Since its conception, the online digital landscape has gone through many changes. Businesses need to keep up with theses changes by developing an integrated marketing strategy, improving website design, and utilizing social media tools.
I'll outline 5 keys I believe every business owner should be investing in for success on the web:
A website with a fixed width is no longer sufficient for today's needs. The use of so many mobile devices requires sites to adjust to fit their specific screen size and reorder content for easier reading.
Mobile phone users constitute a large percentage of internet users. Currently, up to 80% of smartphone users utilize their mobile phones to shop online. Also, the conversion rate for mobile users is three times higher that of traditional laptop and desktop users.
For a business, having a responsive website grants access to an important, vital segment of consumers. Not investing in a responsive website is likely to lead to a significant loss in web traffic and ultimately sales as visitors move on to a competitor.
The new landscape also requires new ways of marketing. Because a website is vital to marketing, it's the first component of a good marketing strategy.
A website is a hub for information about a business. It's where customers go after viewing marketing campaigns. Customers often sign up for newsletters and provide contact information through the site.
Having a proper SEO strategy is an excellent way to market a business and its products or services. SEO helps a site rank in the search engines.
SMM or Social Media Marketing allows you to connect directly with the customer. It also allows a company to spread by "word of mouth".
Many potential customers search for products through social media. In response, those platforms have introduced expanded search engine capabilities.
Having a business's brand on social media provides the business with important exposure - and having quality, resource-rich content on your website is the second ingredient that together provides your business the engine it needs to gain steam online.
Converting website traffic to leads is important for generating sales. There are many ways to capture leads. An engaging way to capture leads and email addresses is a freebie form.
Freebie forms offer an incentive for customers to leave their information with a business. This opens up the way for businesses to contact potential customers for future purchases. The incentive can be a coupon or free, downloadable resource guide as simple examples.
As explained before, social media can get the word out about a company. Social media assets such as a Facebook page or YouTube channel make connecting with customers easy. It also provides a friendly platform for people to learn about the company.
Social networks often come with an option for using campaigns to market products or events. Businesses can use these campaigns to generate more leads. Share your new website content for starters.
Advanced website tools make your business's processes more automated and efficient. It also makes marketing content and business products and services easier.
An online CRM software gives one the ability to group leads and customers, and the business can analyze their preferences and market to them more effectively. Make sure to compare a few CRM software options to find what fits your business needs. As well, a great resource for comparing the best small business CRM systems can be found in this post by Cloudwards.
For example, tied with lead capture on your website, a CRM with email marketing can automatically send a follow-up sequence of emails to “drip” information to a prospect and even trigger different emails based on links clicked in a prior email. It's about developing smarter online business processes and this means investing in technology and software, or finding a solution provider to discuss your custom embedded hardware development needs with.
Together, these keys are critical to a business serious about making the web work for them. Are you maximizing each of these for your business? Contact us for some help.
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