It is important to know how your website appeals to its users and how relevant it is to your target audience. Here are important tips to help you reduce your website’s bounce rate and have potential customers get the best out of your site.
An online presence and the will to execute a campaign that leads people to said presence are just some of the prerequisites of generating a healthy ROI. But, while it’s a good start, it’s not the be-all and end-all of what you need to do in order to succeed online.
In fact, you could have the most eye-catching site and an aggressive digital marketing strategy to bring your target audience to the yard yet still come up empty-handed conversion-wise.
What are you doing wrong? And, more importantly, how do you fix it?
What makes a website appealing to others?
The downfall of many company websites and, ultimately, the campaign they’re attached to, lies in the fact that users are entering and then exiting a single page on your domain without so much as interacting with a single element and giving you the opportunity to convert them.
Calls-to-action are ignored, content links are skimmed over, and lead magnets are left un-downloaded: This is what we call a bounce.
And the higher the bounce rate, the worse off your campaign is. It’s a serious symptom that tells you it might be time for a major digital strategy redesign.
As a general rule, low website bounce rates are good. So, if you want to capture more high-quality leads, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the site elements that could influence whether or not your visitor makes a meaningful interaction with your online presence.
The following are some critical aspects that you should look into when bounce rates are problematic.
Responsiveness
Your website should be accessible on every possible device. So, you or your outsourced website specialist need to make sure your domain is versatile enough to be able to effectively deliver information and value on desktop and mobile platforms and everything else in between.
This will involve, to name the most important parts, ensuring that your typography is readable no matter where it’s viewed, that the screen adjusts to alternating devices, and that there are no issues with the way the website media is displayed.
Page load speed
A domain with all the bells and whistles sure does impress visitors. You’ll have to take into account, however, that website pages with too many elements can bog download speeds — and one thing you don’t want to do is bore your visitor with a prolonged wait time. It will most certainly guarantee a bounce.
When creating your website, keep your end-users’ capacity to quickly load a site at the forefront of your mind. They might not be able to handle such a heavy data load, so opt for simple and clean designs. You can also use file compressing resources like tinypng.com to reduce your image’s file sizes.
Navigability and CTAs
Visitors don’t only want fast-loading website pages. They are also looking for a user experience that’s smooth and intuitive. When designing interactions with your website, always aim for architectural logic that is prominent as well as easily accessed and used.
Another aspect of a website that appeals to visitors is the way calls-to-action are formulated and placed. Visitors prefer not to encounter any ambiguities in what their next step would be; that way only leads to more bounces. CTAs should be utilized cleverly and situated in key positions to lead users further into the funnel.
Content value
Websites that can offer visitors valuable and relevant information do best where bounce rates are concerned. This is, of course, because when the user senses that the site was created to serve their specific needs with posts that are fresh or feature evergreen content, they stay and engage with the site.
Together with a solid marketing strategy and some clean website design and development, any business owner could significantly increase the influx of high-quality leads.
To add to the above points: pop-ups, while carrying some great potential for remarketing, play a part in whether your bounce rates go up or down. Specifically, content should be only disrupted by pop-ups at important parts of the journey. Overwhelming visitors with pop-ups at every turn will only hurt your chances for conversion.
Reducing your bounce rate
Naturally, if you want to lower your bounce rates, then you’ll have to address any issues you detected from the features we mentioned above. We’ve compiled some simple but highly effective fixes you can implement to keep your visitors’ attention and entice them into interacting with elements on your website:
- Prioritize formatting – One of a website’s critical functions is to communicate and deliver your brand’s message to users. You can’t do that when your text content is unreadable. Make long text and paragraphs easier on the eye by using spaces, headers, and bullet points to make your text content more digestible.
- Make your audience relate through storytelling – The obvious pair to the first item, getting your audience to take a bite of your brand’s message is critical to improving your website’s bounce rates. After all, spending time making your text readable will lead to nothing if your text is devoid of personality or storytelling flair.
Capture your audience’s attention by weaving your narrative around their experiences and pain points and how you could help them. Stay truthful about your capabilities, though, no matter how easy it might seem to embellish your claims. Your content shouldn’t come at the expense of your brand’s credibility.
- Generate fresh content regularly to gain traction – When we talk about fresh content, again, we aren’t simply advising that you put out anything for the sake of it. The kind of fresh content that’s needed should be designed and strategically deployed to reel the reader in because it makes sense and offers value: it delivers actionable content that can resolve the readers’ concerns.
- Optimize with the right keywords – Fresh, high-value content makes you a darling with your users. Optimizing said content with the right keywords means that you improve your search engine visibility. When deciding on which keywords to use, you usually have to take four aspects of value into account: Persona value, Traffic value, Brand value, and Conversion value.
A keyword that intersects with all four aspects is your basis for what makes a keyword worth your time, but if you’re unsure as to which keywords fit into this category, then it would be wise to hire an SEO services provider to take care of things.
- Match high-value keywords with corresponding landing pages – Another culprit behind your website’s high bounce rate is that users come to your home page and don’t immediately find what they need. You can remedy this by creating landing pages that target the high-value keywords that you’ve observed users input in your niche. Doing so not only reduces bounce rates but brings up conversions.
