It’s difficult to build a business with a single marketing tactic. A recent report suggests up to 20% of ROI is lost when adopting a single channel approach. An integrated Omnichannel approach makes it more likely a potential customer will encounter your message across multiple platforms and times.
The approach begins with your website.
#1: Your website is the “always-on” embodiment of your business. Integrated correctly, it collects leads and can help turn customers into brand advocates. Given 80% of people research a company or service online before purchase, can you afford not to add a digital face to your business?
#2: The financial barriers to digital entry continue to tumble! While we suggest you engage a Digital Business Consultant, an online presence with a relatively small initial outlay, is possible for any size business. Having a website is now a necessity, rather than a luxury. You can deliver your unique message to a much wider, digital audience. And besides…your competitors are executing on their digital strategy as you read this!
#3: Developing your unique value helps to position your company or service in the expert category. If you’re a handy writer, there’s an opportunity to share your expertise. It’s cheap and easy to get help in this area though if you’re not an accomplished writer.
#4: Integrate a Social Media strategy and now your reach is exploding! You can update your customers on new products or upgrades. Concentrate on delivering an exceptional consumer experience time after time. People will share their positive brand experiences with their followers and expand your digital reach.
The 3 certainties in life – death, taxes and change. The first 2 are becoming less certain as medical advances are adding to life expectancy and big companies exploit tax laws. Change does seem to be the one true constant. Businesses who keep up with digital change, bring value to the customer experience and will their meet competition head-on.
#1: Partner with a digital business consultant.
Many businesses have embarked on Digital Transformation. They realise an online presence is a necessity to move their business forward. For those looking for traction in the digital space, the services of a Digital Business Consultant can be invaluable. Their knowledge of web integrations helps you cater to an increasingly impatient audience.
#2: Leverage people’s obsession with mobile technology.
The average person checks their phone over one hundred times a day! Such is the attachment to digital devices, it’s argued that we are already a human-digital hybrid. Maybe this is the beginning of Elon Musk’s vision for a digitised humanity?
A steady stream of email, social media and marketing notifications hijacks attention spans. In the background, an always-on, digital hum from growing connected technology. Your brand just has to be there. Make it searchable and ready to deliver on mobile devices!
#3 Begin optimising for voice search
Two-thumb typing searches will become extinct.20 percent of mobile queries are already voice searched. In 3 years, it’s anticipated 50% of all searches will be performed without the aid of a screen.
Your potential clients are already asking their Digital Personal Assistant, (DPA), Siri, Alexa and Google to “Begin morning.”
With this command, lights switch, coffee percolates, traffic and weather updates are received. A grocery list is sent to a smartphone for a recipe search a connected refrigerator.
The next command could be, “Find me, (insert your business type here.)” Ensuring your business has a location and service-optimised digital strategy will make you searchable 24/7/365.
Your digital business consultant will develop a keyword strategy to connect direct answers to direct questions.
No longer the conjuring of science fiction writers, artificial intelligence and machine learning, will be smarter than humans.It doesn’t matter who your clients are, be assured that most will always use digital channels to search, interact, transact, share and purchase.
Retargeting can track browsing and purchase history and abandoned cart sales. The information can then be used to place your ads on other sites, keeping your digital brand in the forefront of people’s minds.
#5 Always be contactable
Digital business needs to receive email, respond to Messenger queries and website chat while maintaining a social media presence. People expect to make a connection at the very instant they have a need. It’s critical to screen, direct and respond to that need in a timely fashion.
Email marketing, Messenger chat and social media strategy are just some of the tools your business needs to integrate. You need to satisfy the immediate need when they’re ready to purchase!
And remember…it may take fifty interactions to gain someone’s attention, but one poor interaction to lose it forever! Be human, trustworthy, publish quality information and you will see positive effects from your digital marketing efforts in 2018.
The consumer controls the game and investing in tools to improve their experience, should be a no-brainer.The best promoters of your brand are engaged and satisfied customers and favourable digital reviews are like word of mouth on steroids!
There was a light bulb moment for me when I was first introduced to acronyms.SOHCAHTOAhelped me navigate the mental torture of trigonometry.BOLTSS, the six essential features of a map.
In Healthcare, (where I spent 20 years), acronyms abound to aid recall of physiological processes.
My favourite acronym though is theSMART Digital approach. It helps convey plans and timelines when developing a digital marketing strategy for clients. I liked it so much, I even called my agency Smart Reach Media.
Reachis the amplification and distribution of a message to achieve greatest digital penetration. An example of reach could be the number of unique visitors to a website each month.
SMART digital marketing is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Scaled.
At the core, any business needs to stand out from the competition and communicate aunique selling proposition.
Simple Who, What, Why and Which questions clarify the process and make itSpecific.
Who is involved? What do we want to do? Why are we doing what we are doing? Which constraints and requirements are there for the project? Goals seem more attainable when objectives like these are established early in the planning process.
There are manyMeasurables these days. Likesare important but your Bank Manager won’t take them as part of your interest repayments.
Digital Marketers analyse Click-through and Bounce Rates and use A/B split testing.
Google analytics and Facebook provide audience insights. The user experience on the website is modifiedaccordingly.
The Digital Business Consultant delivers this information in easy to understand language for the client. The data helps the marketing process for the business.
Appraising the available resources and constraints at the business level is Attainability. This is necessary to improve performance.
