If you’re an offline or, “brick-and-mortar” business, I hope you’ve taken advantage of the enhanced marketing opportunities and tools found online this holiday season.
If you have, the links below lead to helpful information to take your efforts further and make them more effective. If not, the links below may help inspire you to start taking some steps online.
Either way, I hope they get you thinking about the advantages of doing more online to promote and grow your business.
This article details how to get started managing your online presence and yes, you have an online presence whether or not you believe you do.
As I noted in my article, “What is an Online Business?“, “Almost every business is online today, whether that was the result of explicit or implicit efforts. At the very least, a business listing has been captured, indexed and made available via the local marketing search tools built by sites such as Google and Yahoo!.”
Thanks to this fact, you are online whether you want to be or not. Furthermore, it’s very possible that people are talking about you online. People such as your customers who have, and are taking, the opportunity to leave reviews and ratings about your business on a multitude of sites.
Because of this activity, you need to watch what folks are saying about your business online, not only to manage your reputation, but to gain insight into what your customers think you do well and what you do poorly.
Why brick-and-mortar businesses must have a website that sells
This previous post of mine introduces location marketing and discusses why you need to not only have a website to be found, but why that website will become the best free local marketing tool you’ve ever had.
Create a Killer Website to Market Your Brick and Mortar Business
If my post on why you must have a website has convinced you to get one, or to spruce up the one you already have, this article gives some handy tips on making in an effective tool for your business.
3 Lessons: From Brick-&-Mortar to Online Biz
As you make the move to do more online, these hard-won lessons that map offline approaches to the online world will jump-start your efforts to succeed.
5 Mistakes Brick and Mortar SMBs Shouldn’t Make Online
Lastly. this article details 5 pitfalls to watch out for as you increase your efforts online.
Matt,
Thank you for the mention. Glad you’ve found my article of help.
Thanks,
Geno
You bet Geno!
It was informative, clear and provided great resources for tracking your listings and reputation online.
-Matt
Glad to be of help. Have a good weekend, and Happy Holidays!
You too!
Hi Matt, thanks for including us in your roundup. Nice site! And thank you, especially, for including BizSugar voting buttons, too — the support is appreciated.
– Anita Campbell
Anita,
Thanks for stopping by and for your kind words! The article to which I linked had an interesting take on the subject and, better yet, contained usable and actionable information – great stuff.
Love BizSugar – it’s on my daily, “Check a few times for interesting articles” list. 🙂
-Matt