- Set up a seamless and streamlined website design – Your user’s ability to find their way around your website is important, and, in a way, it goes along with the argument about optimizing landing pages with keywords you know your users are searching. If they are able to intuit the structure of your domain, navigating to the destination page which has the answer to their needs will be easy. Bounce rates go down while conversion potential goes up.
- Check for mobile responsiveness – These days, not everyone will be accessing your website on a desktop. Mobile devices are infinitely more convenient, and it’s likely that users will be inputting their search query while on the go. Make sure that your website contents load properly and quickly on these devices to give visitors a positive website experience and keep bounce rates down.
- No unnecessary distractions – While it’s true that disruptive tactics could play a critical role in conversions (they’re perfect for remarketing and they can grow your lists like no one’s business and help create leads), it doesn’t justify peppering your website with clutter. Limit your pop-up use to the barest you can get it and focus more on enriching customer UX.
- Make your external links open in a new tab – Maintain the mindset that your website exists to help a user by delivering your product or service or piece of information. Therefore, if you used external links to support your content, make sure that those external links open in a new tab. This way, visitors can concentrate on your message and avoid back button fatigue. It seems like a small thing, but it could go a long way in holding your users’ interest.
High website bounce rates are a hindrance to your marketing goal of drawing in high-quality leads for conversion. Fortunately, it’s a situation that you can fix with some work and a little diligence.
There are many brilliant benefits that come with tracking your brand, be it big or small. From helping brands figure out their ideal target audience to appraising the success of advertising campaigns, you’ll find that brand tracking slips easily into all aspects of your overall marketing strategy.
Sadly, these benefits are not enough for everyone.
That’s understandable. Marketers work with the main aim of generating conversion and that’s not something you can really do with a brand tracker – or is it?
This article will zone in on one fantastic advantage of brand tracking: improving conversion rate optimization (CRO). Discover some of the ways—including offering eBooks and other startup resources—you can track your brand to keep pushing your CRO numbers even higher and attract large numbers of visitors to your website.
How to Improve CRO with Brand Tracking
Figure Out the Best Startup Resources to Offer
If there are startup resources of value on your website, then there’s a strong chance that web users will click through to check them out.
Take digital eBooks for example. You obviously don’t want to give away all of your secrets in one, but if you write skillfully and knowledgeably about your niche and specialist subject, then you’ve just created a startup resource that other brands can learn from. Such content can position you as a thought leader in your niche. And what are people willing to provide in return for valuable information? Their email address.
Providing an email address via gated content is an important conversion because it provides you with a way to build a relationship with a consumer and guide them toward purchasing your product.
But how do you know which resources will drive conversion? It’s easy: use brand tracking. When tracking your brand, you’ll have your finger on the pulse when it comes to who are the consumers with the best perception of your brand and better adapt your mind map ideas. You can segment the data to discover the defining characteristics (e.g. age, location, frequent traveler, etc.) of the consumers interested in your brand and generate content that will appeal to them.
Keep Working on Brand Awareness
Every customer journey begins with brand awareness. So, to really facilitate growth and conversions from the beginning, you must begin here. Only when consumers have achieved a good level of brand awareness can you push them further down the sales funnel.
Brand tracking comes into play here. You can use brand tracking software to track brand awareness for your target audience over time. The software can also be used to track brand campaigns so you can see exactly which campaigns are having a positive impact on brand awareness.
With these insights, you can determine the best campaigns for driving brand awareness and keep running them, or something similar, to achieve your goals. Similarly, you can see which campaigns aren’t working and discontinue them before you burn your budget. To get a better idea of what might work best for you, check out these tips from branding experts.
Making your target audience aware of your brand is a great achievement in terms of conversion. Once you’ve planted this seed in their minds, you should find that people will proactively seek more information about your brand and start their journey toward the ultimate conversion: sales.
Look to Turn Customers into Brand Advocates
Customers who love your brand’s products or services could potentially become your brand advocates. From teaming up with social media influencers to simply offering a referral program for current customers, there are many ways you can create customers who continually vouch for your brand.
Brand tracking data will accurately show you the demographics most in tune with your brand. Using this insight, you can decide which form of advocate would be more appealing to your target audience.
Once these advocates get to work, they’ll be very persuasive in showing customers the benefit of your brand—and getting customers to purchase from you should be effortless. And you can measure the impact they are having using a brand tracker!
Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and all those big marketing tools are great in helping improve your CRO. However, none of these tools can give you insight into the mind of your target audience like a brand tracker can. Need proof? Work your way through the steps ahead to see the difference it makes to your CRO.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) involves using unique programming that enables software to perform many tasks that were initially being carried out by humans. Some examples of this can include language translation, decision-making, speech recognition, data analysis and visual perception. Over the past few years though, AI has transformed online marketing in a number of ways – some of which will be discussed here.
Integrating AI into Digital Marketing
Although most forms of marketing took the digital route almost 20 years ago, some businesses are still struggling to keep up with the changes. As harsh as it may sound, companies that have better marketing strategies than others will stand a far higher chance of attracting more clients than those that don’t.
