Introduction to Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has become an essential component of business success in the modern era. It encompasses various online marketing techniques, including SEO, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising. If you’re looking to enhance your digital marketing efforts, here are ten ways to get started.

Understand Your Target Audience

Creating Buyer Personas

Before diving into any marketing campaign, it’s crucial to understand who your target audience is. Create detailed buyer personas that outline the demographics, interests, and pain points of your ideal customers. This will help you tailor your messaging and marketing efforts to address their specific needs.

Conducting Market Research

Perform market research to gather insights into your target audience’s preferences and behavior. Analyse your competitors’ strategies and identify potential gaps in the market that your business can exploit. Use surveys, interviews, and social media listening tools to collect valuable data about your target audience.

Optimise Your Website for SEO

Conduct Keyword Research

To improve your website’s visibility in search engine results, perform keyword research to identify relevant terms and phrases that your target audience is searching for. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find high-volume, low-competition keywords to target in your content.

On-Page Optimisation

Optimise your website’s content, meta tags, and URL structure to include targeted keywords. Ensure that your site has a logical hierarchy and uses proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) for improved readability and search engine indexing. Also, make sure your website is mobile-friendly, as this is a crucial factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.

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Off-page SEO involves building your site’s authority through backlinks, social signals, and other external factors. Engage in guest blogging, influencer outreach, and social media marketing to earn high-quality backlinks from reputable sources. This will help improve your website’s credibility and search engine rankings.

Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

Types of Content

Content marketing is a powerful way to attract, engage, and convert visitors into customers. Develop a content marketing strategy that includes various types of content, such as blog posts, infographics, case studies, e-books, and webinars. Focus on creating valuable and informative content that addresses your target audience’s needs and challenges.

Content Distribution Channels

To maximize the reach of your content, use multiple distribution channels, including your website, social media platforms, email campaigns, and guest posting opportunities. Promote your content consistently and engage with your audience to drive traffic and build brand awareness.

Utilise Email Marketing

Building an Email List

Email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing channels for nurturing leads and retaining customers. Start by building a targeted email list using lead magnets, such as e-books, checklists, or discounts, in exchange for your audience’s contact information. Implement double opt-in methods to ensure that your subscribers genuinely want to receive your emails.

Email Campaigns

Create engaging email campaigns that provide valuable content, promotions, and updates to your subscribers. Personalize your emails by addressing recipients by their name and segmenting your list based on factors like purchase history, location, and interests. Monitor your email campaign performance and continually optimise for higher open and click-through rates.

Leverage Social Media Marketing

Choosing the Right Platforms

Each social media platform attracts different audiences and serves unique purposes. Analyse your target audience’s preferences and choose platforms that align with your brand and objectives. For instance, LinkedIn is ideal for B2B marketing, while Instagram and Pinterest are better suited for visual content.

Engaging with Your Audience

Consistently share valuable content and engage with your audience by responding to comments, questions, and messages. Encourage user-generated content and run contests or giveaways to boost engagement rates. Use social listening tools to monitor your brand’s online reputation and gather insights for future marketing efforts.

Implement Video Marketing

Video Types and Formats

Video marketing is a powerful way to convey complex information in an easily digestible format. Experiment with various video types, such as explainer videos, product demos, webinars, and live streams. Use engaging visuals, clear audio, and concise messaging to capture your audience’s attention.

Video SEO

Optimise your videos for search engines by including targeted keywords in the title, description, and tags. Create eye-catching thumbnails and transcribe your videos to improve their accessibility and search engine visibility. Share your videos on social media platforms and embed them on your website to increase engagement and reach.

Use Paid Advertising

Google Ads

Google Ads offers a cost-effective way to reach potential customers through search, display, and video ads. Create targeted ad campaigns that focus on specific keywords, demographics, and interests. Monitor your ad performance and adjust bids, ad copy, and targeting to optimise your return on investment (ROI).

Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, offer various advertising options to reach your target audience. Use these platforms’ targeting features to display your ads to users based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics. Experiment with different ad formats, such as carousel ads, sponsored posts, and Stories, to find what works best for your brand.

Analyse and Measure Your Results

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To evaluate the success of your digital marketing efforts, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your business goals. Common KPIs include website traffic, conversion rates, social media engagement, and email open rates. Continuously track your KPIs to determine the effectiveness of your strategies and make data-driven decisions.

Analytics Tools

Utilize analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, and social media analytics, to measure your marketing performance. Analyse your data to identify trends, opportunities, and areas for improvement. Adjust your digital marketing strategies based on your findings to maximize your ROI and achieve your business objectives.

Stay Updated with Industry Trends

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving. To stay ahead of your competition, keep up with the latest trends, tools, and best practices in the industry. Attend conferences, webinars, and workshops, and follow industry thought leaders on social media to stay informed about the latest developments.

Conclusion

Improving your digital marketing efforts involves understanding your target audience, optimising your website for SEO, developing a content marketing strategy, leveraging email marketing, utilising social media, implementing video marketing, using paid advertising, analysing and measuring your results, and staying updated with industry trends. By following these ten tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a more effective and successful digital marketing strategy for your business.

FAQs

Q: What is the most important factor for a successful digital marketing strategy?

A: There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, as it depends on your specific business goals and target audience. However, consistently creating high-quality, personalized content that resonates with your audience is key to driving engagement and conversions.

Q: How can small businesses compete with larger companies in the digital marketing space?

A: Small businesses can level the playing field by focusing on niche markets, building genuine relationships with their audience, and staying agile in adopting new marketing techniques.

Q: What are some common challenges faced by digital marketing agencies?

A: Some challenges include staying up-to-date with the latest industry trends, managing multiple clients and projects, and proving the ROI of their services to clients.

The world has become digital, and your business is no exception. With the growth of digital marketing, businesses have been turning to conversion-based sites as a way to drive leads and sales. A conversion site helps you identify what actions your visitors take on your site so you can focus on driving those actions instead of selling visitors on things like products or services.

A conversion-based site is useful for many reasons beyond just driving conversions. For example, it also gives you an option when designing a layout that doesn’t require you to rely on plugins or third-party services. It lets you target your ads more effectively and create a design that will look great across devices, too.

Create a site for conversions

Creating a conversion-based site is great for driving conversions, but it isn’t always easy. You have many options to choose from when designing your site, and the amount of time and effort you put into your site will depend on what you want to achieve. It’s also important to think about how visitors will interact with your site.

It’s best if you consider a few things before starting your conversion-based site:

  1. How will visitors interact with the website?
  2. What are the goals of your business?
  3. What will convert better?

Be clear about your goals

The first step to creating a conversion site is getting clear about your goals. Identify the actions you want your visitors to take and what you hope they will do once on your site. Make sure you have a clear idea of how you want people to engage with your content so that you can create the layout for your site that allows for those interactions. 

