May 12, 2021
6 Minute Read

A guide to increase your company’s valuation through online presence

KEY ARTICLE TAKEAWAYS

Understand why online marketing can increase your valuation

Understand the various elements of an online presence and best practices for each

Learn top strategies to improve your online presence

Your online presence is an integral business tool in today’s online and interconnected world.

Did you know that 73% of B2B prospective customers research companies and products online before making a purchase and 57% of the purchase decision is completed before even contacting the prospective seller?

For B2C purchases, the statistics are even higher – 85% of consumers will conduct some form of online research before making a purchase decision. These statistics aren’t dependent on the industry. We find that people are just as likely to research the type of software they want to purchase for their business as they are the healthcare providers they need for their families.

[FREE]

Exit Checklist

Want to get a sense for what it takes to sell your company? Start with this exit checklist.

Both inbound and outbound marketing techniques are effective ways to improve your online presence. For business owners planning to sell their company or build long-term value, building your online presence can be even more advantageous. There’s a great deal of data on facets of digital marketing and its effectiveness in dramatically increasing profitability. For companies looking to eventually sell or raise capital, increasing the company valuation is often top of mind for the business owner. Improving your online presence is a cost-effective way to significantly improve company value in a short span of time.

Why online marketing increases company valuation

Increasing your company valuation is certainty driven by growing revenue and profits but is also about decreasing business risk and adding predictability, diversity, and certainty of lead generation activities. There are set steps looked at in terms of valuation that include assessing your market, the customer base, potential concentration issues, the supply chain, future revenue and liabilities, and quality of management. While you’ve likely looked at standard business strategies, like building a moat around your products or services and managing volatility in your business or industry, you may not have originally thought of marketing in terms of increasing your business valuation.

Your marketing initiatives will put you in a much more advantageous position when it comes time to sell. And there is a wealth of data to back up the ROI in planning your online marketing strategy to improve your presence. Your prospective buyers will be looking at your online presence. Even if you haven’t been actively marketing online, you likely do have a website providing a footprint on the Internet, and this may include online reviews or other mentions online. If you’re not involved in this process, you’re leaving a lot to chance.

Your website and owned online properties will be a factor in any buyer’s initial assessment of your business. In the same way that it’s a factor in attracting new customers and improving your sales and profits, your online presence speaks to the worth of the company when it comes to valuation. Inbound and outbound marketing initiatives are a long-term strategy. They reap results over time. With solid planning, they also provide great metrics to allow you to project future revenue and other aspects integral to valuation with much more confidence.

Best practices to improve your online presence

Your online presence is an extension of your total brand. The focus for you should be to maintain transparent and honest content that exemplifies what your business provides customers and build loyalty. Oftentimes, people mistakenly believe that marketing is a less verifiable business investment. Today’s marketing initiatives rely on excellent data that allows us to create insights to push real business growth. The pace of business growth (and sustainability of that growth) is one of the strongest drivers and predictors of business value.

While there is no crystal ball, you can accurately project campaign initiatives to meet your goals. Marketing strategies are a long-term investment. With a commitment to the process, you may see ROI much higher than you might anticipate. Marketing also increases brand loyalty. When working with inbound marketing, a great deal of the process is offering value to your audience. This leverages your brand as an expert but also makes your products and services more attractive for customers who may look to purchase at a later date.

Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Inbound marketing initiatives are designed to bring your customers to you. This includes search engine optimization (SEO). SEO includes a number of effective strategies that help your customers find you online. These might include local SEO, so someone in your geographic area will find your business through your Google My Business listing or the Google map pack. It also includes technical SEO which addresses website structure, performance, and user experience to improve your website ranking. Additionally, link generation using off-page SEO strategies is another key initiative to explore. Off-page SEO involves securing links on reputable, high-ranking websites that point back to your website. Link building can help more people find out about your company while also boosting your search engine rankings.

Essentially, your inbound marketing strategy attracts the audience, converts them, sells to them, and satisfies them. Inbound strategy is geared to cultivate engagement. You won’t necessarily convince every person to purchase on the first contact. Most customers will see your brand several times before deciding to buy. Think of this as cultivating a long-term relationship with a client.

Outbound strategies include things like paid search and display advertising. These are straight-forward, direct sales techniques. They are effective in helping to promote events or sales. Essentially, they work to grab prospective customers and point them toward your brand and website.

The best way to increase your online presence is by using a number of these techniques in your overall marketing strategy.

Top strategies to improve your online presence

There are many solid marketing initiatives, so it’s easy to get confused over where to invest time. The best way to plan your strategy starts with your own market positioning, evaluation of current marketing initiatives, and a financial analysis of what is possible at different levels of investment. The optimal campaigns are those that engage a large target audience to generate increased website
traffic, conversions, and closed sales.

Here are some of the most popular and effective strategies:

Build a Professional and Optimized Website. If you have a website that’s not getting you any leads, it needs to be improved. Your website should look professional, but it also needs to meet the technical aspects of SEO. These are things your audience won’t see, but it impacts their user experience.
Work on Local SEO. If your business is local, making sure that local customers can find you is a great way to build your customer base. Local SEO initiatives will help you get found by all the customers who might be looking for your services in their area.
Invest in Paid Advertising. Targeting advertising, such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads, display ads, video ads, and social media advertising, can be an excellent way to bring new visitors to your website and advertise your product and service offerings. This is a great tactic when you have an ongoing sale or upcoming event. It’s also useful to build traffic to specific pieces of content.
Commit to Organic Search. Besides the technical performance of your website design, search engines care about the problems you solve for your customers. These solutions must be messaged and curated over time through on-page content and off-page citations. Organic search takes time but delivers very high ROI versus other marketing initiatives.
Focus on Content Marketing. Content really is your best asset in building an online presence. Well-crafted and valuable content can go a long way to building loyalty among current customers and building a connection that leads to conversion in your visitors.

Increased online presence = improved company valuation

Your online presence is often one of the most cost-effective tools for generating leads for your business. You should have campaigns initiated to accomplish that goal as a way to improve your company’s profitability. At the same time, these tools also work to increase your company’s overall value.

Looking for ways to improve your online presence and company valuation? The teams at Class VI Partners and C1 Partners are uniquely positioned to develop and execute strategies to accomplish both. We’d be happy to schedule your 30-minute consultation to explore opportunities for your business.

The views expressed represent the opinion of Class VI Partners. The views are subject to change and are not intended as a forecast or guarantee of future results. This material is for informational purposes only. Stated information is derived from proprietary and nonproprietary sources that have not been independently verified for accuracy or completeness. While Class VI Partners believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability. Statements of future expectations, estimates, projections, and other forward-looking statements are based on available information and the Class VI Partners view as of the time of these statements. Accordingly, such statements are inherently speculative as they are based on assumptions that may involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers. Testimonials are no guarantee of future performance or success. Testimonials are NOT paid testimonials.