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Five Reasons Why Your Business Needs Online Presence

by admin

March 3, 2019 2

Favour Onyeoziri

With the advent of the Internet, everything about our lives has gradually moved from the physical world to the virtual world or ‘cloud’ as some would call it. Unlike in the past when you needed to perform all transactions in person, the Internet has made it possible to carry out lots of activities without being physically present. This has a lot of implications for businesses, especially SMEs. These days, a lot of business transactions are performed online. People buy and sell products and services via the Internet. Financial transactions and payments are also carried out online. In fact, some of the biggest market places in the world are e-commerce sites. Key examples are Amazon.com and Alibaba.com, the biggest e-commerce sites in the world.  As the world gradually moves from brick and mortar stores and offices to e-commerce, the big question therefore is why do you need to take your business online? This question is valid even for those whose businesses have online presence but have yet to understand how to maximize the benefits of being online.

• First, it serves as an infallible proof that your business exists. In this age, if prospective customers are unable to find you on the Internet, it’s assumed that your business isn’t in existence. Many consumers love to make their research online before making a purchase. Therefore, when they search for your brand online, they should be able to find you. Not only that, they also should be able to get detailed information regarding your products and services. For starters, you should open social media pages and a website for your business. While your website can be likened to your business headquarters on the Internet, your social media pages can be likened to branch offices where people can visit at their convenience and get the same awesome experience that your business gives. It is advisable to have a presence on the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Another benefit of creating an online presence for your business is to increase brand awareness. According to com, 84.3 million Nigerians currently have access to the Internet. This number will hit 93 million by 2019. Also, according to internetworldstats.com,as of December 2017, there are over four billion Internet users across the world. These numbers hold immense potential for your business. With a strong online presence and depending on the market in which you play in, you can service clients from different parts of the world through the internet. Although this may sound very unreal, but the truth is that as you read this article, many Nigerian SMEs already have access to international markets through the Internet. The bottom-line is that with the aid of the Internet, your business gets more exposure than it would if you remain offline. Many more people see your products and services, experience your brand for themselves and even if they do not patronise you, they get to refer you to other people.

• If you are a business that cares about feedback and customer service, the Internet provides you with an efficient way to gather customer feedbacks, conduct surveys and improve on the quality of your products and services. When you use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instragram, your customers can pass across any complaints they have. You can also interact with them and help resolve such in real time. This will aid customer satisfaction and retention. The Internet also helps you create a personal relationship with people in your target market. They can visit you (your social media pages) daily for regular updates, send you messages, comment on your posts and even advise on the kind of products and services they are interested in. This sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

• It is also an open secret that the Internet affords you a cheaper form of advertising. Conventional methods of advertising such as newspaper, radio and television are not only expensive, but can rarely be measured. This is why many businesses, both big and small, are favouring digital marketing and advertising on the web. Asides from the initial cost of setting up your website, you rarely get to spend any extra money on it, except you are an e-commerce website that needs to be updated on a regular basis. Other online avenues such as social media platforms are all free of charge. You do not need a dime to open a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account. However, you would need to set aside a small budget for content creation on these platforms, depending on how tech savvy you are. Daily picture and post updates about your product or services on your social media platforms are absolutely free. With a little bit of consistency, you get to reach many people within your target market, all for a very small fraction of what it would have cost you if you were using a traditional method of advertising.

• At the end of the day, the goal of every business is to make profit and taking your business online leads to increase in sales and profit. Every day, thousands of businesses meet paying customers online. As you read this article, chances are that a willing buyer is scrolling through the website or social media pages of your competitor. The buyer is already convinced that he or she is about to make the right choice. You know what? Right now, that prospective buyer just placed an order for a product merely by seeing it online. This could be your story. But first, you have to bring your business online.

According to the statistics from statista.com, in 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people worldwide purchased goods online. This is expected to rise to over 2.14 billion people by 2021. In the same vein, by 2019, over half of Nigeria’s population of about 180 million people, would have access to the Internet. The above figures prove that every day, hundreds of thousands of your prospective customers are becoming Internet savvy. I hope your business won’t be caught off guard when this digital revolution is complete.