The Internet has evolved into one of the most important— if not the most important — segments of the global economy, allowing small businesses to enjoy a “larger than life” presence in today’s competitive digital arena. Not only that, ever-advancing technology now makes it possible for small businesses to have the expanded professional presence that once only larger companies or corporations enjoyed.
From professional company websites and blogs to virtual office space, social networks, and giving back to the community, even the smallest business can make use of the “secret weapons” that will attract a larger audience, enhance professional presence, and ultimately make a bigger impact.
Here are 10 tips and tools for getting started:
1. Executive Office Space
Today, small businesses don’t have to have a large budget to afford a professional appearance. Many executive office space providers are month-to-month (no long-term contracts). With virtual offices and “on-demand” space, you pay only for the time/service you actually use. Elegant, upscale surroundings enhance the level of professionalism clients perceive, whether meeting in the facility’s conference rooms or in your executive office. Essentially, you pay for what you need while projecting your small business on a larger scale. For some clients and presentations, coffee shops just don’t cut it. For this reason, we make use of executive office space for our own business. Many clients, particularly our larger clients, have remarked that our physical office space was a factor in selecting our firm.
2. Live 24-Hour Phone Answering
The telephone goes unanswered after hours, and sometimes even during business hours, for many small businesses. You may have voicemail, an automated switchboard service or an answering machine, but nothing lends professionalism to your business like having your business telephone answered by a real person. Existing and potential customers want to talk to a human, not a machine; it gives them a more secure feeling that their message will get through. Many live phone answering services not only pre-screen phone calls for you, they also “hot forward” prospective client phone calls to your cell phone in real-time. Further, these phone answering services will also send all messages via email and SMS text to an unlimited number of email addresses and mobile phone numbers.
The cost? For our live phone answering service we pay $22 a month for roughly 20 minutes of live phone answering time as a base fee and approximately $1/minute thereafter. Our bill averages around $50-$100 a month.
3. Organic Search Engine Optimization
Although we sell search engine optimization services, we are also one of our own SEO clients. With 97 percent of consumers searching for products and services online, nothing gives your business a bigger presence than outranking the competition. Consumers associate top organic rankings with value, reputation, merit, success, and, yes, size.
When your business pops up first on Google, you are often perceived to be the best or one of the best in the market. High organic rank rewards your business with a click to your website and a shot at earning new business. If you give a prospective client what he or she needs or wants to see on your website, you get a real shot at winning a phone call, an email inquiry or an online sale.
4. Professional Web Design
Your website is one of your most important assets. It is just as important as any other critical business asset such as a truck, capital equipment or even a key employee.
For virtually all B2C consumers and most B2B buyers, the Internet is usually the place people go to search for products and services and the last place they check before making a final decision. In many cases, your website is the first point of contact for new business. The information you display on your website and how you present your company is critically important. On the Internet, you get a fraction of a second to make an impression. Getting a precious visitor is the goal; transforming that visitor into a lead or customer is the prize.
The Internet is truly a level playing field. Even small companies can afford great custom web design. Although many business owners treat web design as an expense, you should actually view it as an investment, a lead generator and a profit center. A professional website is essential for building brand equity, trust, and visibility.
5. Proactive Reputation Management
In today’s world, the 1-2 punch of Internet marketing is strong organic visibility coupled with an effective online reputation strategy. When your prospective customers see your website ranked near or at the top of the search rankings and they can visibly see that your company has a high level of positive customer feedback, that is the killer combination that helps you close the deal before prospects even contact you. Furthermore, when your company has more reviews than the competition, it can make you appear to be a much bigger player.
6. Guest Blogging and Sponsored Content
Guest blogging is a form of online content marketing that creates cascade win-wins.
There are two forms of guest blogging:
Off-site // When you write an article to be published on a third party website
On-site // When other people write content to be published on your company’s blog
Let’s consider off-site first. By creating a unique, high-quality blog post that is relevant and useful to the third-party website’s audience, you give their readers valuable, relevant information from a unique, third-party perspective. In turn, Thinking Bigger is giving our company exposure to their audience.
The benefits don’t stop there. In most cases, both the author and the publisher will “amplify” blog posts in their social media channels (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus), and both parties benefit by leveraging each other’s social network audience. This mutual rippling effect not only helps extend audience reach, but also has tremendous search engine value because of the social signals that are driven back to the blog post.
But wait, there’s even more. When your content is published on a reputable website and you actively promote the post, the fact that you are a contributor to a popular niche blog helps to expand your presence and increase your authority as an expert in your niche.
The second form of guest blogging involves publishing guest posts on your blog. This on-site blogging has many of the same leveraging benefits as off-site blogging. Having quality authors with active social media channels publish on your website also helps to increase the presence of your site. In other words, your website or business is important enough that other people want to be published on your blog.
CAUTION: You shouldn’t do guest blogging in volume; otherwise it’s just another form of web spam. Guest posting only works with high-quality content on relevant sites. In other words, only offer to provide content to websites where you would be proud to be published. And only publish third-party content on your website if it’s high quality, unique and adds value to your readership base.
7. Google Plus
Google+ is often overlooked as a key social network. Yet it’s really helpful for improving SEO, especially when your business takes advantage of all its features:
- Google Plus Personal Page
- Google+ Company Page
- Google+ Authorship
- Google+ Reviews
- Google Knowledge Graph
Taking advantage of all of these features not only makes your company more visible and presents you in a professional light, G+ also helps considerably with search engine optimization and ranking.
8. LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows like-minded business professionals in both small and large companies to connect, build business relationships, and essentially help each other. Make a point of expanding your networking, reaching “500+” connections, having a detailed resume, creating a company page, and taking advantage of all the features LinkedIn provides.
9. Federal Trademark Registration
Getting a federal trademark registration for your brand name or service mark is relatively inexpensive. In our case, we have federally registered our trademarks Kansas City SEO® and Kansas City Web Design®. Registering a trademark is more affordable than you think – it costs about $500 through legal services websites such as Legal Zoom. Most people are unaware that trademark registration is so affordable.
Taking the extra step to get registered and using the registration mark can give your small business a much larger presence both online and off. Trademark registration may also give your company some protection against your competitors that use trademark stuffing to gain an SEO advantage by misusing your trademarks online.
10. Charitable Contributions
Aside from being the right thing to do, giving back to your community helps your business in many ways. In many cases, your donations or participation in events not only gets your business in front of new audiences, but there is also often SEO and online marketing value if your company can be listed online (with a link) as a donor or participant, or mentioned in an email newsletter.
Not too many years ago small businesses were extremely limited when it came to making a name for themselves and projecting a professional image. You may have worked from a small space in the back corner of a strip mall, or on the third floor of a shabby building that had seen better days, simply because it was all your company could afford. Times have changed, and for the better! Whether you’re the owner of a one-person business or have a handful of employees, you can achieve a bigger, more professional image than you could a decade ago.
As you can see, having a professional website designed, sharing quality content through blogging, engaging in social media, and having professional office space only when you need it can grow your small business to levels you never could have imagined. You may want to consider putting a few of these 10 secret weapons to use in your own business. With today’s technology, anything is possible.
