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Brick and Mortar VS Online Business

Brick and Mortar VS Online Business

I've found that when you go to bring your business online, sometimes it's easier if you think about it as if it's an old-fashioned brick and mortar store. You start out by building your website. That is your Brick and Mortar store with a dirt parking lot. If you add that little popup that asks your visitors for their email address, now your store has a paved parking lot. Add some tracking codes from Google and Facebook, and now you're starting to gather the data you need on your customers. But you're on a street all alone and no one is driving down it.

So let's get you some neighbors. This is where you'll reach out to relevant channels to produce links back to your website and its products and or services or even your blog. Now, you're on a road with a couple businesses next to yours, and you've got a chance that someone may just pull into your lot and look around. Still, this leaves us with little traffic, and we really want people to stop in.


First, let's do a press release, being that we're a new store, this is the perfect time and method to announce it. This is the same as putting out a press release at a Brick and Mortar, and you're having your grand opening. But we still need to get more awareness, so let's run some brand awareness ads to get the word out about our existence. We can gain followers and likes to our Social page in the process of doing this and start to warm up a cold audience. Then, we'll run some traffic ads that direct customers to some solutions to their problems. After all, we're here because we're trying to help someone solve a problem, right? Then, after users have visited your website, you can re-target them with appropriate ads that may offer a discount as a conversion ad to get sales. This is the same as putting out a radio ad, getting a flyer tossed in the local paper or even making a TV commercial and targeting your target audience.

Want a better community? Get involved with them, just like you would with a Brick and Mortar store. Join your local chamber and attend events, make yourself known. From this involvement, you'll gain additional stores to your street and increase your website traffic further. If you can, offer them the solution that no one else is. Need to lower your cost per acquisition? No problem, look at your statistics and figure out where the bottlenecks are and resolve the issues. Do you need a better offer? Do they just need to see more value? Be transparent and when in doubt, ask your audience, you might just be surprised at what you learn. These items are all the same as a Brick and Mortar and are steps that you'll continually make to improve and grow your store.

Once you tackle one channel, go after another. At this point in your business, what you're doing to attract customers and gain website traffic is the same as it would be if you were a physical store looking to get foot traffic in the door. Keep at it and you'll slowly become the local expert and store everyone wants to shop at. Then don't stop, keep going, this isn't a race with a finish line, this is a journey where you'll continue to grow and expand.

Do you have questions or aren't sure where you are in this process? Drop us a line and we'd be happy to help get you on track and pointing in the right direction, EVEN if you don't work with us.

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