These days, a number of businesses are using AI as part of their e-commerce strategies, with many of them using this technology to collect and analyze various types of data in real time. The software then provides various suggestions regarding how to best use the information obtained.
Until fairly recently, the collection of data, analysis thereof and the resulting recommendations were tasks that only human beings were able to perform. However, AI is now able to complete these tasks with ease – and often in far less time than humans ever could.
Advertising
Reliable AI software is able to collect valuable consumer-related information and work with it in such a way that it can make the necessary changes to any existing marketing strategies you have. It will even go so far as to provide suggestions on how to package products and advertising so that it attracts as many potential clients as possible.
Analytics
In years gone by, businesses that needed to have a large amount of data analyzed would have had to hire several humans to get the job done. Once the data had been collected, the same people would then be required to compile highly in-depth reports providing information regarding the steps that would have to be taken to ensure success.
The use of AI technology means that data can now be simultaneously obtained, analyzed in order to predict future performance of an advertising campaign in real time. AI also relies on brand-based, behavioral and product-based clustering in order to collect the required data. This information can then be used to see precisely where and how to customize marketing campaigns to obtain the best results.
Chatbots
The use of chatbots has changed the marketing world considerably – and for the better. In many cases, they have virtually eliminated the need for using live customer care agents on chats – especially outside of standard working hours. Having chatbots available enables customers from all over the world to receive a response virtually right away – regardless of where they are in the world.
A number of businesses now rely heavily on chatbots to provide their existing and prospective clients with the information they need within a matter of seconds, saving a lot of time for all parties concerned.
Improving User Experience
Another way in which AI will impact the future of digital marketing is that it has significantly improved the user experience of several different machines and systems. This has gone on to allow business owners to structure their activities according to current marketing trends or methods that their competitors may be using.
In years gone by, most complaints that were lodged against a business online would have gone unnoticed simply because there wasn’t a mechanism or system in place that was able to detect them accurately. However, thanks to the advances being made by AI, complaints can be picked up automatically. This means that action can be taken to remedy a situation far quicker than before – as soon as a customer leaves their feedback even.
Introducing Voice Search Technology
AI has also made performing any type of online search easier and more convenient than ever because it eliminates the need to click and type. This means that businesses that have included a voice search option on their websites will most likely receive more visitors – ultimately resulting in more conversions over time.
All that a potential client will need to do is talk into their phone, and from there, everything they are looking for will be displayed on their devices. Google currently manages more than three billion searches per day, with approximately a third of them being voice-based. This figure is bound to grow substantially over time though.
While AI was previously thought of as some futuristic form of technology, the truth is that it can help businesses boost their online marketing strategies substantially. If you would like to learn hoe to incorporate this type of technology into your marketing campaigns, contact us today.
The digital era has come with an incredible amount of data that is now integral to many business operations. With the emergence and rapid adoption of social media and search engine optimization, data has never been more plentiful and readily available. New strategies that small local businesses and global companies alike can make fantastic use of all hinge on data and business intelligence. Social media platforms alone offer businesses a constant amount of data that is publicly available. While having access to unlimited data is a good thing, there is more data than companies can handle on their own. If a company wants to make effective use of the copious amounts of data available online, they will need to use specially designed tools, like the PI System Connection, to manage the volume. This is where business intelligence comes in to save the day. Business intelligence is the technology-based process of data collection and analysis that allows businesses to use data effectively and quickly. By using business intelligence, you can enhance your digital marketing and use data to make smart decisions.
Know Your Customers
Before the Internet, companies were forced to wait to learn about customer reactions to their new products. There was no instant feedback, and products would go through development, launch, and then companies had to wait for reviews to see if the product was successful. This lag in communication between a business and its customers can lead to the business making products customers don’t want.
Thankfully, the Internet, and more specifically, social media, lets companies receive instant feedback. Social media gives businesses access to customer’s needs, wants, dislikes, behavior patterns, and a host of demographic information. Use this customer data to inform your marketing content and appeal to different types of customers with content that suits their needs. You can also use customer data to prevent wasting resources on ineffective marketing that targets the wrong groups or sends a message that doesn’t resonate with your intended customers.
Real-Time Analytics
Data flows through the Internet at a constant and breakneck speed. Working from out-dated data can cause a myriad of problems, and if a business wants to stay competitive, they cannot afford to be lagging behind with data analysis. There is always new data, and it can be hard to keep up, but real-time analytics lets businesses stay up to date. Real-time data analysis enables companies to respond faster in a variety of categories. Whether real-time data enables a marketing team to change course to make a better ad or allows customer service to respond to customer questions faster, real-time data analysis will always be a vital tool for companies.
The Power of AI
Real-time data analysis can even be augmented with artificial intelligence to automate tasks and responses. CRM tools that use AI can automate follow-ups, emails, customer service responses, and more. Fast responses and automated tasks not only benefit the customer because they receive their service faster, but it also benefits the company. The less time human employees waste on tasks that can be automated, the more time they have to work on something new.
The tasks AI can now tackle include designed email marketing content in accordance with personalized user behavior. AI is now helping companies connect with people and turn those connections into qualified leads. The real-time analysis even knows the best time to contact a lead, what information the lead will like the most, and what titles receive the most clicks. AI is becoming an indispensable tool that is expanding the reach of business intelligence to the benefit of customers and companies alike.
