The Digital World has given the businesses wings to expand their reach beyond the geographies they are located in. Any business can sell and deliver products and services to any geography in the digitally connected world. This is good, but with every good, there comes the bad. So, every online business competes with other businesses for gaining market share. Every business wants to win more customers online using the digital medium and channels.
Many of the businesses keep struggling to gain market share and win more customers online for their products and services. Meanwhile, a new entrant gains the market share and manages to win more customers online than the older ones. How does this happen?
Simply putting this happened because of the Competitive Digital Marketing Strategy. Well-executed campaigns are necessary to acquire customers and build a brand and build loyal customer bases.
Below we will discuss a few really effective ways which help the business win more customers online.
How to Win More Customers Online?
Technically there are four key signs that indicate a once successful digital marketing strategy has run its course. And what to do next to get your business back on track.
Keep Your Search Engine Ranks Consistent
Majority of people first search online for the products or services they want to buy. Hence, it is important for the companies to remain on the top searches of the search engines. Remember that 90% of people don’t go to the second page of a search result on google.
That simply means that most of the purchase decisions are made based on the search results appearing on the first page of the search engine (especially Google, Yahoo and Baidu).
So, you need to keep monitoring your SEO activities and optimize your SEO campaigns. That will increase your website’s visibility to consumers searching online for the products or services you offer. Most online businesses achieve a measure of success through SEO.
Over time, nonetheless, some strategies begin to wane and must be supplemented or revamped as per the trend and search engine algorithms, or else, rankings may be lost forever.
Top Reasons for Search Engine Rank Drops
The drop in the search engine rankings happens due to many factors. Chief among them is the technical aspects of your website. Search engines like Google take into account site speed, structure, content, security, and usability to award rank to it.
These parameters change often and are up to each search engine’s discretion and their policies. Also, keep in mind that the preference they give to branded content and the paid advertisements.
A site could rank very well for years only to discover that Google now wants sites to have responsive design. A design that works on all mobile devices and tablets. Not having this could cause you to disappear from the searches. Or maybe pushed back many pages on the search engine result pages.
Always keep a tab on the keywords you use on your website and keep them updated. Remove the keywords which are no longer performing and replace those with more relevant search terms. Keep updating the pages on your website to make them fresh and relevant.
Also, an SEO campaign must be a continuous activity and not a one-time activity. A good, ongoing SEO campaign as part of an overall digital marketing strategy ensures that you not only stay in business but thrive and keep attracting more customers for your business.
Dwindling Conversions
If people searching for the products or services you offer to land on your website after searching on the search engines but do not purchase your services or products then there is a problem. It’s time to consider your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) initiatives.
By tracking visitors’ on-site behaviors, and especially where people drop off on your website you can analyze the results to discover what needs to be addressed on your site.
Usually, updates to content, navigation, even the shopping cart, etc., are necessary. But in some cases, there might be other issues as well. Fix everything you can to improve the conversions on the website and reduce the bounce rate.
The Conversion Rate Optimization would help you figure out the exact point in your sales funnel where it breakdowns. Fix that so that your potential customer doesn’t leave your website without taking action on your website.
For instance, if your customer leaves right after the cart page then there might issues of Promo Code not working. Maybe the Cart doesn’t allow the customer to return to the website to browse other products. Or the cart doesn’t allow to edit the quantity of the products, etc.
This simple study will help you quickly take remediation initiatives that will target exactly what needs to be fixed. You don’t have to take a wild guess at the root cause of the issue. And you put in your efforts and resources where it is exactly necessary.
Social Failure
A study by Adweek reported that in 2018 Social media is expected to get a total of 25% of online marketing spend. Another study said that 81% of all small and medium-sized businesses are would be using multiple social media platforms, while another study by Pew Research Center found that 91% of retailers use at least two or more social media channels.
So, for online business owners who have been ignoring or were not focusing on these social media platforms, it’s time to revisit your social media channels.
Make a proper Social Media plan keeping in view your business objective and start creating and posting engaging content and increase engagement and brand loyalty by being proactive and responsive.
For instance, exhibit exceptional customer service by instantly addressing negative reviews, comments, and feedbacks by the users, and offer a reasonable solution.
There are numerous other strategies for increasing your reach via social media, such as contests, polling, sweepstakes, events, etc. Nevertheless, the main takeaway is not to neglect the person in “personal interaction” on these channels.
According to Social Media Week, personalization is very important because “people trust people more than they trust faceless, corporate brands.”
Better to hire a social media manager to help you build your brand on social media. Help to achieve your business objectives on social channels if you don’t have expertise and time to devote there.
Time to Ditch the Responsive Website
If qualified traffic is quickly leaving a website, simply putting if the bounce rate on your website is too high then your website is missing something essential.
There might be two reasons for the same: slow loading time especially on mobile devices and different versions of the website on different devices.
The website should look and perform seamlessly across all platforms such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
Google has noted that people using mobile devices will leave a website within seconds (usually for a competitor’s) if the product/service page they’re looking for does not load fast on their screen.
Always keep in mind that, mobile use is only growing day by day. As per the Statista report, as of February 2017, mobile devices accounted for 49.7% of web traffic worldwide. And that number is going to increase day by day.
Check your traffic/conversions on mobile devices and see the areas where there are problems that require fixing. For example, it might be the page design, website speed, the touchpoints, voice searches, in site search, navigation, etc. Your aim should be to improve the overall user experience.
Consider AMP
Don’t assume that your responsive website is good enough to serve your customers. Go, see the analytics reports, and figure out if you need to develop the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Or maybe a different mobile website for mobile users.
Or maybe you need to move your mobile customers on a dedicated shopping app where they will shop on your website.
A few of the important things which need to be kept in mind while designing the mobile website or the responsive website are:
- Streamline the design
- Keep it uncluttered
- Reduce the number of keystrokes and touch buttons from the entry point to purchase
- Enhance the user experience.
Conclusion
Website metrics such as paid/organic/referral traffic, page views, duration of visits, bounce rate, users flow and conversions are trackable.
Hence, all SEO, CRO, and social media campaigns should be planned to keep in mind the data of website analytics and focusing on the areas which would require your immediate attention for rectification.
Keep bringing new and innovative ideas into your digital marketing strategy. This way, business owners can be fully aware of their digital marketing campaign’s effectiveness. Also, ensure that it is revised as required to meet the company’s business objectives and yields optimal results.
