You’ve decided to take the plunge and launch your creative business online. No matter what your product or service there are 3 things you want for your creative business. These help ensure business longevity by creating a strong foundation that makes every part of your marketing more productive.
Creating an Online Presence for Your Creative Business
Have a Website
When I said have a website, I’m not talking about a free site or online store hosted by someone online. Why not use these? Because you are not in control. Imagine you marketed your business diligently for two years and included the website on your business cards, in posts on Facebook, and shared it with all your customers. Now, what happens when that company hosting your website decides to close up shop? You just lost your website and all the traffic that was coming from that two of blood, sweat, and tears you put into your business! By purchasing a domain name and hosting, you can build a business website where you are in control. You own it. Secondly, it looks more professional. You worked hard to learn the skills you use to offer your products and services. Your website should reflect your commitment to your business and your audience.
A Professional Look
Speaking of professionalism, you want your site to look clean and polished. It’s the first thing many of your customers will see first. Doing it yourself may save some money, but it can also become a never-ending project when you’re new to designing a website. Web designers help you create a functional and professional-looking website that will invite customers to want to shop with your business. There are many important parts to web design to make sure it works as well as it looks. The location of the design company isn’t an issue since all the work is done online.
SEO. or search engine optimization is very important to the success of your website, bringing you leads; SEO companies can help you improve your site SEO and bring you more customers.
Your products featured on your website need quality images. It’s helpful to learn how to handle a camera, take photos, and edit those images to use on your site and social media accounts. Find a favorite design tool to get your photos ready to share.
Have a Mailing List
Once you have a website, you want to get a mailing list set up. Once you have a website, you want to get a mailing list set up by lusha alternative. By having a mailing list, you can capture all those visitors to your website and send them relevant information to their inboxes. This helps them get to know about you and that you have someone of value to them. They then continue to come back to your website and eventually become a customer. It also allows customers to become repeat customers. Have a new line of services or products you’re launching that you can include in your newsletter! A great way to get them to sign up for your mailing list is by offering a freebie of some sort: a tutorial, pattern, printable, eBook, report, tip sheet, etc. There are many possibilities! My favorite email management services are Mad Mimi and MailChimp. Both have free options for beginners.
Have a Blog
Some of you may be cringing at the thought of having to manage a blog. Some of you may be nervous – you doubt your abilities and creativity to post to the world. There are so, so many great resources online to help you learn how to write and manage a blog. A blog has too many benefits, NOT to do it. A blog gives you content to share on your social media. It gives your website content for visitors to come to your site and read. You can share it with your mailing list. More can be found through search engines by having quality content and keyword phrases on your website. You may not realize this, but you can have a website set up using WordPress, making it both your website and your blog.
Once you have these three things set up, you can plan your marketing around them. You create posts, you share those posts along with other content on social media, people come to your website/blog, they enjoy your site and join the mailing list, you now have the opportunity to keep yourself visible to them, and you turn them into fans and faithful customers. From fans and faithful customers, you have people referring to their friends and colleagues.