Natural Language and Voice Searches
Google estimates 70% of all Google searches are done with natural or conversational language. There are still keywords within the natural language, but the old way of searching the Internet is gone. Learning to work with RankBrain and voice search will increase your SERP performance. The widespread adoption of home smart devices has led to a rise in voice search, and companies must incorporate that form of data into their marketing strategies. By supporting and integrating voice search and natural language keywords, a company can maintain organic traffic as the way we search continues to evolve.
Business intelligence is a critical process that businesses should employ to keep up in the digital age. With more data available than ever, every tool to manage, understand, and analyze data can help boost a company’s digital marketing. Business intelligence spans a wide variety of uses, from understanding customers to AI-enhanced CRM, and is a tool all digital companies should be utilizing.
Running a successful business requires taking risks. While playing it safe can protect your business at every turn, it’s not going to put you ahead of the pack anytime soon. It’s worth taking chances for this very reason, as you might end up garnering a larger audience or a greater return on investment (ROI) based on the business decisions you make.
Yet while you should be taking your business to higher levels, you should equally guarantee you’re protected along the way. This self-protection comes in the form of a trusted marketing backup plan.
A marketing backup plan is needed whether you’re running a small or enterprise business. This plan is necessary as it’s a form of business protection: You’ll be prepared, ready to pivot your marketing strategy, even if things do not go as planned.
When a Marketing Backup Plan Is Needed
As a marketer, it’s imperative that you have a plan in place for your business. A well-designed marketing plan allows your business to look toward the future, setting guidelines for goals as well as expectations related to annual progress. Yet, try as we might, expectations do not always meet reality. Truthfully, life tends to throw us many curveballs along the way.
Your backup marketing strategy is the foremost way to ensure your company is protected in the event of sudden business fluctuations, marketing changes, and cultural shifts. Disasters and shifts that can occur include the following:
- Loss of marketing-related employees
- Cultural trends affecting your niche
- Onset of a global recession
- Spread of a sudden public health pandemic
- Public relations fallout related to a specific business decision
While we might plan ahead for future business success, we never know what reality will throw at us. It’s important, for this very reason, that your business has a Plan B set in place, such that you can remain protected no matter what life throws at you.
Why you Need a Business Backup Plan
The primary need of your company’s backup plan is self-protection. A business running blind, regularly making decisions on the spot, is a business set up for future failure. Decisions should be made with a great deal of foresight, planned in accordance to team discussions between inter-business departments, market expectations, and much more.
When set in place, your company will end up with a safety net that will work behind the scenes of your main marketing decisions. The best part is that these don’t have to be set aside just for a rainy day, either. You can begin implementing assets from your business’s backup plan, before putting them into action at the last minute, when you’ll need them most.
Already having established plans, beyond your primary method of marketing, is a surefire way to protect your business, as you’ll have an interconnected network driving people to your business that won’t require the stressors of getting it off the ground. Here are some plans you should consider incorporating into your business beyond your basic product and development approach.
Social Media Strategy
If you haven’t already gotten your company on the social media train, it’s time to get onboard. Social media has proven itself as a successful avenue for companies to reach out to customers, find greater audiences, and increase brand engagement—specific social media trends have made it easier to achieve all of these. In strange economic times, social media platforms allow you to still interact with customers, whether for free or by placing targeted ads.
Yet, it’s important that you set up your social media profile sooner rather than later—it can be difficult to garner a following from nothing, so you should begin by posting content and interacting with other users and fellow businesses to gain a following.
Affiliate Marketing Strategy
An affiliate marketing strategy is a sound way to protect your business, providing it with a fortified backdrop that will act in support of other business and marketing ventures. Whether connecting with social media influences or fellow businesses, a well-strategized affiliate marketing network can provide your company with fruitful outreach to increase long-term brand engagement.
One of the best qualities to implementing an affiliate marketing strategy is that it can allow your business to address global issues that might be affecting your marketing bottom line, as well as many other people’s lives. Along with providing you active marketing support and growth, an affiliate marketing strategy gives you the perfect line to reach out to people during times of struggle.
You don’t have to be selling them anything through your messaging, either; your contact and approach, through your affiliates, can be as simple as discussing where you’re at and letting people know you’re here for them, whatever your products and services.
Corporate Responsibility Approach
Another proper backup strategy you can implement to support your business is the creation of a corporate social responsibility plan. How it’s implemented from business to business differs greatly, but corporate social responsibility (CSR) is directly related to a company’s brand, messaging, and beliefs.
At its core, CSR is a simple way in which companies can show their audience their morals through charitable and responsible action. Many businesses are utilizing CSR plans, nowadays, to improve their environmental standards along with other social programs. It’s a simple way for a company to work behind the scenes to make internal improvements that better the world around them, and which can still work toward improving primary marketing goals.
And, in case anything goes awry, such as the onset of a global recession or a pandemic like COVID-19, your business can modify its CSR goals to meet the social situations of the time.
