Winning in the digital marketplace
- By Becca Lutwyche -
- Oct 24, 2012
Today's guest blog focuses in on how to win on the digital battlefield, even when you're up against major brands...
For decades big brands and companies have battled it out within the realms of advertising and within store. Ensuring that you win at these critical points has often been the key to success and lets be honest, generally the bigger companies win. They have more money to invest in above the line advertising and crucially more influence with the retail buyers.
However the explosion of the digital realm as a place where business battles can be won and lost, has thrust a brand new dimension into the equation. This largely unknown territory that lacks the heritage and familiarity of the previous battlefields often sparks fear into large companies that are relatively comfortable with their above the line and in store strategies. However for the entrepreneur this is the greatest opportunity.
The digital landscape affords the entrepreneur one key benefit, if you can learn the techniques and understand the processes, you can see the kind of business results that would generally be unaffordable through established mediums. Entrepreneurs and their smaller businesses have the ability to be fast paced, making quick decisions due to their flexibility and lack of bureaucracy. This is the definition of the internet, fast paced, creative and flexible, the internet can be seen to stand for everything that is entrepreneurial.
The explosion of the digital realm as a place where business battles can be won and lost, has thrust a brand new dimension into the equation...
For any entrepreneur to succeed in the digital marketplace I believe that there are a couple of key things that the entrepreneur can do and crucially, can do well.
Firstly every company needs a creative, content rich website to act as their digital hub for consumers. This should feature an interesting and dynamic landing page that encourages the consumer to navigate around the website, browsing your information, product pages etc. In addition adding an integrated ‘where to buy’ page or buy it now functionality allows consumers to complete the shopper journey by purchasing the product/service that you offer. Due to the sophistication of search engine techniques, websites with strong, rich, relevant content are rewarded with higher rankings, thus increasing the digital visibility of your business. By ensuring that your website does not have duplicate content which can reduce its importance and by integrating relevant keywords into your website through title tags or anchor text, the rankings and relevance of your website will increase. These are all tools that are at the disposal of any entrepreneur that is motivated enough to learn the tricks and tips behind website design.
In addition to a well built website, a blog may afford the entrepreneur with a low cost way of interacting with consumers. Blogs are an easy, fast way to get your message across to consumers and they generally are looked upon with more trust than the big websites and PR articles that are churned out by big businesses. Adding a blog to your website can also improve the overall organic search engine rankings of the website itself. The key is developing blogs with keyword rich content which will drive traffic to your website. In this way blogs act as a crucial search engine optimisation (SEO) tool.
Websites and blogs are not the only way for entrepreneurs to win within the digital realm but they are a great start. If you can get these key fundamentals right then progressing with elements such as social networking websites will only add to your digital presence. Crucially digital marketing offers the entrepreneur fast paced flexibility that has the ability to reach the roughly 2 billion internet users. This is an exciting prospect for any entrepreneur and with the motivation to learn more about the digital practices; any start up could win within the digital marketplace.
Image by Enkhtuvshin 5DmkII on Flickr
By Becca Lutwyche.
This guest blog complies to Virgin.com terms & conditions.