Next, think about the most important features of your website and plan out what content should be displayed where. For example, if you’re selling products, think about where they should be placed and what order they should be in. If you’re selling services, then plan out which pieces of content are essential to the visitor’s experience and where they should appear on the page.

Use analytics to inform your decision-making

The top resource for finding success on a conversion-based site is analytics. Using the analytics, you can make informed decisions about what your visitors are doing and what actions to focus on.

Start by setting up goals in your analytics software so you know where you want to take your traffic. After that, set up conversion pixels on your website so you can track specific actions. When it comes to clicking ads or visiting certain pages, this will help you understand what’s working and what isn’t. It also gives you a chance to fine tune your site before investing in any other methods of driving leads or conversions.

Make sure you understand your visitors’ journeys

Understanding your visitors’ journeys is vital for a successful conversion-based site. From their first encounter with your website to their final purchase, you need to know what steps they take and how long it takes them to complete each step. This helps you target your ads so that your message will reach the people most likely to convert into customers.

There are several ways you can use analytics on your site to understand these journeys. For example, Google Analytics lets you see where visitors go on your site, when they come in contact with a certain page, and where they enter and exit the site. You can also use Google Search Console to see how many people have viewed different pages of your website over time and what keywords they searched for while visiting. If you have a blog or news section on your website, consider using Google Trends to find out which topics are trending right now.

AdWords is the key to success with PPC ads

One of the most important things to understand is that Google AdWords is a huge key in driving conversions. With AdWords, you can target your audience and set up your ads to have a specific call-to-action at the end. You’ll also see better conversion rates when you’re using PPC ads.

Some other tips for success with PPC: Embrace long-term goals and make sure you are willing to stay focused on them. Track your performance so you can make continuous adjustments.

#1: Use a conversion-based site

Making sure that your website has been designed with conversions in mind is an essential step toward creating a successful conversion site. In order to create this design, you need to know how visitors interact with the site and what actions they take throughout their journey through your website. This will help you identify what actions are most valuable for driving conversions on your site and focus more on those actions instead of selling visitors on things like products or services.

#2: Embrace long-term goals

When designing a conversion site, it’s important not to get too distracted by short-term goals. Instead, make sure that you understand where you want to be in the future and use that information as a way to guide your design efforts today. Don’t worry about getting everything done right away; rather, think long term so that once you reach those goals, all of your work will be worth it overall.

Test, test, test

Of course, to create a successful conversion site, you need to first test your idea. To find out what’s working and what isn’t on your site, use Google Analytics or another analytics tool to review where visitors go on your site. This will also help you identify any problems that might need to be fixed.

Another way to determine if your site is converting well is through data tracking. You can use a tool like Google Tag Manager to track specific actions visitors take on your site and how many people are taking those actions. If you see that people are not converting at the rate you want them too, you should re-evaluate why they aren’t converting and make adjustments accordingly.

Conclusion

Everything about your website – from the copy to the design – should focus on one thing: conversions.

Your conversion-based site should have a clear goal in mind and a site that targets a specific type of visitor. With the help of an analytics tool, like Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track what visitors are doing on your site and use that information to make decisions about where to invest your time and money.

Once you’ve created a conversion-based website, it’s time to get it in front of people. AdWords is the key to success with PPC ads.

When it comes to building a website, the options can feel endless. In the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion in new design software and a surge of fresh ideas from the world of digital marketing. The result? A whole new generation of website builders that make it simpler than ever to create your own site.

These programs are not just for those with no technical know-how—they’re ideal for anyone who wants to build their first site or refresh an old one without hiring an expert designer. WordPress itself is an excellent example of how these builders can be used to create beautiful sites quickly and easily. With more than 60,000 plugins available and more than 200 themes on offer, there’s always something that will fit any taste or project. Here’s everything you need to know about using these tools as a WordPress site builder

What is a WordPress Website Builder?

Website builders, such as WordPress and Wix, are programs that can be used to create a website without requiring any technical know-how. These programs make it easy for anyone with a creative idea to create a site in a matter of minutes. In many cases, these websites can look more polished than those built by professional designers.

Many of the best website builders use HTML5 and CSS3. This is why you’ll find that they have an attractive interface and intuitive functionality—the design will stay modern even after years of updates. Website builders like these also allow you to quickly customize your site’s appearance with different fonts, colors, layouts, images, and other features all without having to learn code or hire someone who has knowledge in web design fields like graphic design or web development.

What’s the difference between a WordPress Website Builder?

A website builder is software that helps you design and build your website. There are a number of different programs out there, but WordPress is one of the most well-known options. A WordPress site builder integrates with WordPress to make designing a site effortless. It allows you to edit the theme of your site, add media, and manage pages on your site without needing to learn any coding skills or worry about hosting or domain names. It’s in this way that it can be used as a WordPress website builder.

You can also use these tools as a developer by using their program as a tool to create sites for clients or other projects that don’t require complex design solutions. You simply use the tools within the program you choose while working with client-provided files and save them on your computer when they’re ready for publishing. 

As an example of how websites created with these tools function without any coding experience, consider Tumblr. By using Tumblr’s website builder, building your own blog has never been easier. With easy drag-and-drop interface, you have access to all the features that make Tumblr so popular—as well as some custom ones just for those who create their own blogs.

Why Use a WordPress Website Builder?

If you’ve been wanting to build your own website, but don’t want to take the time and money out of your budget for a professional web design service, a WordPress website builder can be a great option for you.

WordPress is an open-source content management system that’s been in use since 2003. It was originally designed as a blogging platform, but has grown quickly over the past decade and has become one of the most popular platforms on the internet.

With WordPress, anyone with some technical knowledge can learn how to create a professional-looking site at their own pace. Just by following a few tutorials, you could have your dream website up and running in no time! This means that if you have any ideas or simply want to refresh an existing site with new content—professional grade websites are accessible to all.

When it comes to building a website with WordPress, there are many options available. But the most important thing is understanding just what exactly makes this system so useful in creating great websites—it’s what sets it apart from other options like Squarespace or Weebly. The power of WordPress is its flexibility; with so many plugins and themes available, it’s possible for users to customize their sites into whatever they want them to be.

From design to delivery with WordPress website builders

When using a website builder, you will be able to spend more time on the creative process and less time worrying about technicalities. The design software will often take care of the coding for you, which frees up your time to focus on aspects like content and design.

You’ll also be able to easily update your site in the future. You won’t need to hire an expert designer or developer or worry about learning HTML and CSS—with a website builder, all the updates are done for you with just a few clicks. This makes it much easier for new changes to be made without having to pay someone else.