Prepare for the Worst
While your company’s primary marketing plan should be as well-thought-out as possible, you should have a proper backup plan in case anything dramatic happens that has not been expected. The above are just a few options to creating a proper backup plan—one that can protect you when it matters most.
A website that’s professional, consistent and easy to navigate will be a huge component of any company’s online marketing strategy. For companies with a business-to-many (B2M) model, however, building a website can be harder than usual. These organizations need to create a website that’s both high-quality and effective at appealing to an audience consisting of individuals and businesses who may have wildly different needs.
It’s definitely possible for a B2M website to be highly effective at capturing both businesses and individuals — but the site will need to meet some unique design standards.
This list will help you tell if your B2M website is meeting customer standards. Ask yourself these questions:
1. Do You Have a Unified Brand Voice?
While some elements of your website will need to be specialized — built for only businesses or customers — your entire site will need to appeal to both to stay relevant to all visitors.
Developing and maintaining a unified brand voice may be a little tricky, especially as you’ll have to balance the needs of your individual consumers against those of your business clients. However, a consistent brand voice is necessary if you want to be seen as professional and valuable to your audience.
2. Do You Appeal to Your Entire Audience?
And do you meet all your audience’s needs?
One of the unique challenges that B2M businesses face is that their audience likely has divergent needs. As a result, a B2M website will need to appeal to that company’s entire customer base.
Shipley Energy’s website shows how you can cover your entire audience at the same time without sacrificing clarity or confusing visitors. The two forms break down into business and residential services. They list out the different services available, quickly communicating what the company provides. This setup ensures residents and businesses get directed to the right pages based on what they need.
Simple design elements like separated lists are great if you want to be sure your services are easy to navigate. This arrangement can work even if you’re appealing to two or more very different audience segments on the same page.
3. Are Your Links and Calls-to-Action (CTAs) Clear?
In a similar vein, keeping internal links and CTAs clear can ensure customers access the resources they need. If a button or link leads to a service that’s intended for just individuals or businesses, adding extra language can steer every visitor in the right direction. Doing this may require adding in some extra links or creating additional pages that break down services based on the audience. The clarity these changes create can go a long way in making your website easier to navigate.
Upwork offers an example of a freelancing platform that achieves this well.
This form is built for businesses and individuals looking to hire designers for their projects. It also includes a link for individuals wanting to promote their services on the platform.
There are more visible links for freelancers elsewhere on the site, but this link ensures that anyone who has gotten lost looking for the freelancer sign-up page can be redirected.
4. Are You Taking Advantage of Product Similarities?
Some of your products and services may be marketed to both individuals and businesses. For goods like these, you can focus on core features or similarities to keep pages valuable and relevant to both audiences.
If you have products marketed to both audience segments, you can design pages and product lists so you avoid splitting traffic and keep your website easy to navigate.
5. Is Your Website Easy to Navigate?
For any business website, a navigation header or toolbar with links to essential pages — like a list of services and products, an about us page and contact info page — will be important. These navigation elements make sure the website is easy to navigate, allowing customers to reach crucial information no matter where they are on the site.
For a B2M business, these same features are also critical. But, you’ll also want to be sure they make the site easier to navigate while considering your audience’s divergent needs.
For example, if you have separate pages for business and individual services, are you including them in site navigation elements?
Adobe’s navigation bar provides a great example of this idea in action. All services are available and easy to access from the site’s header — including ones for individuals and businesses. No matter where a user is on the site, they have quick access to Adobe’s full product line.
6. Are You Supporting All Your Customers?
Both businesses and individuals will have questions, concerns and issues that need to be resolved — but their problems may not be the same.
Your support forms should consider all the possible problems your audience may have and collect enough information to direct the complaint to the right staff member. If you have a live chat or chatbot, make sure qualified reps are assigned to each customer’s issue. It may also be a good idea to invest in cross-training your customer service team so they’re equipped to handle concerns from both audiences.
Building a B2M Site That Works
For B2M businesses, building an effective website may be a little tougher than you initially think. Your site’s design will need to consider the needs of your entire audience, which can make common design elements trickier to build. You will need to create support forms, product listings and navigation headers to accommodate both audiences. You’ll also need to make sure your brand’s voice is consistent, even as you speak to different audience segments.
Doing this will take some extra work. The benefits of a website that fits your customers’ standards, however, will outweigh the costs.
Author
Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.
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Coronavirus has not only left individuals and families worried about their financial futures and employment statuses; small and large businesses are feeling the money pinch at the moment as well, with many of them cutting running expenses wherever possible – including their digital marketing budget.
While it may be necessary for businesses to cut or even eliminate some expenses during this challenging time, this doesn’t mean that your marketing efforts need to be halted. In fact, now is the time for you to ramp up your online marketing as much as possible and the 10 tips below will help ensure that your business remains visible online during these challenging times.
Make it Easy for Clients to Find you Online
The days of searching through the Yellow Pages to find contact details for a business are long gone, with more individuals than ever before searching online for the products and services they require. As such, this is the time to ensure that it is as easy as possible for potential clients to connect with you.
If your business has little to no online presence, now is the time to rectify that by having a professional website set up and establishing the relevant social media profiles.
