Picture this, Andy has taken over a very successful bike shop based in the picturesque town of Skipton. The business has a good turn over, loyal local customer base and steady flow of income that can support himself and two staff. However along comes a national bike retailer located only 2 miles outside the town centre, slowly but surely Andy’s steady business begins to lose trade the difficulty being he cannot compete on price as his volumes from suppliers are low and he cannot offer the discounts that the competitor does. What does he do?
a) Keep going and hope things will get better, maybe lay off his staff and then work 7 days a week?
b) Close completely, give up and go work for his competitor
c) Look at his opportunities, understanding what he can do to change his fortunes
If you’re like adigi digital agency we’d help Andy with option (c), as we know the internet offers ALL businesses the opportunity to increase their target audience from local to national in a matter of weeks. In 2009 alone the UK’s ecommerce market was worth a staggering £80 billion (IAB UK, November 2009), with a large proportion of which being made up of small to medium sized businesses.
What do you need to do? It’s quite simple…speak to a digital agency in West Yorkshire such as adigi, and share your ideas with them. They’ll gain an understanding of your business, your customers and who you should be targeting online, from which they can formulate a strategy that will effectively bring you to life online and drive traffic and enquiries. When you’re ready you commission the ecommerce website to be built and wait for the launch.
However once the site is live the story does end there, you need to consider ongoing marketing or search engine optimisation (SEO for short…). Driving the visibility of your site is essential, after all you could have the best looking site in the world but without the customers to show it to it’s pointless. Search engine optimisation will make sure you’re standing out from the crowd, drive traffic and ultimately sell your products.
Therefore is it time you went from local to national, raised your profile and increased your sales…if so contact adigi today and let us help you formulate your digital strategy.