Finally, when using a website builder, there is no limit to what you can build. There are hundreds of ready-made themes that are available as well as thousands of plugins that offer innovative features and functions. This means that there is something available for any project idea you come up with without needing to start from scratch every time.

Pros of Using a WordPress Website Builder

The beauty of a WordPress website builder is that it’s not just for beginners. If you already know how to use WordPress, then you can use one of these tools to design your site quickly and easily. They also make it easy for those who don’t have any technical backgrounds to build a professional-looking site. For example, if you want to create an Instagram feed for your newsletter, there are web builders available that can be used in minutes to create beautiful galleries.

Another big benefit is the ability to create stunning websites without having to hire a designer or worry about the tech yourself. This allows you to focus on what matters most: your business’s mission and what makes your company unique. The builders also allow a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and small businesses the opportunity to create an online presence without breaking the bank or even hiring an expert designer.

Cons of Using a WordPress Website Builder

Using a WordPress website builder is not for everyone. It’s worth considering that you might have to give up some of the freedom and control that comes with creating a site from scratch. You might not even be able to totally customize the site without hiring designers or developers, which will make it harder for your business if you plan on selling products. If you choose to build your site using a WordPress website builder, you might find yourself with a basic site that doesn’t do much more than show off your content. 

If you decide to create your own site from scratch, use these tips to improve the user experience:

  • Spending a little more upfront on design will help ensure your site looks professional and has a higher chance of converting visitors into customers. 
  • Choose a unique name for your company and make sure it’s spelled right! (Note from Dan: Check spelling… seriously?)
  • Find people in the marketplace who can help you build out features that are unique to your business needs.

Final Words: Should You Use a WordPress Website Builder?

The answer to this question largely depends on the project you’re working on. For example, a website builder might be overkill if you want to build a fairly simple website with minimal customization and a basic layout. However, suppose you’re looking for something more in-depth and customizable with features like e-commerce, content management system (CMS), or mobile optimization. In that case, a WordPress website builder can help streamline the process and save money on design fees.

And by using WordPress as your site builder, you don’t have to worry about getting locked into any particular program. The WordPress software is open source and available to use for free. You also get access to thousands of other developers who are constantly adding new plugins that can help your site grow to meet your needs!

Starting an e-commerce business can be a challenging venture, but it doesn’t have to be. In this article, we’ll walk you through the 7 steps you need to take in order to launch your own e-commerce business. These will be the key concepts that will aid you as you build your start-up and help you set up your own shop sooner rather than later.

Before we get into the details, it’s important that you understand the ins and outs of launching an e-commerce business so that you don’t waste precious time and money. Read on to discover more about how starting an e-commerce business can help grow your brand, drive revenue, and create a steady income stream for your future.

What is an E-commerce Business?

E-commerce is the term for online shopping, similar to what you might find at a physical store. E-commerce businesses typically sell products or services and have a web page that can be found through search engines. These companies often enlist the help of a digital marketing agency in order to help them reach their target audience as efficiently as possible. If you’re wondering what it takes to start an e-commerce business, here are 7 key steps:

1) Understand Your Goals – First of all, it’s important that you understand your goals when starting an e-commerce business. Why do you want to start your own store? What is your target market? What are your main objectives? If you know these critical points before moving forward, you’ll be able to laser-focus your efforts on reaching those goals.

2) Research Your Target Audience – Once you know your goals, it’s time to research your target audience. You should also understand how they shop and what they like to buy so that you can create the perfect product for them. This will help maximize revenue and ensure that the most people see your product.

3) Create Product Ideas – Once you understand who would be interested in buying from your company, it’s time to figure out what kind of products would interest them the most and come up with product ideas based off of this information.

4) Plan Your Marketing Strategy – You need a plan if (note from Dan: the sentence ends here…?!)

How to Start an Ecommerce Business

Step 1: Create a business plan Before you launch your business, it’s important that you create a business plan. This will lay out all the key goals for your e-commerce business and what steps need to be taken in order to reach those goals. It’s also a great way to ensure that you are on the right track before spending any money or getting too far into the process.

Step 2: Develop a website Next, develop a website that is designed specifically for your e-commerce business. This will give your customers an idea of what they can expect when they shop with you. It’s important that this page is engaging and easy to use so that visitors stay on the site longer and purchase more products.

Step 3: Create social media accounts Social media is another key cog in online marketing for e-commerce businesses, but it is also one of the most difficult things to get started with. You need talented people who understand how to leverage these channels effectively if you want them to work for your company. Regardless of whether you hire someone or do it yourself, creating social media accounts will help you engage with potential customers on different platforms and build brand awareness in new ways.

Step 4: Set up shop on Shopify If you don’t have an established domain name, Shopify offers unlimited domains at no cost. With this service, setting up your start-up store won’t take much time at all! Plus (note from Dan: abruptly ends again!!!)

Step 1: Research and understand your market

The first step to starting an e-commerce business is doing your research. Find out what products and services are already in demand among your target audience. What’s the most popular item? What are their demographics? What are their tastes and preferences? Who are your competitors like? These questions help you get a better understanding of your market and which path you want to follow.

Next, figure out which other resources you need in order to launch your business. Do you need a website for your e-commerce store, or will you be using a platform such as Shopify or Bigcommerce? Do you need social media accounts, insurance, or storage space for products that will be sent from suppliers to buyers? For now, just focus on one step at a time without worrying about all the moving pieces.

Step 2: Build a solid foundation

Starting an e-commerce business is all about building a solid foundation. This includes setting up your website, coming up with a strong business name, and developing your brand identity. After you’ve figured out the basics, it’s time to start building your product line and getting the word out about your new venture. Keep in mind that at the beginning of your journey, you won’t make a lot of money. You’ll be investing quite a bit of time and effort into launching an e-commerce business before you see any return on investment (ROI). But remember: if you’re going to put in the work now, you could reap benefits down the road. It’s important to set realistic goals for yourself so that you can build momentum over time.

Step 3: Establish your brand voice and aesthetic

In order to stand out from the other e-commerce start-ups, you need to establish your brand voice and aesthetic. This means you have to be mindful of what people want, who your target audience is, and where they are located. If you are able to establish a strong brand message with a clear aesthetic, this will help increase revenue for your business. Your brand voice and aesthetic should also align with your brand values and mission statement so that there is no confusion in how you wish to portray yourself. If it doesn’t fit, then it won’t work!

Step 4: Design your site’s layout and platform

Designing your site’s layout and platform should be a top priority. You should think about how you want your store to look and function before beginning any coding or design work. For example, you might decide that you want your website to have a clean, minimalist aesthetic that uses white space and contrasting colours to draw the customer’s eye in, or you might want it to be bright and colourful with cartoon-like graphics.