2. Engage and Connect with Clients via Social Media
Many business owners think that simply having social media profiles set up will be enough to help their marketing efforts. However, social media has become more popular than ever because of families living under lockdown – in many cases, this is the only source of news and information that some individuals have.
As such, it’s crucial for businesses to interact with their followers on social media. Creating polls or even just sharing an inspirational post can be highly effective – especially when people have more free time on their hands.
3. Keep Ahead of Competitors
While so many businesses remain closed, many owners and managers tend to forget about their digital marketing. However, this is in fact the ideal time to ensure that your company’s website is not only up to date with the latest security features; it’s crucial to check that product and service offerings, as well as contact details are correct. Doing this will put your business ahead of several competitors.
4. Local SEO is More Important than Ever
With more individuals than ever before shopping as close to home as possible, ensuring that local SEO is active on your website is crucial. After all, you’d like to do everything possible to attract clients in your geo region.
Although Google My Business (GMB) is not currently publishing online reviews, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still try and submit any. In fact, submitting reviews at this time could enable them to be published as soon as GMB returns to normal operation.
5. Improve your Online Presence
Even if your business already has an online presence, there is virtually always room for improvement in this regard. For instance, if you sell a wide range of essential and luxury items, now will be the time to market more of the essentials and fewer luxuries. Many consumers will only be purchasing essential at the moment due to cash constraints, so making these items as easy as possible to find on your website will help boost sales.
6. Start a Blog
Incorporating a blog into your existing company website can help drive additional traffic. However, it’s no longer good enough to simply slap up a few posts that have been stuffed with relevant keywords. Website visitors expect to learn something new when visiting your company blog, so ensure that you hire experienced and competent writers.
7. Don’t Underestimate Video Marketing
More than 75% of internet traffic consists of video content these days, meaning that your business could be losing out on valuable online exposure if you haven’t incorporated videos into your online marketing strategy yet.
Even a few short videos explaining your product and service offerings will go a long way to boost your company’s online presence. Over time, it may even be possible to monetize your videos on YouTube.
8. Respond to Online Reviews
These days, online reviews play a huge part in marketing your business because several individuals rely on them to obtain information before making purchases. By actively responding to online reviews that have been left for your business, you’ll show new and existing clients that you care. Keep in mind that any responses to negative reviews should be kept strictly professional.
9. Use Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
While more people aren’t working because of lockdown restrictions, it provides business owners with an ideal opportunity to use PPC advertising.
Although you will have to make a small investment to use PPC advertising, you’ll still be able to control your marketing budget and get the word out about your business while many others have temporarily ceased their marketing efforts.
10. Finish your Digital To-do List
If you’re not commuting to and from the office at the moment, chances are that you may have a little more free time on your hands than normal. Instead of wasting it by zoning out in front of the TV, use this time to see if any potential marketing opportunities have perhaps fallen by the wayside during the busier times.
For example, your website may be in desperate need of a makeover, but you might have been hesitant to have it offline while this takes place. However, now will be the ideal time to have this service performed so that your site can be ready to serve your clients as soon as you reopen.
Another option here is to have a conversion rate optimization audit performed on your website. This will help ensure that calls to action (CTAs) are doing their job of converting site visitors to paying clients.
Although trying to incorporate all of the abovementioned strategies into your company’s website and marketing strategies may seem overwhelming, this need not be the case. If you’d like to give your company website the online edge during this time, contact our experts today.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the business world. With millions of people staying home, ordinary commerce has been disrupted, and brands are noticing the changes. Businesses are working to adapt old strategies to fit the new normal, but it is easier said than done.
Before life starts to return to normal, take the time to prepare your brand to bounce back after COVID-19 has released its grip. While no one knows precisely when life will look like it used to, it is a prudent idea to be prepared for that day so that you can jump into post-COVID-19 operations as quickly as possible. Here are a few things your brand can do to build itself up in preparations for life after COVID-19 while maintaining momentum during the current quarantine.
Communication is Mandatory
During these uncertain times, customers want to know what is going on. Do not assume your customers already know your new practices, hours, or availability. Any changes in your business that will affect customers must be communicated and explained, so customers know what to expect. Lean on your existing systems to mitigate delays while informing customers of issues beyond your control and the steps you are taking to fix the problems. Use shipping APIs to bring as much stability to the shipping process as possible, regularly update inventory levels so customers can’t order products you do not have in stock, and above all else, be honest with your customers. Customers will understand delays or changes due to the current world state, but only if you tell them what is happening. Going radio silent because you are afraid to disappoint customers will inflict more damage than if you were honest.
Adjust Your Marketing Strategies
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses were reasonably secure in and successful with their online marketing strategies, but these old marketing methods must be adjusted to suit the new global situation. Companies that are still using the idea of selling just to sell are not going to find success in the current climate. Businesses should shift perspectives and sell to provide a service or fill a need. Unless you have a real reason why someone would need or want your product, your marketing message will fall flat.
