also gives your brand great visibility across search engines. Promotion of these types of content strategy gives your business that added edge over your competitors.

So as with most things in life, taking consistent actionable steps with all aforementioned will see you build a long term successful digital footprint for your brand with minimal cost implications.

Let us know if you’ve tried any of the Dos or fallen victim to the Don’ts.