You need to decide what kind of e-commerce experience you want your customers to have on your site. This will help determine the type of platform your site needs to use, such as an online store that lets customers browse products with a menu on one side and a checkout process on the other, or an e-commerce platform like Amazon where everything is on one screen.

After deciding what style you want for your website, create wireframes (or mockups) of how it will look when it’s finished. These mockups give designers a sense of what the final product will look like without having to build it from scratch. Once you have these approved by those in charge of designing your site, move into prototyping so that they can visualise the end product even better. Once you get all of this done, start building!

Step 5: Add products to your store

This is arguably the most important step in the process. It’s also the easiest. All you have to do is decide on a product, determine your price, and upload it to your store. Once that’s done, you can start driving traffic to your new e-commerce business. If you’re not sure where to start, try looking at items similar to what you want to sell and consider how they are priced.

You may be wondering how much money this will make for you when it comes to income. This all depends on how much time and effort you put into building your e-commerce business. But it’s safe to say that if you invest some time and energy into building up your website, social media presence, and learning about online marketing, then investing a little bit of money into creating products can be rewarding in the long run.

Step 6: Optimize your site for search and display ads

Next, you’ll have to decide what type of advertising campaigns you want to run on your website. You’ll need both search ads and display ads to generate revenue.

Display ads are banner advertisements, text links, or video advertisements that are shown on the web page. Because they are seen by customers who do not reach the site directly from a search engine result, they offer a high-quality CPC (cost-per-click) rate while providing a low CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) cost. These ads show up more often than search ads on the same webpage because they can be targeted to specific audiences.

Search ad campaigns are very similar in nature to display ad campaigns but with one major difference: they appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). Since these particular ads are always visible on the SERP, they command a higher CPM cost than display ads.

Step 7: Track performance and make adjustments

Understanding the performance of your e-commerce business is vital. You will be able to see how well your business is performing and make adjustments if necessary. In order to track your performance, you’ll need to be able to track traffic, sales, inventory, and more. To learn more about tracking these metrics in Google Analytics or another tool tool of your choosing, check out our blog post on how to use Google Analytics for e-commerce.

As you continue to grow your business, we recommend that you set up a plan with key milestones that establish objectives for each quarter. These milestones should be specific and measurable goals that will provide you with insight into what worked and what didn’t work, allowing you to make changes as needed.

Ready? Let’s get started! (Note from Dan: Engage CTA needed here?)

Google is the king of search. It’s how people find information on the web, and as a result, Google has become the most important tool for businesses to find their audience. With Google’s search bar at the top of every user’s results page, it makes sense that Google dominates this market. In fact, they own over 90% of it!

And that’s not even taking into account their many other products such as Maps, YouTube, Android and Chrome Browser. For any business looking to get found online in today’s competitive marketplace, understanding how Google thinks is crucial.

Google knows what people are looking for, so if you can answer those questions with your content and keyword strategy—you have a better chance of showing up higher in searches. Below we’ll explain some strategies you can use to get more traffic from Google Search and rank higher for your keywords.

How to Rank on Google

There are a few ways to rank higher on Google. The first is to use their keyword planner tool, which is a free tool that allows users to input keywords and see how valuable they are. You can also use tools like SEMRush or Moz tools to get more accurate keyword data. Search engine marketing (SEM) is another great way you can achieve success by driving traffic back to your website.

Another strategy you can use is getting links from authoritative websites that Google values highly. This strategy improves the quality of your website’s backlink profile and gives you an edge in ranking for the keywords you’re targeting. As we’ve mentioned, having a well-rounded backlink profile will help you dominate online searches for your target keywords, which leads us to our last point!

One of the most important tips for ranking on Google is creating content that people want to read so that they’ll come back again and again with their search engine query. You need to make sure your content has good topic relevancy, it isn’t too long, and it’s updated regularly.

Finally, you need good site navigation so that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for quickly! If visitors don’t feel like they have time to explore your website because it’s too busy or complicated—they won’t stick around!

Google’s Core Results

First, it’s important to understand Google’s core results. If you want your website to rank on Google, you need to create content that improves the user experience, which is what Google looks for in all their search results. The goal of a search engine is to provide relevant information.

Google wants the most easy-to-find and relevant information they can find so they can improve the experience for their users. The easiest way to do this is by providing multiple answers and giving users more information than just one page or website.

One of the most important things to remember with Google’s core results is that they only show 10. In order for your site or business to be found, you need to be better than what 10? This doesn’t mean you should just spam your site trying tons of different keywords but rather focus on optimising for a few keywords that will get you the most traffic.

Google’s 3 Key Results Types

Google has 3 key results types. They are:

  • Direct Answer
  • Knowledge Graph
  • Knowledge Panes

Now, these 3 result types have different weights across the search engine, and Google also uses other signals to help determine what rank you’ll get in the search engine.

Direct Answers are the most closely related to your keyword, and they weigh heavily in your position on the search engine. In fact, they’re ranked by how many people search for them each month. So if you want to rank faster and more consistently, it’s important that you use your keyword in your content a lot and make sure it’s visible on the front page of Google Search.

Knowledge graphs are a new type of result that is appearing more frequently in searches now that we’re moving towards a knowledge-driven world where people will want answers from experts rather than just searching for keywords or information that might not be accurate or up-to-date. The advantage of using knowledge graphs is that you can show up when someone searches for something specific in relation to an expert guest on your website or blog, or social media account–which would then bring them back to your site to read more about their topic of interest!

Knowledge Panes are very similar to traditional websites with their own domain names, but instead of being called “www.” they’re called “knowledge.” They’re designed as a starting point for users who don’t know where else to search.

Google’s 4th result is its paid ads.

Google’s 4th result is its paid ads. Advertisers pay Google to be the top ad in their results, and it pays off! When you’re looking for a new venture, or are just launching an online advertising campaign, consider how much you’re willing to spend on your advertising. If you have a budget set aside, make sure to create a budget for your Google ads.

Your budget should include things like keywords that will generate traffic, target audience demographics to reach, and the maximum amount of impressions you’ll allow per day. This will give you more control over what gets shown in your ads and better chances of being seen by people searching for your keywords.

Tips for Ranking Higher in Google Search

Keyword Research – It’s important to know what people are searching for on Google. If you have a niche or industry that is competitive, then it can be difficult to rank #1. You need to identify your target keywords and know the search volume and competition levels.

Content Selection – Google looks at content heavily in their ranking algorithm. They do this to make sure they’re only showing people content that’s relevant and matches that person’s search terms. If you use SEO best practices, your website will be more likely to rank higher in Google Search results.