Businesses that specialize in jewelry are an example of how a business can pivot their marketing tactics to reflect customer needs. Most people are not planning large weddings for the near future, but jewelry companies are still able to market their wares because of how they changed their messaging. Instead of marketing rings for the typical large summer weddings, jewelry companies are encouraging customers to buy rings to celebrate the significant moment in their lives and relationships even if they can’t host a proper party. Change your marketing messaging to provide comfort and an uplifting perspective that shows how your product can fill a need while remaining sensitive to your customer’s struggles.
Double Down on Inexpensive Marketing Methods
Marketing does not have to break the bank to be effective. Pay Per Click, PPC, ads are cheap, very cheap. Internet traffic is up, but there are fewer ads which drives down the cost of ads. Paid ads are bringing in a better return on investment post-COVID than pre-COVID, so now is the time to grab the unclaimed paid ads slots. SEO may not return a profit instantly, and it may be months before you reap the benefits of SEO, but you will never see those benefits if you stop SEO marketing out of panic.
Embrace Change
The current pandemic has shown businesses that change is inevitable and unavoidable. The next massive industry change might not be a pandemic, but another shift will happen in the future. The next substantial commerce change is likely to be the bounce back after COVID-19 has passed. Business might be slow right now, but you should be preparing for a surge in customers in the future. No one knows when the rush will hit, but your brand should be prepared regardless. Bolster and secure your e-commerce site so it can handle a sudden increase in traffic, have backup marketing copy that you can switch to once social distancing guidelines relax, and continue your SEO strategies to see long-term benefits.
The world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis, and you should take every opportunity possible to reinforce your brand to prepare for a post-COVID world. While things remain uncertain, communication is paramount. Tell your customers what is going on and what they can expect from your brand. Adjust your typical marketing strategies to reflect the global situation. Provide new and appropriate reasons why customers need your product instead of selling just to sell. Instead of cutting marketing efforts, double down on effective and inexpensive methods to maintain your brand’s digital presence. Embrace change and prepare for a customer surge so you can hit the ground running once COVID-19 has passed.
It isn’t easy attracting people to your brand and turning them into raving fans. Not only do you have to grab their attention amidst all the clamoring for their business, but you must show them you care about them and their concerns. Brand loyalty can be hard to define and even harder to attain.
In one report, only 9% of consumers reported loyalty to a brand they buy regularly. Capturing the allegiance of the general public is hard. Luckily, inspiring devotion from those who already love your product is much easier.
Building brand loyalty in 2020 requires a look at where consumers are in the current landscape of the world, what they care about and attention to detail. There are 11 things you can do today to improve your standing with clients.
1. Know Your Audience
Your first step to building brand loyalty must be fully understanding who you’re trying to reach. Dig into your website analytics and your internal information on your customers. What is the average age? Do they have particular hobbies? The more you know about them, the better you can meet their needs.
Once you have an idea of the factors most of your core audience has in common, create buyer personas representing your typical customers. Use the personas for anything you do. If you come up with a satisfaction guarantee, run it through the lens of the buyer and how they might react. Gear marketing campaigns to the representation. Always keep your users in mind.
2. Improve Customer Experience
The overall customer experience (CX) helps users feel connected to your brand. Make getting information, ordering and asking questions as easy as possible. From the moment a consumer contacts you, they should intuitively know the next step. Guide them and help them from step one through after the purchase. Make sure anything you offer provides value and reduces friction. An example might be creating a digital app featuring one-tap ordering.
3. Utilize Social Media
The majority of adults online have at least one social media account, and Twitter alone will have 275 million active users by the end of 2020. To build brand loyalty, your presence on any platform must be consistent with your presence on other mediums. However, you can also turn a new customer into a loyal one by thanking them for a review, providing a solution to a complaint or asking for input.
4. Develop Consistency
Just like you need to know who your customers are, you must also know who you are as a brand. Develop a strong mission statement and stick to it no matter where you interact with buyers.
If you have a customer-first policy in your brick-and-mortar stores, you should have the same policy on your e-commerce platform. If you greet customers with a specific greeting in person, use the same hello via live chat. The look, feel and policies should remain the same no matter where customers encounter your business.
5. Find Your UVP
Your unique value proposition (UVP) is what you bring to the table that your competitors don’t. Some brands choose to go with the best price, while others focus on customer service or top quality. Start by studying competitors to see what their UVPs are. Yours must differ. You can certainly match what they’re doing, but you need something unique to stand out. Your customers should say you are the best in a particular area and they’re devoted to you.
6. Offer Incentives
There are around 2.8 billion Google searches every day. Even if a customer buys something from you online, the chances of them remembering the transaction are slim. To stand out from all the noise on the internet, you need some type of incentive program. For example, offer them a discount for a second order or a free item every so many times.
The incentive doesn’t matter as much as offering some perk for repeat business. The more times they order from you, the more likely they remember your company name and order again.
7. Tap Into Influencers
Work with influencers to get the word out about your brand. People tend to trust the recommendations of others over what you say about your company. Choose a social media personality with an audience close to your typical customer. Since they work with different brands, brainstorm ways to get the word out about who you are and what you do.
If you’re lucky, the influencer becomes a rabid fan of your organization. In turn, their followers want to check you out and hopefully become secondary influencers by sharing info on your company with others.
