In times of austerity, making the most of your digital assets is becoming increasingly important and is something that businesses simply cannot afford to ignore. While the ultimate aim of any business is to increase sales and expand its customer base, the ability to offer a high level of customer service and a user friendly customer journey are paramount in achieving this goal.
While it may be tempting to invest in new and emerging technologies, it’s important to make the most of your existing digital assets before further investment is made. Investing budget in the right places and at the right time could have a major impact on sales.
Show off your great content and products
Before considering whether to allocate budget to cold email lists, PPC and SEO optimisation, you should ensure that your content is compelling so that search engines find you. The more relevant your content or products, the better you will fare in search engine results.
Improve your existing website
Customers get frustrated by poorly designed websites with a cumbersome user experience. Make your website simple to use and to the point, and only ask for the minimum amount of information from your customers that you can get away with. Pinterest for instance is well known for its easy registration process and little amount of information required to sign up, a process which is said to have helped their stellar growth.
Make your website faster
Studies by Google and Amazon show that the faster your website, the more conversions you will have with your existing customer base. Investing in your current website and infrastructure makes sense as this investment will help it work better and faster. It might even reduce hosting costs as less servers will be required to run it.
Resist the latest trends
Don’t automatically assume that an iPad app is the linchpin to your marketing strategy even if a good proportion of your customers have iPads.
Consider making your website mobile friendly for all mobile devices using technologies like HTML5 or frameworks like Pugpig. People don’t use mobile or desktop devices in a segmented way, they consume personal and work content on all their devices all the time.
eCRM is not just a buzz word
Learn more about your customers and use that knowledge to sell more effectively. It sounds obvious but eCRM is generally underused in marketing and is often quite basic it its implementation. Many marketers think eCRM equates to sending emails to their customer using traditional segmentation.
Consider enhancing your website with behavioural and personalisation modules which can help you learn more about your customers’ online habits.
In conclusion, improving and streamlining your existing digital estate is a great way to increase conversion and improve customer loyalty.
Solve your customer problems rather than attempt to sell them products and services they may not need. Your customers will thank you for it, come back and recommend your services to their peers.