Internal Linking – Google ranks websites with high-quality content, so if your site has a lot of quality content, there’s a good chance it will rank higher in Google Search results. To increase your internal linking opportunities, consider linking out from all the pages on your site—not just specific pages that are relevant to your keyword research.

Page Optimisation – Page optimisation refers specifically to how well optimised each page is for search engines like Google. If you have optimised every page with keywords and other important information like “Related Searches,” then Google will give you points for optimising each page which increases your overall ranking power with the right amount of effort!

Title Tags – The title tag is the most important part of any webpage because Google uses it heavily in its ranking algorithm. So, if you want to get ranked higher on google searches, make sure your title tag includes the keywords you want people to search.

Rank high in Google for Local Demand

Google’s search algorithm has a lot of moving parts. As a result, Google uses many signals to determine the ranking of websites, sometimes even giving human beings the final say in what ranks where. One of the most important aspects that Google takes into account when determining rankings is relevance. In order to rank high for your keywords on Google, you need to be relevant to those searches.

What does this mean? Well, it means you want to make sure your content answers people’s questions about your products or services. You need to show the provider the information they are looking for. So if they type in ‘online marketing,’ you want to make your content as helpful as possible by providing valuable information and resources on how to get started with online marketing right away.

This strategy is especially useful for local businesses because people are searching locally first before looking nationally and internationally.

Rank higher in Google for Niche Demand

If you want to rank higher in Google for a specific keyword, you need to understand the needs of that niche. Consider what people are asking for, and then make sure that your content provides that answer. You can also try creating a list of potential keywords and then brainstorming ideas for how to optimise them.

Rank higher in Google for Brand/Keyword Demand

One way to rank higher in Google is by understanding the demand for your keywords. If there’s a lot of demand for your keyword, then you have more chance of ranking higher.

In this case, you would need to create content that answers the questions people are searching for in order to rank higher. This means you want to answer these questions with the best possible information and use powerful words that show up on page one for high-demand keywords. In addition, you can also include common misspellings and synonyms of your keywords as long as they fit into your on-page SEO efforts.

Another strategy to increase your chances of ranking in Google is by creating a blog. Blogs are becoming more and more popular with search engines because they help users find what they are looking for quickly and provide relevant information about topics they care about.

Additionally, blog posts typically get shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And when it comes to rankings in Google, it’s important to remember that blogs tend to rank better than websites because people are looking for quick answers rather than large volumes of content.

Conclusion

A well-planned SEO strategy can provide your business with a steady stream of qualified leads. With proper SEO, your business will be able to rank on Google and get the most traffic possible. But success doesn’t come without effort. Here are some tips to help you get started.

Posted in SEO

The success of your website depends on the quality of traffic it receives. Therefore, mixing and matching the right digital strategies can generate substantial website traffic. While you might deliver the best message, product, and service, it would mean little until you attract your target crowd regularly and reliably. Learning how to increase your website traffic is one of the best ways to achieve these goals.

1. Prioritise Content Marketing

Content remains king. This concept applies to all types of online content, including visual, video, and written articles, because engaging content keeps site visitors coming back for more. While SEO strategies can improve your site’s searchability and align with the crawlers to raise SERP rankings (search engine results page), you should also tailor your content to your readers’ interests. 

2. Leverage Paid Ads

Paid ads are some of the most effective ways of getting your site across to your target audience. First, you should thoroughly research your target demographic before deciding on a paid ad platform. Identifying your audience’s interests, locations, and ages can help you pinpoint their most frequented platforms and increase your chances of engagement. 

Also, consider the type of ads applied in your campaigns. While video ads may seem highly popular, market research shows that 49% of people click on text ads, 31% on shopping ads, and only 16% on video ads. 

Similarly, you should have a systematic tracking method for paid ad metrics to ensure that the money you spend goes to good use. Regularly checking your paid ad campaigns helps you evaluate their effectiveness and re-strategise if necessary to optimise their impact. 

3. Constantly Refine On-Page SEO

SEO provides a proven formula to connect your site content with your audience, and it usually has three components: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO

On-page SEO refers to your website’s attributes, including meta descriptions, tags, well-positioned headers populated with keywords, and short paragraphs. The effectiveness of your SEO campaigns largely depends on the on-page SEO components. Therefore, managing on-page SEO as a set of living documents that require constant tweaking for the best results is essential. 

For instance, combining evergreen and seasonal keywords can help you reach a broader audience, especially during peak seasons like the summer holidays. Also, search engines like Google tend to revise their SEO practices, so keeping up with the latest updates helps drive more traffic to your website. 

4. Develop Effective Link-Building Strategies

Links make up a considerable part of off-page SEO. Internal and external links are the two main types, and both can help you improve site traffic in different ways. Therefore, applying each kind to your website might be advantageous. 

Internal links facilitate the site navigation process for your audience. For example, clicking on an internal link on your blog may take your reader to a deep service page (i.e., pages that take four or more clicks for access from a home page) and generate website traffic for that part of your site. 

External links bridge your site content with other websites and work well with search engine crawlers as part of technical SEO. Google rates the equity or value of an external link differently from an internal one, prioritising them for ranking purposes. The search engine also determines the usefulness and credibility of your website by assessing the quality of your external links. 

You might consider external links similar to a peer-review article’s citations, supporting its content’s authority and authenticity.  

5. Optimise Email Marketing 

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for generating business revenue, with an estimated $36 for every $1 spent. This marketing type can be a real game-changer if you wish to generate website traffic from your target demographic, with a mailing list engaging and attracting constant traffic. 

Periodic email newsletters can also help keep your audience interested in your offerings by providing exclusive tips, discounts, content, and tutorials that redirect your readers to your site. 

An advanced mailer allows you to manage your mailing list easily and offers customisation features to give each email a personal touch, further driving engagement. 

6. Keep Your Google Business Profile in Top Form

Your Google Business Profile represents your company’s online public image, and optimising it will help generate website traffic. For example, organic user searches on Google will turn up your Google Business profile, where potential site visitors will form their first impressions of your business. 

While conventionally, site visitors and customers would navigate to your business home page to acquire more information, they will now turn to your Google Business Profile for the same purpose. 

Consider including information that optimises your business reputation, such as high-resolution photos of your company and products, customer reviews, and valuable contact information such as operating hours and a link to your website, which directly generates website traffic. 

Videos are also highly effective ways of introducing your business to potential customers, where studies show that 53% of customers want to see more video content from companies they support. 

Closing Thoughts on How to Increase Your Website Traffic

Having an easily navigatable site is only half of the battle won. You will need to provide the guiding lamps that lead your most valuable audience to your winning content. Engage Digital can help you discover the most effective methods and tools to connect with your target audience without the guesswork. 

Book a call with us to say hello to the Engage Digital team! Together, we will discover the full potential of your business’s marketing growth. 

Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar business looking to expand online or a digital-first company that needs to re-do its brand, you can consider your website the welcome mat to your business.

If your website is outdated, difficult to navigate, or fails to get across your brand’s values, it can easily leave potential customers feeling disconnected. Meanwhile, if it feels cookie-cutter or forgettable, you’ll have nothing to leverage when it comes to building a lasting reputation and fostering customer loyalty.

For all of these reasons, hiring a professional web design agency is a worthy investment. The question is, how can you choose the right one? No matter your budget, timeline, or desired look, here’s some advice to point you in the right direction and help you select a qualified team of professionals that can bring your brand’s website to life. 

1. Compare Web Design Companies’ Qualifications

When it comes time to select a web design agency, you have countless options. One of the quickest ways to narrow down your options to the best is to go through their websites. It’s a bad sign if a web design agency has a website that’s slow, outdated, inconsistent, or just doesn’t speak to you. In other words, this is a situation where you can judge a book by its cover. 

After finding your favourite websites, take some time to read through the agency’s list of qualifications. Has it won any awards? Who’s on the team? Are they certified in any design software? While there are plenty of highly talented design agencies that aren’t award-winning, these things can certainly help prove an agency’s reputation and reliability up-front.

Most web design agencies will have a list of their team members so that you can see how long each individual has been in the business. You should also see when the agency was established by checking the “About” section. While you shouldn’t necessarily avoid young talent, experience is valuable. 

Lastly, as you try to get a feel for what the agency does, make sure its team is familiar with search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). With countless factors impacting SEO—including speed and clean code—it’s important that your agency doesn’t unknowingly work against your website’s future rankings or performance. 

2. Thumb Through the Web Design Company’s Portfolio

Every web design agency will have a website design portfolio where you can look through some examples of their past work. The best agencies may even have case studies where they’ve interviewed previous clients to have them talk about their experience working with the team.

Even just taking a few minutes to look through the screenshots or links that an agency shares can help you determine the quality of its work. Beyond noting whether or not the examples are up to your standards, you should also consider if any of them match your style.

If you’re going for something entirely different from an agency’s typical projects, the company may not be the right fit. With that said, don’t let a website portfolio on its own throw you off just because you have a different style in mind. If the website agency’s team do great work, it’s still worth reaching out to them to see what they’ll say.

3. Make Sure the Practical Details Line Up

Once you have a list of website agencies that have stayed in your favour after going through their website, team, and portfolio, it’s time to do your due diligence and make sure that working with them is a practical choice.

For example, if you’d prefer to work with an agency in person, you should limit your search to those with an office nearby. It’s up to you how far you’re willing to travel, but checking where the agency is located (or able to travel to) will help you quickly determine if an agency is still under consideration.

On the other hand, if you’re working with a web design agency remotely, location still matters. More specifically, you need to know which time zone the agency works in to make sure that scheduling meetings and progress checks won’t be an inconvenience. While many teams will try to work with your schedule, you shouldn’t have to jump through hoops every time you want to call in. 

Beyond location and time zone, you might also consider the size of the agency’s team (smaller teams may not be able to take on a major enterprise project), its general timeline for projects, and its target clientele (which will impact how much the agency charges). 

4. Find a Team That You Connect With

By far, one of the best things you can do when comparing the web design agencies you’re considering is schedule a time to actually talk with the team—either in person or over the phone. When you do, go ahead and give high marks to the team that you resonate with the best.

Aside from being friendly and clear in their communication, the best web design company will have a team who are happy to spend time explaining their services, getting to know your brand, and talking about how they would approach your project.

During this call, you should ask questions pertaining to:

  • The timeline and how long they would expect the project to take. In order to provide an accurate estimate, they’ll likely ask what information or pages you want to include, among other things. 
  • The process for handling requests and revisions. How will the agency handle it if you change your mind about something during the project or if you don’t like how they executed something? Understanding if revisions are included, and to what extent, is critical to staying within budget and getting the results you want. 
  • The estimated cost and what could change it. Additional customisations and more complex website features will certainly raise the original estimate. Consider if the web design company plans to charge a flat fee or hourly rate for the project, or some combination of the two. 

There will be a lot to remember, so even if you think you can keep track of it all, make sure to take notes. This will make it much easier to compare your options after you talk to your favourite website companies. 

5. Compare Estimates From Web Design Companies Side by Side

Following the consultation, you should request a written estimate from each web design company you speak to. Obviously, your budget will be a primary consideration, but you should also think back to which team you melded with the best. Working with people that are happy to listen to you and help build upon your ideas is crucial to a successful web design project that reflects the look you’re really going for.

In addition to great communication, consider the additional services any agency offered to you (for example, help with branding, logo design, or SEO) that you’re interested in. Also factor in the estimated timelines each agency gave you, as it might not be feasible to go with your first choice if the agency is going to take six months or more when the other options can get you a site within two or three.

Ultimately, the final decision is up to you, but by doing your due diligence, you can make sure that you don’t waste time and money with an agency that’s not able to execute your requests with the speed, quality, or reliability that you want. 

Get Started by Requesting a Website Quote

Are you working on choosing a web design company? Asking the right questions is a critical step to finding the best fit for your brand. Aside from being communicative and creative, the agency’s team should be quick on their feet and dedicated to your satisfaction. For all of those things, you can turn to the team at Engage Digital. When you’re ready to take the first step, request a free website proposal from us, so you can move forward with your website project.

Marketing can be a complicated business.

What elements will give us the best results. Should we be posting to social media more regularly? How much should we spend on Google Ads? Is our website good enough?

As a growth marketing agency, we’ve tested them all and surprise, surprise, there is no one magic bullet. Even businesses within the same industry are faced with completely different products, opportunities and challenges.

That being said, over time we’ve narrowed our digital marketing approach down to a proven growth marketing formula, that we represent in our proprietary canvas. And from this model, we use comprehensive planning templates to analyse and deliver personalised tactics for our clients’ businesses.

There are many parts to our Growth Marketing Canvas and it’s defined over 3 discipline segments:

  • We’re continuously strengthening the Growth Pillars; improving the product offering, continuously tweaking a compelling Value Proposition.
  • It’s a step-by-step application of prioritised marketing tactics and campaigns across a Customer Conversion System (a sales funnel).
  • And it deploys a Technology Stack to build efficiencies, reduce costs and report on progress.
The Engage Growth Marketing Canvas

With all this potential marketing complexity though, I’m often asked where an organisation should start! What growth marketing parts should get the most attention? It’s like applying the Pareto Rule – what 20% of action will give me 80% of the overall results.

What if the key to future business growth and success lies in focusing on just the core marketing components and doing them well.

