What is likely to be the first thing you do when looking for a restaurant, mechanic, or beautician? You check their website. No matter whether the outlet you are interested in belongs to an international chain or is a local business, you want to know whether they are still open after your work shift or you should not bother driving there. However, small businesses have a limited budget to spend in marketing efforts, especially during these uncertain times. On the other hand, some benefits of having a website for your small business should not be ignored.
That's How Potential Customers Find Your Business.
Today's users and customers use the internet as a faster, more responsive, and immediately efficient phone book. In the past, if you could not find a business on the phone book, you will skip to the next one that offers similar services, but you can get in contact with - and that's your competition. If anybody in your area has a website, you will need to make sure that your business is as visible as theirs. If they don't, well, there is nothing outrageous in being the first one.
Including a Blog Helps You Build Relationships With Your Customers.
A couple of landing pages and contact forms might just be enough to encourage potential customers towards your business. However, before or after the purchase, such pages might not be particularly useful in keeping the engagement levels high. Instead, implementing a blog and regularly publishing relevant content allows you to supply answers to the most common questions and issues your audience might be experiencing.
When writing a blog for your business's website, you can craft a marketing strategy by yourself, but you should be aware of what are the most common blogging mistakes to avoid them. If you feel like this might be too overwhelming for you, asking for a consultation offered by an SEO or digital marketing professional can guide you through the right path.
And So Does a Newsletter!
Alongside regular blog posts, investing in a newsletter, and crafting the perfect call to action allows you to generate new leads and retain more data about your audience than ever. However, newsletters are also essential to keep in touch with your target market throughout the year. Therefore, you can check in with them in the periods in between purchases or when you are about to launch or update a new product or service.
Instead of having to find new customers who are interested in your latest creation, most of your audience will get to know about offers, discounts, giveaways, and new launches. Don't forget that in periods in which your business can't operate as usual - like in the case of the current restrictions - a newsletter can help you communicate to your customer opening hours and safety measures implemented.
Create the First Point of Contact
Undoubtedly, websites are the first point of contact for a customer who is looking for your address or contact details. If it does reflect the value proposition, theme, and mission of your brand, your website offers an ideal peek into the experience that your customer is about to have.
Not having a website might suggest that your business is not particularly up-to-date, innovative, or clear in intent. Additionally, if you let the first point of contact be when the customer walks into your physical shop, this might not always go as planned! And first impressions are often everlasting! In this case, a well-crafted website allows you to create the ideal first impression you always want to leave in a new customer.
If you are the owner of an established small or local business, your customer base might derive from decades of word-of-mouth marketing and entire generations engaging in your services. However, if you are a new business, you will have to generate trust and get your customers to know that you have the expertise, attitude, and knowledge to perform the best job. A website can do precisely that.
Your business' site will have testimonials, reviews, social media handles' links, and call to actions. Your customer can explore your business, experience, and portfolio at its own pace, and make an even more informed decision. Aside from increasing the number of customers for your business, they might also be willing to pay more for the same product!
It's a Marketing Channel You Can't Ignore
With an endless range of marketing media out there, it can seem impossible to pick the best one for your needs. However, just by having a website, you can combine several digital marketing branches, such as SEO and video marketing, in one platform. While you might need the help of a professional agency or expert to craft a strategy that can truly get your business off the ground, websites are also reasonably easy to handle by yourself.
You Can Leverage Data to Create Better Services
Past and potential customers commenting, subscribing, and generally taking action on your website offer you a data set you can start plotting. Whether this about your marketing campaign, expectations not met, or a particular aspect of your product that does not work as well, it is all valuable feedback. Through such input, you can craft better products, strategies, and services that truly reflect your users' needs.
It Is the Starting Point to Build an eCommerce Business.
The current pandemic and ensuing lockdown and social distancing measures have made clear that remote working, delivery options, and touchless services are here to stay. While your small business already works locally, you might not be able to reach an audience that, while interested, might be located away from you.
However, today, not starting to think about an eCommerce option might decrease your business's level of competitiveness, especially if you look at other companies in the same sector. You can still opt to keep your local outlet open as usual, but generating income streams through an online eCommerce store allows you to benefit from a visibility level that you would not have otherwise.
For companies that have always only worked with full-time employees, a move to a more flexible approach to labor requires a mental shift. It has long been a major sticking point that if the workers were not present in the office, the employer couldn’t be assured that they were putting in the work.
