No business is an overnight success, and whoever claims otherwise is either delusional or a scammer. Especially in our world today which relies more and more on digital presence, there are many things that you absolutely need to do by or around the time your website is ready to be deployed. Moreover, you need to do these things before you start purchasing ads for your business so that you centralise your marketing and your audience.
1- Google My Business
If you don’t have a Google My Business page for your business, you absolutely have to create one now. If your business has been around for a while, chances are someone already created a Google My Business page for it that you just need to claim. Just go here to begin the process.
Having a GMB (Google My Business) page is extremely important for your business because it serves 2 main purposes (among others). First, it lists you on Google Maps so that people can more easily find you through their Google Maps app when they need to visit your location (this is doubly important for businesses who serve customers at a specific location such as restaurants and shops), and second, it allows people to more easily find you on Google Search when they type in your business name or “your industry near me” (for example, “restaurants near me” or “colleges in Bankstown”). In addition to that, your GMB page is where clients will be leaving you reviews, so you definitely need to have control over the page in order to more quickly respond to client reviews, especially the negative ones (which you won’t hopefully get).
2- Grab your Social Media Handles
A Social Media handle is the symbol @ followed by your business name. For example, ours on Facebook is @brandpluswebs. It is important for you to reserve these as soon as you reserve your business name for two main reasons. The first reason is to make sure that no one already has the handles you are looking for, and second, to book the best social media link for yourself because your social media handle is linked to your URL; for example, ours is https://facebook.com/brandpluswebs.
It would be ideal if you can reserve the same handle across all your desired social media accounts so that your clients can more easily find you across different platforms; however, it’s not a big deal if you can’t find exactly what you want because you can always try and get something close such as @XYZclubau if you can’t find @XYZclub.
3- Create and Start Using a Professional E-mail Address
If you are getting your website done through Brandplus Solutions and we are providing you with the hosting, we will provide you with 100 e-mail addresses that you can use for your business. These e-mails will be, for example, info@mywebsite.com or accounts@website.com.au or whatever you like them to be as long as they are in your domain’s name (our domain is brandpluss.com, and our email is info@brandpluss.com). Other providers may charge you extra for these email addresses, but we don’t (you can find out more here).
It is very important to use a branded e-mail address when addressing clients, and not your regular gmail or hotmail account because it makes you look a lot more serious and professional. In addition to that, it shows clients that you have a cool website that they can visit and get more information about your business from, even if your website is still under construction.
There is definitely a lot more that you need to do in order to ace the digital marketing of your business; however, we find that these three simple steps are the way to start before you start purchasing ads for your business. When you start advertising, you need something for your audience to look at to know more about your business. You could have them call you; however, research shows that businesses that have websites and social media presence gain more trust from clients.
Best of luck with your new business!