So, we’ve distilled our comprehensive Growth Marketing Formula down to just the 5 core ingredients needed to grow your business – execute these well and you’ll set your marketing up for success…

1. Understand your Customer

Ensuring you are targeting a willing, hungry and profitable audience is, without a doubt, the most important step of any marketing campaign.

Analyse your customer base and find out everything you need to know; What social media platform are they on? What their values are in life, what they watch, what they read, what issues do they face related to your industry and product.

Find out what your customers want and what moves them, before you go spend a lot of money marketing. Draw up personas for your top 2-3 customer groups – rank their importance and the share of marketing they should receive from you.

2. Define your Value Proposition

A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. It’s outcome-focused and stresses the value of your offering to the customer.

For [target customer] who [statement of the need or opportunity], our [product/service name] is [product category] that [statement of benefit]. 

What are our customers’ pain points and desired gains?
What key customer problem do we provide a unique solution for?

Hit people over the head with what makes you different. 

3. Set a North Star Metric

Your North Star Metric is the metric that your company uses as a focus for growth.

This measure should be an indicator of the performance of our growth marketing tactics, not necessarily a KPI of the overall business.  e.g. Spotify: Time spent listening. Uber: Rides per week.

To qualify as a North Star, a metric must do three things: lead to revenue, reflect customer value, and measure progress.

4. Attraction Marketing

It starts here – if you’re not drawing in a market then the rest of your sales funnel is starved.

Attraction is a critical part of a systematic, scalable sales system. You need tactics in place that are attracting quality leads to your content, website or location.

Fundamentals here include SEO and Google Ads but may also involve display ads and retargeting, emails to targeted lists, cold call outreach, social media, content marketing and PR.

5. Testing and Optimising

Rapidly iterate through experiments to optimise marketing throughout the funnel.

Use A/B testing to improve landing page conversions.

Apply incremental changes to Google Ad campaigns for continual improvement to Cost-per-acquisition over time.

Experiment with cold call outreach and compare performance to other channels.

Test at a low cost and scale the tactics that show promise against your North Star Metric and other KPIs.

While there is always room for fundamental leaps, much of the gains from growth marketing are marginal and incremental.

Run experiments, prepare to fail, pivot quickly, amplify successes.

Takeaways

Our 5-ingredient extract is a distillation of our wider Growth Marketing Formula. Its where 20% of effort will get you 80% of all possible gains. So, if time and money are limited then make sure your focus is on these 5 essential components of your marketing plan:

  1. Understand Your Customer – target willing, hungry and profitable audiences.
  2. Define your Value Proposition – define what’s in it for your customer, why should they buy from you?
  3. Set a North Star Metric – the one measure that will define success – if it increases, your business grows.
  4. Attraction Marketing – just one part but responsible for fuelling your whole sales funnel – no traffic, no conversions.
  5. Test and Optimise – run experiments, prepare to fail, pivot quickly, amplify successes.

49% of companies report that customer acquisition is their primary marketing objective. 58% of business leaders indicate that lead generation is one of their most toughest challenges.

Business growth is always challenging – few businesses build their sales revenue on luck – it takes dedicated effort and the right tactics to grow and retain your customer base.

If you’re like most business owners, you’ve tried almost every conceivable way to grow our business. Some of it works – most of it doesn’t.

But let’s start at the beginning – the key to accomplishing your ambitious sales goal, starts with attracting more of the right sales leads.

A sales lead is a person or a business that has the potential to purchase your company’s product or service.

A lead only becomes a prospect once you have identified their fit as a potential customer or they have shown a level of direct interest in what your company has to offer.

Without well-targeted leads we won’t have the chance to close deals. Our clever engagement tactics, sales offers, landing pages, proposals and closing scripts won’t see the light-of-day unless we feed the sales funnel with leads.

Calculate the sales leads required to reach your revenue target

Tune in to your buyers’ needs

Fundamental to engaging with leads is appreciating their situation – understanding the process a customer goes through to become aware of, consider alternatives and decide to purchase from you.

Our outreach communication or inbound content needs to resonate with them:

  • What problem do we solve for them?
  • What’s our ideal customers biggest frustration?
  • What motivates them to take action?
  • What’s the best way to communicate to them?
  • Why should they care about what we provide?

Once you have identified your most important personas, then you need to optimise your website for conversions. Your website will be your most important tool you have for tuning into your audiences needs and turning leads in to customers.

Implement an omni-channel approach

You can dramatically increase your chances of turning leads in to customers by increasing the number of times your leads see you or engage with you.

The adage that it takes 7 touchpoints or interactions to generate a prospect is so very true – indeed, depending on the commitment (dollar value, consideration of alternatives, trust) required to make a purchase decision, many industries report it takes 2 or 3 times this many interactions before a decision is made.

We need to use every channel to connect with leads – traditional, social media, website content, direct calls, live chat, email, SMS, retargeting and more.

The messages need to be tuned to the stage in their journey with you – discovering their problem, not aware of your solution, weighing up alternatives, developing trust in your promise, motivated by your offer.

Try outbound responses to inbound leads

If you’ve attracted an inbound lead through your promotion, advertising, or content, great.

Sure, you can nurture those leads with a series of automated emails and social and PPC retargeting efforts.

But why not take more direct charge of turning those respondents in to prospects and customers through outbound.

Send more personalised emails, live chat, and direct SMS messages to them and where relevant, call them.

Make your outbound as personalised and as tailored as possible.

If you can’t get to all of them, lead scoring can identify the most engaged leads or those most ready to make a purchase decision.

A direct call has been found to increase the chances of a close by 2-3 times.

Respond lightning fast to leads

According to HubSpot, the odds of a lead becoming qualified are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes.

Just imagine how our odds drop, when we take a day or two to respond to a lead!

Get to your lead while they are in the moment.

A robust lead-to-close system addresses this by triggering a task and alerting an internal sales agent to respond within 5 minutes of acquiring a new inbound lead.

Revisit closed and lost opportunities

Often, “no” means “not right now”.

Revisit with your closed or lost opportunities. There is every chance that while you weren’t selected 6 months ago, you left a favourable impression that you might be reconsidered now that the time is right or other alternatives proved not so positive.

Companies that did not buy from you before are already qualified sales leads. Invest time and resources into marketing to these prospects. Stay in touch through email campaigns, local events, blog posts, and phone calls.

Today might be the very day that old lead asks “what was the name of that company that provided that amazing presentation 6 months ago?”

Find sales leads on social media networks

About 42% of us use some kind of social media.

Facebook and Instagram offer an abundant source of leads for B2C leads but that’s not to say they aren’t a viable source for B2B business either.

LinkedIn offers a more targeted source of business customers, with members more in the zone of finding business related information.