Nevertheless, more companies are opening up to the idea of using flexible labor such as freelancers, short-term contract workers, and remote workers. Here are four reasons to take it more seriously now.
The World is Less Predictable Than Ever
If the recent months have taught us anything it’s that predicting the future is no longer possible with any degree of accuracy. The business world isn’t stoic or slow-moving any longer – all companies must adapt to this different reality.
With the possibility of further national health issues in the future, being flexible in business operations is essential. Revenue can climb (or fall) at much faster rates than before. The need to be fluid and adaptable is more necessary than ever.
Get New Projects Up and Running Quicker
When the company is diving into a new project where only some of the existing employees have any experience in that area, it creates a dilemma.
Recruiting several full-time workers before work can truly begin in earnest will require weeks or months to find appropriately qualified people. Meanwhile, the project doesn’t move forward and the risk is that competitors will steal a march on your business.
Instead, consider using freelancers to take on specific tasks to get the ball rolling on the new project. Start with research tasks and building out the systems that’ll be necessary for a larger team to proceed. This will save time when the employee recruitment phase is complete.
Is One Freelancer as Good as Another?
Finding effective freelancers is hit and miss. This is what puts companies off trying them out.
However, there are now solutions to this difficulty. One is a database of freelancer marketing specialists who can provide a range of services in the digital realm from project management to web development to media buying to strategic development. Just looking in one state alone, there’s plenty of qualified Minneapolis freelancers available for marketing purposes, and they’re capable of working nationwide too.
It’s also possible to ask around for recommendations about people who have worked for your peers. Because they only need them for occasional tasks, they’re not worried about you poaching their staff, so the suggestions come much easier.
Tap the National Talent Pool
As an employee in one city, your local talent pool for employees is restricted to the city and surrounding catchment areas. Depending on the industry focus in the city and the limit of the talent present, it might be difficult to find the people with the requisite skills.
When looking farther afield and accepting remote workers or freelancers, it’s not necessary to headhunt someone and have them relocate across the country. Instead, they’re available, usually immediately, with the skills required without any fuss.
For companies that were previously unwilling to work with people outside of the employer-employee construct, it’s a real eye-opener to see the wealth of options that the wider labor market offers. It also allows for greater flexibility to scale labor up and down as the economy indicates, to manage costs appropriately.
Are you looking for the best types of videos for retaining customers? Once you have secured business, your work is not done. It is important to strengthen relationships with existing customers so that you can secure repeat business.
For most business types, repeat business is the most important. This part of the consumer life cycle phase is, of course, beyond the funnel. One Funnel Away can help you with creating a funnel for your ideas if you need further information on this. Below, we are going to take a look at the best types of videos for retaining customers in further detail.
Thank You Videos
One of the best ways to retain customers is to show your appreciation for them, and what better way to do this than with a thank you video? You need to show your consumers that they are just as important to you once they have purchased from your business as they were while you were trying to turn them into a customer.
A good example of a customer thank you is a video created by Constant Contact back in 2014. Why is it so effective? Well, not only does it show customers that they are special, but it also reminds them why they loved working with the brand. Another good example is the thank you video from Birchbox, which not only involves the company saying thank you to all customers, but also shares their favorite customer interactions from throughout the year. It is great because it shows employees talking about their favorite memories, which no doubt makes customers feel special.
As you have probably gathered, sharing these videos at the year-end is a good strategy, as you are reflecting on the year gone by. The aim of these videos should be to spread positivity; there should not be any overt selling purpose.
Show Additional Uses For Your Product
Once your customers have purchased your product, you can show them additional uses for it through a video. This adds value to the purchase the customer made, and it also shows your consumers that you still care about them.
This is something Oreo executed brilliantly in a 20-second video that shows followers how to make an Oreo banana cream pie using their biscuits. This is something that can easily be re-created for all food products, as well as other items, such as videos of different ways to wear a clothing garment or accessory, or different hairstyles that can be created with a hair styling product.
Embrace brand advocates
Use video production to give your customers a way of sharing their stories. By giving your customers a voice, you increase brand loyalty. This is something that Walt Disney Company did exceptionally well. They created a video of a father and daughter enjoying Disneyland, and they shared it on Facebook on Father’s Day, encouraging people to share the video with their ‘Disney Dad’ to remind him of how special he is.
Thousands of people shared the post, with many commenting on the video about the experience they had at Disneyland with their father. By doing this, Disney celebrated the experience their customers had, and, at the same time, they endeared themselves to other customers who wanted to have this experience.
