Just a website? Where's the rest of your digital presence?

It's business start-up 101.  Get a business name, phone number, email address, domain name, website, business cards, store front sign and a store hours sign for the front window.  For many business owners, that list is very much their business plan too.  I've seen many hockey businesses operate this way and struggle to stay in business.

For some of them, the website is something that they get to later with little regard as to what they want it to do and how much it will cost.  Others spend too much time and money on their web presence and still don't end up with the intended result or functionality.  In either case and somewhere in between, business owners are ignoring digital presence beyond websites.

Consider that 'www dot access to information' was commercialized over 20 years ago and could only be viewed through desktop computers using keystrokes.  Today, access can be achieved through sound, voice, camera and proximity using mobile devices.

Let's face it, the only people or things visiting your website is the older tech generation, search engines,  hackers and the younger tech generation only because you have no other digital presence.  And since you're stuck here, you look to SEO, sharing links and using Google Adwords as channels to get people and bots to find your brand.  Boring!

Digital Presence Essentials:

1.  Website

• Make it mobile friendly. A Responsive Web Design (RWD) will give users a better viewing experience with your brand.  The site formats nicely to any device (computer or mobile).
• Free designs usually end up costing you because you try to stretch their capabilities beyond what they are intended to do.  You pay the provider to try to fix things and end up with a mess that has to be recreated from scratch.

2.  Social Media

• Social media platforms have done a great job with their mobile apps.  They quickly realized that their users access their service on mobile devices more than desktops (aka websites).  You need to be there and be active.  

3.  Mobile App

• 80% of a smartphone user's time is spent with apps.  The other 20%?  You guessed it.  Trying to navigate through clumsy websites with their mobile browser.
• Apps are not replications of your website.  They provide a meaningful service to your customers (or things that websites can't do).  The investment in your own app will put you miles ahead of your competitors' website only digital presence.

4.  Advertising

• Back to social media for a second.  Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin have robust advertising platforms.  You can spend as little as $6 per month to promote your business, a product or promotion.  The analytic reports will help you with targeting and your budgets.  Again, most of the ads are consumed on the mobile apps of these social media companies.
• Apple has just opened it's iAd Workbench to anyone with an Apple ID.  In the early days of iAd, you needed a $1 million dollar ad budget to reach a market on Apple's mobile devices.  That amount was reduced and eventually any developer could promote their apps.   Today, you can advertise apps, music, books and most products and services.  Ads appear on apps that are using the iAd network.  You have control over targeting the ads by geography and interest categories and budgets.  Other platforms include Admob by Google and the Hockey Science & Technology ad network.

5.  Email

• Use a professional grade service like Constant Contact to set up your mailing list and create decent newsletters.  Email marketing is really good for reaching your customers and giving them the opportunity to share your news with others via social media or email forwarding.

6.  QR Codes

• People really don't have the time to type your website address or contact information.  QR codes can be used on printed material to scan with a camera and a QR reader enabled app.  The information is saved to the device to be used later.  Code generating apps can be downloaded and are inexpensive.

7.  iBeacon

• iBeacon is a trade mark of Apple.  It's an indoor positioning system to that allows a bluetooth transmitting device to communicate with iBeacon enabled apps on mobile devices.  You would use this in a retail store to alert and provide details of products in your store as a shopper roams around.  It's a sales assistant.

If you need help with your digital presence, please contact Hockey Science & Technology.

Stick Business is for Player Performance Professionals who want to discover new information, products and services to develop and operate their business.  Stick Business is published by Hockey Science & Technology.

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