Top five reasons A physical business needs a digital brand

If you and your business are thriving out there in the physical world, it may seem goofy or even pointless to focus on raising your brand awareness in digital media. However, you may be surprised by our top five reasons that a physical business NEEDS a digital brand.

Reason 1: To Get Found

The most obvious reason your brand needs a digital brand is to be found. Gone are the days of walking past a job site and asking for a business card. You and your business need to be able to be found where people are looking. Where are people looking? Online, of course!

A few of the many free resources available to you and your business that can get your name out there in the cyber sphere where people are looking to contact and hire businesses. These are great places to be found and should be utilized effectively!

Reason 2: To build a reputation

Reputation building is one of the most difficult things you can do when you're first starting your business (or first building an online presence). Good work is rewarded, but how do you get rewarded when you haven't yet done any work, or at least any that's provable online?

That's where reason one and reason two collide. Online, results with proof matter. You never know, you may just end up being the first business of your kind in your service area. That would be a chance you don’t want to pass up. With services like the google business page, positive feedback generates positive feedback. In other words, the more good reviews you get early on, the more often you’ll be contacted as people go to search for the best rated solver of their problem.

Reason 3: To Drive Foot Traffic

Being a mainly physical business, it can sometimes be hard to see the forest through the trees with online presence. However, its just another tool at your disposal to drive customer and clients to your business!

Your online following is your *free* advertising base. If people follow your coffee shop on Facebook or Instagram, posting a warm latte and bagel on a rainy day may be the difference between having an extra 10-15 customers on a quiet Sunday morning. If you're a clothing shop, showing off some of your latest merchandise finds may garner the attention of someone who hasn't visited your store in a while.

Reason 4: To maintain para social relationships

Being a business/business owner, you'll come into contact with more people in a day than most people will talk to in an entire week. Those numbers at scale means that its nearly impossible to not have a blip every once and a while. Not everyone's experience with your business is going to be stellar, that's reality. What's more important is how you address those instances and make them right.

Social media, and online reviews are a great way to do that. Responding to negative feedback online in a non-argumentative, empathetic, and compassionate way can turn around a customer's experience from "never going there again" to "their customer service made things right and earned back my business". Plus, you never know. Some of those one, two and three star reviews may get edited and bumped up to a four or a five if you're willing to rectify someone's bad experience.

Reason 5: Social Proof

Earlier I said that your online following is your built-in free advertising platform. However, that's online half of the truth. The whole truth is that audience is expanded by friends and families of followers. The good experiences that they have in your store or with your business turn into good word of mouth. And in a digital age, word of mouth can be written down shared indefinitely.

Creating incentives to "check in", leave reviews, take/post pictures with a cute or eye-catching visual, like/share or follow is an amazing and quick way to generate some of that social proof that will inevitably be passed on to others who your audience is engaged with online.

If you're interested in learning more about how your physical business can best utilize a digital space - don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'd be happy to help you uncover the best strategy for your website!

Futurist Horizons is a website design and marketing company that specializes in creating effective and accessible websites and marketing content for businesses.