To increase the chances of retaining customers and generating a loyal consumer base, incorporate the video content mentioned above into your marketing strategy. As they say, ‘work never ends’, and if you stop trying once you have turned a lead into a customer, you are going to find that they walk straight into the hands of the competition next time around.
If your business is reliant on your local community for sales, then finding ways to reach out to the people closest to you is a must. But even if your business isn't reliant on the community around you, you might still want to focus on them within your marketing, as the more people you have buying from you, the better. Right? We're sure you're nodding your head in agreement as you read this.
Of course, if you already have a local marketing strategy in place that works for you, then fine. Keep doing what you're doing. But if your marketing strategy sucks, you should do what you can to improve matters.
The following steps are recommended.
#1: Understand your target audience
The most important step in any marketing campaign is to know who your target audience is. You need to work out who your ideal customer is, what types of things interest them, and what marketing approach works best when targeting them. So, you might want to work out what social platforms they might use, what websites they might visit, and where they might spend time offline. Customer analysis can be carried out through market research, social media analytics, and the application of data science with the help of a data science agency. Checking out the marketing efforts of your nearest competitors can also help you in this regard.
#2: Target your audience
When you know who and where your key demographic is, you need to reach out to them. Build a marketing campaign around their primary interests. Focus on SEO and use those keywords that your audience will probably be entering into Google. And create advertisements and other promotional materials that explain why and how your product or service can fulfill the needs of your audience. Use a range of marketing strategies in your efforts to reach them, but focus on those that can be assumed will bring the best results.
#3: Get involved with your community
To really make an impression on your community, you need to increase the visibility of your business. When the local people know and trust the people behind the product or service they are being offered, the greater the chances of them using your business. So, get out there and do what you can to make yourself known. Attend community events, as both a business guru and as a friend of the community. Offer training courses and workshops to local people. Hold fundraising events for community causes. And follow these other ideas for getting involved with the local community, as the more you can do to engage with people, the greater the chances that they will engage with you.
#4: Track your marketing efforts
Which of your local marketing strategies are bringing in the most results? When you know what is working, you should devote most of your time to these areas. Check out these techniques for measuring local marketing and go back to our suggestions about data science and social media analytics to track your marketing efforts further.
By following these steps you will improve your local marketing strategy. So, if you haven't attained the sales you hoped for in your locale, consider our suggestions and commit to further research on each one of them.
There is more to your success than just a great looking and informative website. Even the best websites need the support of great marketing strategies.
Embrace email marketing
One of the ways to achieve this is through email marketing. Email marketing allows you to connect directly to potential customers and return visitors to your site. When done properly it provides that personal touch that you would normally only get in face-to-face marketing. However, when it is done poorly, it can become akin to spam; unwanted, unappreciated and unlikely to lead to anything positive.
Given this, it is important to understand the subtleties of email marketing. This includes elements such as the importance of making sure you have permission to use the individual’s email details for this purpose. When you capture an email address you must ensure the individual knows why you are asking and is giving permission to you to send such communications. You must also remember that this permission can be revoked at any time and that your emails must include an unsubscribe link.
You need to be aware of this and of the less obvious elements of designing a good email marketing campaign. Anything from the subject line, to the amount of time the email takes to open, will affect whether the email is even read, let alone whether the reader responds to it.
SEO is not something you can address once and then just forget about. The Internet is changing all of the time and you need to make sure that your business stays ahead of the curve. We recommend reading 2020 books on search engine optimization (SEO). This will make sure that you are using strategies that are effective in the modern-day.
One thing you definitely need to make sure you stay away from is black-hat techniques. These are strategies that try to manipulate search engines to get to the top. You will get penalised in the end.
Avoid PPC mistakes
Pay Per Click advertising can be a very useful tool in bringing new customers to your business website. However, this only remains true if you understand how it works and avoid some very costly mistakes along the way.
One of the major mistakes that businesses make when first using PPC is related to their links. It is important that the link you include in the advert takes the visitor to the right page, the page for the product or service that was included in their keyword search. If you instead send them to your home or contacts page, the visitor must work to get to where they want to be.
Unfortunately for you, it is easier for the visitor to click back and try a different link altogether, losing you a potential sale and costing you money into the bargain.
Another mistake to avoid is forgetting to split test your text. Failing to test any aspect of your campaign runs the risk of losing potential customers and your PPC adverts are no different. Your web design agency will take care of the testing phase for you ensuring that only the most appropriate wording is used.
