DIGITAL STRATEGIES FOR LOCAL BUSINESSES ( AND WILL ONLY COST $1200-2400/YEAR)
Digital Strategies for Local Businesses
Recently, I gave a deputation for one of the committees for the City of Belleville. After my presentation I stayed on to listen to the various organizations within our community talk about their digital strategies for success. It was very interesting and also very concerning. Locally hundreds of thousands of dollars is spent on international technology to solve local digital needs. There are better solutions locally.
These organizations have marketing budgets and resources that are not available to most small businesses. Yet, their results were not overwhelming impressive. For example, the Bay of Quinte Marketing Board, which is a fantastic organization, spent over $70 K on their websites and digital marketing strategies. The traffic to their 5 websites was only 230, 000 (cumulatively) views for the entire year for 2019. (Anyone is able to access these stats from the BOQ.) We had offered the BOQ Marketing Board a free profile ( worth $2400/year) they did nothing on our site for the year of 2019. They received 195,000 views on our site for the entire year.
My point to these revelations is that you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to have a great deal of exposure. The old adage “ Work smarter not harder” truly does apply to the small business’ digital strategy. As a small business owner, resources both monetary and human are often limited. By taking a real evaluation of your digital footprint can improve foot traffic and digital traffic to your business with less effort on your part at a lower cost. Streamlining your social media, SEO and website can have real benefits for your business. As well as having a true LOCAL digital focus on where you operate your business is key to real growth. It is also the key to growing our local economy.
Let’s be clear, social media is a necessary evil in today’s business strategies. But paid social media ads actually have a -90% ROI. As well, relying on only social media alone without keeping your website up to date ( or not having a website at all) and not using SEO strategies are actually counter productive for business growth.
For retail businesses Shopify has been the go to for e-commerce platforms. BUT, what most businesses aren’t told is that 95% of Shopify sites fail. You can Google it!
We recently did a local survey asking consumers ( non-business owners) how they viewed the local online shopping experience.
75% stated that it was NOT easy to shop locally.
82% used international sites or big box stores during the initial stages of the COVID shutdowns.
65% stated that the local “shop local” initiatives did little to convince them to support local businesses.
100% stated that they wanted to use one local-centric platform for their shopping needs.
Amazon is expanding because of ease of use. Locally we need to use their example and apply it locally.
ShopBayofQuinte/ShopCentralHastings is moving ahead to offer these services not only to just local retail stores but all organizations. Local services need to be found, Local community groups need to be heard, sports teams need to be celebrated and non profits need to be supported. Having one local platform is the solution to all of these issues.
We will be offering webinars over the next few weeks to showcase our platform and how it benefits local businesses. Join us on one of the following Fridays at 10 am: October 23, October 30 or November 6, 2020.
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uhvyWso0TsmbaP1BhGHBmw
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