8. Find the Right Emotion
Do you remember the last time a business genuinely understood you? Around 56% of people are loyal to brands they feel get them. The way these companies show they are tuned in is through tapping into the emotions of their customer base.
Think about the pain points of your customers. What is the problem driving them to you for a solution? What is the feeling behind their issue? For example, if they hunt for a new home security system, fear may be what drives them. How can you offer peace of mind?
9. Be Open
If you make a mistake, don’t try covering it up. Instead, be open and honest. Explain what the issue was and how you plan to fix it. You should also describe your plan to avoid the same problem in the future. People are much more likely to stand by a company making a mistake and owning up to it than one deceiving them.
10. Protect Your Contacts
Your customers need to feel their private information is safe with you. Implement security measures and procedures protecting them. Only keep the information you truly need and never share their emails or phone numbers with third-party sources. Laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require you to have policies in place and actively defend private information.
11. Improve Customer Service
Stellar customer service is the hallmark of a strong brand. You have to go above and beyond if you want clients to remember you and remain loyal. Start with a policy and then train all your staff. Send live agents to training on how to handle an irate customer. Find solutions to simulated scenarios. Give your workers the freedom to come up with creative answers.
Show your customers you appreciate their business. Phone them to see if they’re happy with their purchase, and send them a card on their birthday. Find unique ways of interacting and engaging your audience.
Build Trust and Loyalty
A big part of building brand loyalty is showing your customers you are worthy of their trust. Provide strong incentives for them to stick around, and they’re likely to become ambassadors, sharing your name with others. Creating an image of reliability takes time and attention to detail. If your numbers aren’t where you’d like at first, keep trying. See brand loyalty as a marathon rather than a sprint. Over time, you’ll gain a following and build word-of-mouth business.
Author
Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner
Online consumer engagement is part of being a successful business in the 21st century. A customer will be gained or lost based on the experience they have on your site. In order to build trust between your brand and customers, the two will need to have a good relationship with each other.
A strong relationship with a customer is the result of a strong strategy. This plan includes understanding the customer’s journey to your brand and how they interact with it online and offline. The right strategy can help not only with consumer engagement, but also brand loyalty, overall revenue, and an edge over your competitors.
So whether you are going after a new target audience or strengthening your current customer base, here are a few ways of increasing your brand’s consumer engagement online.
Build a Community
The values and beliefs of your company are important for consumers to know. A study from LoyaltyLion reports 68% of customers are motivated to be loyal to a brand if they know it shares the same values as them. Shared values and beliefs create a shared sense of belonging, the cornerstone of a community.
You can share your beliefs in a variety of ways with customers, aside from just stating them on your website. Incorporate messaging around brand values that appear in welcome or post-purchase emails. Build beliefs and values into reward programs where people can earn points by following or acting upon them. Create social media campaigns to encourage a display of the values of your brand, which can encourage employees and consumers alike to participate in, thus supplying you with user generated content for your community.
Conversation is Key
One of the best ways to improve consumer engagement is by staying connected with your customers and prospective customers. Regular conversations through newsletters, feedback, and reward programs can build goodwill with individuals. In addition to these programs, you can also use live chat and chatbots on your site to assist customers.
Live chat is a popular engagement tool – it turns every interaction with customers into an opportunity to build on a relationship or create a satisfying experience. Live chat helps resolve customer problems rapidly and re-engage frustrated customers with the right messaging. More than half of consumers prefer live chat to calling into a company in today’s market.
The next step from live chat is chatbots. According to a report from Opus Research, 35% of customers want to see more companies using chatbots. Chatbots are available 24/7, can be personalized, and respond instantly to a customer’s question. They’re available on websites and social media so you don’t miss a customer query.
Technology Is Your Friend
Technology can be used as a new type of employee for your business by taking on smaller tasks to allow your team to attack bigger projects. In terms of improving online engagement, technology can provide your brand with useful insights.
These insights include measuring active users, or the percent of active users on your site during a designated time frame. This also allows you to measure your retention rate, which is the number of users who click on your site and then browse it. It can also calculate website visit length, how long an individual stayed on your site. This information is priceless for your brand, especially when determining how many new customers you gain each quarter.
All of this data collected can be reviewed using an enterprise resource planning tool. ERP systems can hold this information for comparison over time or to indicate product growth. It can also organize data for use by leadership within your organization, which can help pinpoint customers’ problems or create new strategies quickly.
Multiple Channels are Necessary for Success
Although it can be tempting to just use your website to communicate with your customers, there are multiple methods of staying connected online. Webinars are useful to bring people together in an interactive format for answering questions or presenting the information. They can also be a source of feedback and content ideas.
Social media platforms are a way to construct brand loyalty while talking to consumers in real time. Posts on these sites can share creative content, useful videos, new product announcements, and more. Content on these pages can humanize your brand to foster positive connotations with consumers. Customers can comment on the posts and give you real-time feedback on what they think. Many customers browse social media frequently during the day, so publishing content on a regular basis keeps your brand on their minds.
There are multiple ways to improve customer engagement on your site. Building a community, regular conversation, using technology, and socializing through multiple channels are all great methods of reaching current and potential consumers. Deploying just one of these tactics can help your brand expand over time.