Now is the time to increase customer engagement for your online business by implementing digital marketing strategies. Read more to find out how.
Business owners are searching for new ways to grow their businesses online. With a rapid shift from in-store experiences to digital and online, businesses must adapt quickly in order to stay relevant and grow.
The Rapid Shift to Online
It’s more important now than ever before to elevate your online business to ensure its survival. While there are an abundance of technological solutions at your disposal, you’ll need a multifaceted digital strategy to see better client engagement and conversions. Now is the time to start developing that strategy.
Recent reports indicate that the dramatic increases in internet usage can hardly be met by the current infrastructure. HBO NOW reported a 40 percent surge from its four-week average, while Amazon Prime Video, Zoom, Slack, and most other consumer technology companies also reported extreme increases in usage.
Considering the new imperative—that your business’ success depends on a strong digital strategy—this article will provide an in-depth look into specific ideas about how to grow your business online.
Many organizations procrastinate overhauling their website due to concerns about cost and bandwidth. However, it is now absolutely critical to have a strong digital presence, which begins by investing in your website. A custom-built website designed for your specific business needs cannot be overlooked. Your website is arguably the most important tool that your business has to actualize significant growth.
At Blennd, we build high-end, solution-driven websites that are designed to grow businesses online and drive conversions so that your business can reach and exceed its KPIs. If you are considering rebuilding your website, contact our brand strategy agency at Blennd today. We’ll help guide you through assessing the features and functionality you will need to meet the specific demands of your business.
Your current digital infrastructure is one of the primary considerations when thinking about how to amplify business online. Is your current website built to handle e-commerce functionality? Do you have drop shipping functionality on your site? Determining the size and complexity of your online store will largely determine if your site should be built on a WordPress or Shopify platform. Another consideration should be the external software integrations you’ll need. For example, if you use Salesforce as a CRM, this will need to be built into your web development plan.
To actually grow your business online, your new site should also focus on optimizing the user experience for leads and conversions. If you haven’t been collecting digital data from your website visitors, this is the time to start. This can be achieved by integrating value-driven email sign-up forms on your site. By offering exclusive discount codes or valuable information, users will be more likely to complete your forms so you can gather their data. These leads should be fed into your CRM allowing your sales team to follow up accordingly.
This is also the time to assess how your current and future customers will easily perform necessary tasks on your site. For example, if you own an interior design business, you might need to have a portal where customers can easily update payment and contact information. It might also be useful to include other features that create great customer experiences like cost calculators, online ordering, appointment schedulers, and customer support chatbots.
While a heavy focus on your customers’ needs is necessary, it is also prudent to consider how to cater to your employees for onboarding and continued education. For example, if you have new hires, how will you establish a thorough digital onboarding process? At Blennd, we just built an employee portal for a large retail client that allows their employees to easily sign policy documents, take safety quizzes, watch training videos, and more.
Develop a Cutting-Edge Digital Marketing Strategy for Online Business Growth
The prospect of ramping up your online business, overhauling your website, and implementing a digital marketing strategy might induce some anxiety. This feeling could stem from what you’ve heard about the technological complexities and costs of huge e-commerce sites like Amazon or Zappos. The truth is that your needs depend on the type of your business, as well as your current digital infrastructure. This means that the digital solutions your business needs could be simpler than you think.
To begin to develop a multifaceted digital marketing strategy, you’ll need to identify what products or services you want to sell online and whether your current digital infrastructure is equipped for it.
For example, if you’re running a garden supply business, in the past you might have operated primarily as a brick-and-mortar store with only a few SKUs on your e-commerce website. The chances are that you have low web traffic, and you might need a more strategic approach to drive customers and sales to your online store.
While there are a variety of ways to achieve this goal, retargeting is a great option that typically has a low cost per lead and a high conversion rate. For example, if someone has been eyeing a lawn mower on your site, an ad for that lawn mower will pop up when they’re reading the news in The New York Times. This keeps your brand and products front and center throughout your future customer’s journey through the web.
Paid social is another effective way of driving traffic and conversions. By crafting sponsored content and ads, you can boost your web presence on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Across the various social platforms, there are a variety of ways of targeting your audience using demographics, interests, job titles, and more. Paid social allows you to find your audience and pitch your product or service directly to them.
For example, if you’re running an IT company, you’ll want to harness the power of LinkedIn to expand your B2B branding and network. Through paid social, you can target your ideal customers with valuable downloadable assets in exchange for a lead. On the other hand, if your own a high-end clothing store, you can tap into Facebook and Instagram’s advanced targeting and “look-alike” audiences to get your brand in front of the right customers.
If you need help crafting and implementing a digital marketing strategy, contact our team at Blennd for a free consultation.
Expand Your Digital Content and Diversify Your Marketing Channels
In the past few weeks, there has been a huge influx in digital webinars, yoga classes, happy hours, church services, and everything in between. If you’re a business owner with a product that was traditionally offered in person, you’ll probably need to adopt a new digital platform. Fortunately, there are an abundance of webinar and digital event software systems like Zoom, Livestorm, and GoToWebinar that make it easy for you to offer your services digitally.
However, just because you have created a webinar, you shouldn’t expect people to flock to registration. To get your digital event in front of the right audience, you’ll need a strategy. First and foremost, your webinar platform should be integrated with your website. This integration will drive traffic to your site and ensure that your customers’ data is streamlined into your CRM. Compiling all of your customers’ information in one place will make it easier for your sales team to build long-term relationships based on their activity and information.
To spread the word about your new digital service offerings, you’ll need to diversify your marketing channels and utilize paid advertising. This means crafting ads and narrowing your target audience to communicate effectively about your upcoming webinar series via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other social platforms where your audience lives. Many webinar platforms also have the option to Livestream a webinar through your social channels to maximize and diversify engagement.
Of course, it is also important to consider your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. After all, there’s no point in having a beautiful website and fantastic online products, if no one can find them in a Google search. This applies to your blog content, as well as any other downloadable documents or valuable information on your site. In fact, if you’re not currently creating valuable resources and content for your customers, now is the time to start. This will not only help your SEO strategy, but it will make your customers refer to your website as a known and trusted source of information.
Ask for Expert Business Growth Plan Advice from Our Team at Blennd
Like most business owners, you’ve probably always wanted a cutting-edge website and a strong digital strategy to grow your business online. But we cannot emphasize enough, that now is the time to put your aspirations into action. After all, the implications of the current scenario are unprecedented and “waiting it out” is a huge risk to take for your business.
While we are not sure how long the Covid-19-related restrictions will last, we do know that the shift to digital life is the new norm. One thing we have learned from history is that dramatic worldwide events like the Great Depression and this pandemic can permanently change the way we live. In this case, the implications of Covid-19 have dramatically shifted everyone’s lives online.
Now is the time to devote the time, resources, and budget towards developing a digital strategy to grow your business online—for the sake of your employees, customers, and your bottom line. Worst case scenario, you now have a concrete imperative to invest in that custom-built website and digital marketing strategy you’ve always known your business needs.
Contact us today to receive expert guidance on how to grow your business online.
