I addressed the fact that finding a right-fit strategy for any particular company is a challenge. Your audience will continue to evolve, your business will continue to change, and what happened last year will almost certainly have to change this year. While there are a lot of high-level strategies and tactics that need to be considered when finding your ‘win’, there are some very basic things that you can stop doing TODAY in order to put yourself in a better position online.
In part one of “Stop Wasting Money and Start Winning Business” we tackled Understanding Your Platform. Today, we look at 5 other points to help you achieve ROI from your marketing efforts.
1. Get Social
Having a social media presence, like a Facebook page, is expected today. It is really the minimum that your company can and should do. The best way to utilize any social media presence is to GET SOCIAL. A lot of marketers and companies are still deploying old school methods of promotion but they are using these new channels to do so. Your customers and prospects do not want to be barraged with your special offers and product announcements. They want you to do what you are meant to do on social media – interact and be social.
If you are using social media to push messages only, then you can probably shut down these profiles altogether and not get much pushback from your connections. However, if you are using social media to create and nurture relationships, and respond to questions, then you are one of the few companies that truly ‘gets it’.
2. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
Companies typically get tired of their current website after about two years. Coincidentally, that is about the same amount of time that you can leave your site up without getting left behind by technological change. Before you decide to do a redesign or complete revamp of your website, you have to realize that you go to your website a heck of a lot more than anyone else. Most of your traffic will be first-time visitors, therefore the design will be new to them.
If your site is not producing the results that you want and if the design is old and tired, then it is absolutely okay to give it some love. When redesigning your site, there are three things to keep in mind.
- Does the proposed new site help you achieve your goals?
- Does the proposed new design compliment your offline brand and is it consistent with your brand identity?
- IS IT MOBILE COMPATIBLE?
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your new site is on a desktop or laptop. If your new site isn’t responsive, then you will have wasted your time and money. Mobile visitors will not spend any time on your site if the experience isn’t optimized for their device.
3. Consistency in Brand
Your digital presence should be an extension of your offline brand. I’ve met with companies who are top of their field and seen as market leaders, however their digital presence tells a completely different story. There is plenty of evidence to prove that people are looking you and your company up online before ever meeting with you. If you are portraying yourself as smaller or less competent that you really are, you are loosing opportunities. If you lose a minimum of 4 to 5 “A” opportunities per year, what does that equate to in lost revenue?
4. Respond
You could spend a lot of time determining your audience personas, mapping out content for them based on their sales lifecycle, and creating the perfect call-to-action and landing page – all leading to a huge success in lead generation. However, if you do not respond to your leads or follow-up with them, then you are not only wasting resource developing your process, but you are leaving real money trapped in your system.
I have written about this several times now, but it amazes me that companies don’t respond to web submissions. I have done my research on some vendors here locally in Virginia and then contacted them asking for a bid/quote/etc. and have not heard back. I was ready to buy, and all they had to do was respond to get my business. Revenue was landing in their laps and they didn’t bother to follow-up. That is insanity!!!
Bottom line – make sure you have a process in place to follow up with all of your qualified leads.
5. Updated Information
If Siri and Google don’t know who or what you are, then I can say with near certainty that your potential clients don’t know you either.
I have four recent – and frustrating – examples of this working against companies. My family and I just relocated to Central Virginia, and are still learning the area. Early on, I would ask Siri or Google for information on restaurants, local coffee shops, etc. I headed out to “arrive at my destination”, except it wasn’t there. I drove around the vicinity of these four establishments never to find them.
The lesson? Make sure all of your online contact and location information is updated and indexed. This could mean the difference between customers buying from you, or driving home frustrated.
Hopefully these 5 (plus my point in Part 1) ideas above will help you either improve your strategy, or at least help you ask some tough questions.