Up to this point, the process has set Relevant goals to achieve short and long-term business goals.
This all needs to occur within an acceptableTime-Scaledperiod for the client. The designer needs adequate time as well to deliver their best work.
Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.” Your business will benefit from a structured development phase between you and the Digital Transformation agency.
A successful business understands it’s essential for growth to anticipate customers needs. An organisation’s website is the first point many consumers encounter a brand. It’s essential to create a lasting first impression and should incorporate 3 essential elements for the user.
We’ve identified the 3 elements as Omnichannel, navigation ease and selfishness.
The Omnichannel marketing approach provides the customer with a seamless experience. The customer can be shopping online, by telephone or in a bricks and mortar store.
Many organisations find it difficult to keep up with technology. Editing and launching across many channels in a personalised, Omnichannel manner, is time-consuming.
Partnering with a Digital Business Consultant can help to reduce technology overwhelm. They show you how and where your business should exist in the digital space.
This includes integrations with your responsive website design. They include social media presence, email and other paid marketing.
80% of people based their purchasing decision on the look of a website they visited and how easy it was to navigate.
If your website was designed 5 years ago, it’s time for a refresh!
Understanding people’s problems and providing solutions will always perform better.
Your consultant can continue to ensure your digital assets look and perform their best all the time in the future.
Nomophobia is the fear of being without one’s mobile phone…yes, it’s a real thing! 66% of people describe their smartphone as a “lifeline.” 87% of Millennials say their phone never leaves their side, day or night!
With this kind of device attachment, mobile optimised design and navigation are paramount. Neglect mobile design at your peril!
Your prospects have a penchant for tablet devices too. Some great tools exist to test views on a range of devices. Check out how your site looks on a Kindle Fire or an Asus Nexus 7!
As digital expectations accelerate, customers expect personalised experiences that assist them through to the purchase decision.
80% of people are unable to make this decision in real time unless they refer to a digital device first. Many purchasing decisions by consumers rely on consulting online reviews first.
It’s vital for the business to ask for positive testimonials. It’s as important to show how you deal with negative ones. Social Media integration is the ideal medium to show the human face of your brand. Timely replies to customer issues and relationship building are the beneficial results for all.
A successful digital marketing strategy is always trying to leverage people’s selfishness. At every point in the digital marketing cycle, people are always trying to meet a need to survive and thrive.
Impatience, need for immediate gratification and pleasure-seeking are the embodiment of this need. Google even has a name for these behaviours. It calls them, micromoments.
In 2017, people who complain, expect a reply on social media within the hour. They want the business’s sole concern to be improving their experience.
Live chat integration can reduce this wait further to almost zero and is becoming the norm. There are even free versions for fledgeling lean startups.
Need automated booking or online scheduling of your services, with multiple consultants? Your visitors will appreciate this integration into your Digital Transformation.
The services of a Digital Business Consultant can produce significant savings to any organisation. The financial benefits of outsourcing can be significant.
An appropriate and scalable platform, with integration capabilities, should be part of the initial advice you’d receive. You can save thousands in the long run and prevent having to rebuild in the future.
There are many good reasons why your Digital Business Consultant will tell you getting to page 1 of Google is a marathon and not a sprint. It’s a hyper-competitive world out there with a myriad of channels all vying for peoples attention. Experts suggest even with the right content and strategy, it can take 3 to 12 months to reach the coveted page 1 position!
We’ve put together some amazing digital facts from across the web to illustrate the competitive fight for peoples digital attention.
Let’s Start With Raw Internet Numbers:
1. More data was created in the last two years than the previous 5,000 years of humanity. It equates to roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes a day and 90% of all data ever created.
9. 4.3 billion Facebook messages are posted each day
10. 4.14 million Youtube videos are watched per minute. That’s 5.97 billion hours watched every day
11. 269 billion emails sent each day
12. 67 million images posted on Instagram every day
13. One estimate projects that by 2022, there will be 35 billion devices connected to the web—that’s four devices for every man, woman, and child on the planet!
What about purchasing and selling on the Internet?
14. 94% of buyers conduct online research before a purchase
15. Amazon makes around $258,751 in sales per minute!
16. $674.24 billion worldwide by the end of 2020 – The amount of money that will be spent on Digital advertising
17. 76% of people who search a local product on their phones visit the business within a day and 28% will then purchase
How about email?
18. 80% of sent email is SPAM…who’d have thought!
19. Email marketing is the least used marketing channel but produces the highest Return On Investment.
20. Emails between 50 and 125 words had the best response rates at just above 50%
21. People are using the search term “best” 80% more often in the past two years., ie, best smashed avocado in Melbourne.
24. 60% of U.S. online consumers have purchased as a result of reading a blogger’s recommendation. (Factbrowser)
25. A blog on a Websites can help to achieve more than 4 times the amount of indexed pages by Search Engines. The greater the number of indexed pages, the more fruitful your SEO efforts will be (U.addresstwo)
26. Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without.
27. After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of online consumers made a purchase.
The Importance of Website Security:
28. More than 6000 computer viruses are created every month
29. 30,000 websites are hacked each day!
We Lost Without Our Smartphones:
30. 91% smartphone users say they turn to their phones for ideas in the middle of a task
31. 82% of them consult their phones before buying anything in a store.
These are just a few of the mind-boggling statistics that we’ve seen in the last year. They show how entrenched digital is and how likely it will continue to dominate every aspect of our lives.
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