Use social media to get recommendations from your clients, post special offers, and tell more about your company. Any social media can be a fruitful channel to reach your audience and generate sales leads online.

Plus, once you have leads in the system, you can use social media to talk to them and find out more about what they need and want.

Get referrals from current customers

Your leads aren’t as likely to accept you singing about how great you are, as they will hearing from your current clients and customers.

Ratings, reviews and testimonials are powerful forms of endorsement.

Your leads are far more likely to trust you and hopefully purchase from you if they see that that they are working in good company or read positive messages from satisfied customers.

Get those messages front and centre on your website. Use those referrals in your pitch videos. Display your google ratings and reviews everywhere.

Don’t be afraid to ask your customers to refer friends and colleagues to you.

Run specific friend-get-friend promotions to encourage referral lead generation.

Create a better sales funnel

Once you have identified your ideal lead targets and what channels to use to reach them you should have a plan to collect contact information.

Usually, the first stage of an optimised sales funnel process is funnelling leads toa lead capture page or landing page that encourages visitors to share their contact information, usually in exchange for something of value to them; a coupon code, a free gift, a demo or valuable piece of content like an how-to ebook.

At this point, it’s vital that you have CRM or Marketing Automation software in place to keep track of sales leads and to further engage them through email, SMS and retargeting messages on social and websites platforms.

Marketing automation apps like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign can be set to do all the hard-lifting of sending personalised messages and identifying just the right time to offer online sales incentives or prompt a sales representative to make a closing call.

Attract organic traffic from SEO

While paid online advertising can offer a short term fix for targeting leads, search engine optimisation can generate organic traffic to your website on an ongoing basis, literally for free.

By focusing on keyword researched quality content, posted to informative and engaging landing pages and blogs, you can rank high with search engines like Google and offset the massive investment of ad campaigns.

It’s unlikely that a business in a competitive industry can give up on paid placement, but ranking well with Google will ensure that this organic channel serves you well for a strong flow of leads at a lower cost of conversion.  

Takeaways

  • A healthy and productive sales funnel must start with a strong flow of leads.
  • Without leads your sales pipeline is dead in the water.  
  • Start by assessing your buyer personas and appeal to their pain points and frustrations with a strong value proposition.
  • Communicate your value proposition through an omnichannel lead generation approach that may include conventional media, PPC, social media, email, SMS, or cold calling.
  • Continue to experiment and optimise the sources for your sales leads – measuring not just quantity but conversion, costs and sales value of each lead source.
  • It’s vital that you use CRM and Marketing Automation to gather contact information of your hard-fought sales leads to engage and nurture them through your sales pipeline.
  • Assess if your current process responds to new leads quickly and provides them the personalised information that will make your business stand out from the competitors those leads are also considering.

Before the pandemic, ecommerce was important to some of us, an extra channel to support retail stores to many of us, and an ever-growing necessity to all of us.

Now everything has changed.

If the first lockdowns of 2020 got us thinking about growing our ecommerce channels, then the second and third waves of Covid-19 in 2021 have all businesses rethinking the importance of digital and the abundant opportunities of ecommerce.

Forrester research predicts that digital customer service interactions will increase by a whopping 40%.

This increased reliance on online shopping, digital finance services and even health consultancy being delivered virtually isn’t going away.

Sure, we’ll flock to the malls and stores when we get the chance but as consumers, we’ve also realised that we don’t have to travel halfway across a city to have a bargain or an essential purchase land at our door.

We’re becoming more aware that the clothing or electronics or homeware item we need can we hunted out online, often with more choice, better pricing, and amazingly speedy deliver from around the world, let alone from across town.

Competitive websites and particularly ecommerce websites can’t endure a cold face of function and form – to maintain their market position, or push beyond, they need to evolve and interact with users – here are four insights to help improve in this new reality of ecommerce prominence and the customer experience.

Your business needs to be always on – because your customers are.

No matter the time of day or night, no matter how busy you are or under resourced you are, your customers are always on.

So, your ecommerce site or online business needs to be always ready to engage and provide the right information for your customers.

Of course, the digital environment lends itself to provide the right technology to provide the support and answers your customer’s demand.

Searchable and categorised knowledge bases and wikis provide information and assurances to customers literally instantaneously. They can be updated and added to quickly and are inexpensive to install even for the most modest of ecommerce stores.

Live chat can also provide customers instant access to answers. And when not manned by real people, bots step in to provide timely information to the most regular questions.

Pop ups and artificial intelligence can provide answers to customers exploring special product features or pricing pages.

Browse abandonment and cart abandonment automated workflows can re-engage with us long after we would have left the physical stores carpark.

Start small and put ideas to the test

Digital allows us to experiment at a relatively low cost.

We can identify a single pain point within our shoppers’ funnel and address that with conversational intelligence or a reworked workflow.

If results show promise, we update and test some more.

We can then introduce the change and scale at will – keeping an improved customer experience at the centre of our objectives.

Map and improve the Customer Journey

The customer journey consists of four key parts. These are:

  1. Awareness
  2. Consideration
  3. Decision-making
  4. Evaluation

By exploring the CX at each one of these stages, you can improve the overall customer experience with you. This begins with helping them find you.

Map and evaluate the customer journey to determine where customer needs might not coordinate with what you have to offer. Then you can plan for an even better experience by making the sales journey as smooth as possible.

Becoming empathetic and real

In the past, we’ve felt we’re more in control of the customer experience, when that experience was face to face, or at least person to person.

With a mechanical ecommerce relationship that empathy with customers is often lost.  

But data from all touchpoints can provide extraordinary insights into the customers’ requirements and feeling.

We just need to spend the time to understand what the data is telling us.

High bounce rates on certain product pages might indicate that we haven’t clearly delivered the benefits of that product over another.

Abandonment during checkout might indicate that our shipping costs are too high.

Not receiving a message to confirm delivery might leave customers anxious that the parcel has gone astray.

Sending a thank you note in the mail is likely to leave a customer highly impressed and they are bound to pass the positive experience on to friends.

Takeaways

Despite the digital process of ecommerce transactions and touch points, or because of them, many online businesses can dramatically improve the customer experience.

Indeed, improving CX is the ultimate objective of our online marketing activity.

If we outgun our competitors with Customer Experience there’s an absolute probability our brand will flourish.

Data analysis, conversion optimisation, marketing automation, artificial intelligence and more, have big parts to play in ensuring we improve and tune the customers’ experience. Just think to when you were most delighted from an online experience – can you emulate that in your business and the way you deliver ecommerce or any sort of website engagement and transaction.

Want 10, 20 or 50% more sales in 90 days?

Download a free copy of our 30-page Growth Marketing Playbook – a tactical guide to growing your sales.