Focusing on a local market is a perfectly good business strategy; but any business looking to expand further afield has to at least consider a digital presence and marketing strategy.
We touch upon the importance of issues relevant to this exercise in our posts entitled "Embrace Technology to Stressbust™" and "Keep a Tech Trail as opposed to Paper Trail to Stressbust™".
And a business rarely gets more than one bite of the cherry when it comes to establishing an online presence; so this is a highly specialist area that could really benefit from in house or external dedicated expertise.
Key considerations may include the following:-
● research the market with a view to engaging expert support that believes in and wants to meaningfully help your business thrive
● know precisely what you want your online presence to look like and achieve to be able to convey this clearly to digital support partners
● determine core functionality and structure needs in advance (eg is a website info only or intended to be interactive?)
● settle on a google business profile (GBP) optimisation approach and stick to it
● is the site to be completely open or are closed access areas required? Do search results need to be restricted accordingly?
● what analytics or statistics do you want or need from your digital presence strategy, and how are you intending to secure them?
● is affiliate marketing an objective and if so does your proposed approach accommodate it?
● are online payments envisaged? Again, if so, this functionality will need constructed optimally and are there any anti money laundering checks required - see our post entitled "Anti Money Laundering Checks for Businesses"
● if it is proposed to collect and hold data, how are relevant permissions to be obtained (e.g. electronically or manually) and how will it be protected and processed legitimately? - see our post entitled "Register & safeguard Data to maximise its value"
● if developing an app, make it functional, effective and secure - see our post entitled "Some 'Apps' are about as useful as the 'g' in the word 'lasagne'"
● up front work aside, how much will requisite ongoing licences, software, server support and permissions be for effective budgeting purposes?
Building an implementing a digital presence is a complex exercise with numerous strands to it, all of which need to dovetail. It is not,therefore, an exercise to be rushed; the above example considerations are not by any means exhaustive because each business's needs are unique to their proposed objectives.
But the benefits of getting the strategy right with the right strategic partner in place can be immense- see "How to make Strategic Partnerships work for you".
If you can relate to the contents of this post and would like the value of our extensive network expertise in this area, please reach out to us in confidence via our "Contact" page or at connect@stresstips4u.com
For further information in this regard, please consult our "Legal Notices" page.