Strategy - Website Marketing Services
Making eBusiness Easy
Strategy
Every website needs a plan and this is where the majority of websites fail. There are usually no distinct objectives and if there are, no work has gone into reaching those objectives. Creating a strategy means understanding the goals and this comes from knowing how the web can serve your business.
There are four key areas with which to identify objectives and create a strategy:
- Administration
- Communication
- Sales
- Marketing
Let’s take a look at these four areas.
Administration
By far, the biggest administrative burden when dealing with clients or customers is handling their information and integrating it into your back office systems in a productive way. This could be collecting and storing their email addresses but weeding out the spam, processing their shopping habits and using this information for marketing purposes, importing transactions or even managing mailing lists. There are many administrative jobs the web can create but often there are many administrative tools that can solve these problems.
Good customer service from efficient administrative systems and processes makes your website and your business easier to market and is fundamental when scaling the business up and dealing with demand. Too often this aspect of marketing is treated as an afterthought as businesses chase the sales but without the infrastructure to deal with this load, marketing becomes difficult and unproductive.
Note: Think about the way you deal with the information your website generates. What problems do you have? What more information do you need from your customers? How is your website supporting these needs?
Communication
Customers and clients need flexibility and response when communicating. Typically, it’s email that is the preferred method of communication best supported by the website but in nearly all cases we see, email processing is poorly controlled, too mixed with spam and is slow to action. Because it’s the “norm”, customer expectations of email are low which presents an opportunity to exceed these expectations by tightening the systems that process email, channeling the right correspondence to the right person and incorporating a hierarchy of communication methods such as messaging and VOIP should email not suffice in a given instance.
Many of these solutions cost little or nothing but time to understand, integrate and facilitate. It’s a case of using technology to get back to the traditional side of business in a virtual world and offering good, reliable customer service.
Note: As a means of communication, is email more trouble than it’s worth? Do you receive too much spam? Have you looked into other methods of communication such as VOIP and messaging? Do you hear the same questions over and over again? Have you considered publishing more customer service information on the website?
Sales
What the web is made for, right? Well, no, but it’s very, very good at it and some of the biggest companies around sell so we know it works. Selling online is a process within the business and not the business and we have to be clear on this distinction. We look at how the sale of goods is wrapped from a customers point of view and tailor the experience to flow with ease, minimum fuss and flexibility of payment options given the consumer demographic.
To lead to a sale, we need to capture a customer, convert them to buy, then give them appropriate actions to facilitate purchase. Beyond this point, customers then fall into the administrative system which allows us to further market and correspond with them, leading to more potential sales. Remember, a repeat customer costs less to acquire than a new customer.
This end to end approach is crucial for a good customer experience which leads to a mobile and distant marketing department. The best way to gain confidence in a new service is recommendation and we need to ensure the service you provide your customers warrants recommending.
This, of course, requires you to be in an industry where service quality counts. Many other sectors are solely price driven and just want a given item quickly and cheaply. eBay is a great example of success in this area but as anyone familiar with eBay will know, customer service is a lottery; but plenty gamble when the price is right.
Note: Are you spending too much driving sales? How do you process the information your existing customers leave with you? What options do your customers have when trying to buy your goods or services?
Marketing
There are several facets to marketing online, more specific details of which are contained within the menu section on the left but from a strategic point of view, we are looking for visibility, brand awareness and confidence.
Visibility leads people to the website and there’s a variety of methods to achieve this. Often though, the most important aspect is overlooked and that’s “a reason to visit”. Unique, prolific and informative content is the engine that drives the web. You could sell “bolts” for example and all you’ve got to say about them is the thread size, but if this is important to your consumer base, then that’s exactly what we write about. There are always ways to be diverse with information, even with the most difficult of products and it’s this research and collective experience that makes the world of difference to the visibility of the website. Since we mentioned “bolts”, it could be that many people would search for a particular size bolt for a given application such as “10mm bolt for brick walls”. The product may technically be known as a “rawl bolt” to the trade but we have to be more diverse than this and consider the markets knowledge. The right answer in this instance is the answer that generates more leads.
Taking a holistic approach to marketing, part of the strategy would need to include the best forms of visibility, whether it’s articles of recommendation from review sites, comparison websites that highlight your great prices over competitors, good search engine rank for a wide variety of researched phrases and much, much more. We need to balance visibility with economy so your return on investment is as high as can be realistically achieved given the markets and competition.
Getting people to your website is one thing, but converting visitors to customers is another discipline in its own right. There are two areas to consider, the flow of information and confidence in your business. Site architecture is the system of allowing information to lead people from one point to another in a logical way. We as web users know too well that information or site architecture is generally poor due to the number of clicks we need to get from the site we’ve landed on to the resource we’re after. We need to ensure the steps needed are minimal and the resources people seek are to hand.
OK, people find your site and they’re where they want to be but do they have confidence in your service? Passing money over the web has many implications, most important of which is security. Using a secure and seamless checkout and payment process is essential but people aren’t at this stage yet, they’re still on your site deciding if they should use your business. It’s with the core information you need to convey confidence. This could mean security policies and logo, trade associations, customer service and communication methods, testimonials. All these reinforce consumer confidence at the point it’s needed most.
Note: What methods of marketing do you currently employ for your website? Are you paying too much for advertising? We know word-of-mouth recommendations are the best forms of marketing, what are you doing to recreate this online? What is your strategy to lower costs and gain market share?
What next?
Check out our other marketing services by using the navigation menu at the top of the page, alternatively, contact us for more information.