Popular Articles on Business 2 Community |
- 3 Essential Digital Marketing Tips for Small Business
- 10 Practical Ecommerce Tips to Increase Holiday Conversions
- Using Social Media For Great Customer Service
- Email Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing – And The Winner Is?
| 3 Essential Digital Marketing Tips for Small Business Posted: 09 Dec 2013 08:07 PM PST One great advantage of digital marketing for small businesses is that this type of marketing can be very cost-effective. Return on investment is often much higher than with more traditional forms of marketing. This means even a small company with limited resources can launch a successful digital marketing campaign using the tips below. Furthermore, small businesses actually have some advantages over large businesses in crafting a digital marketing strategy. Create Powerful Digital Content You can create great content no matter what size your company is. Great content can mean weekly blog posts that are roundups of relevant news and information within your industry; tweeting interesting links; or videos, photos and text that you produce. Content should focus primarily on quality information rather than your product. Big companies may be able to spend a lot of money on multimedia and expensive copywriters, but your advantage as a small business is bringing a personal touch that no large company can match. You also have a local advantage and the opportunity to position yourself as part of your community. Talk to and Engage with your Customers Pick one to three social media sites that your customers frequent and start talking to them. Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are good places to start. As a local business, you can take suggestions from customers and implement them immediately in a way that big companies can't. If you're running a restaurant, what are your customers' favorite daily specials? What magazines do customers want to see stocked in your bookstore? You can also become a local expert who answers potential customers' questions over social media whether your business is a tyre store, a financial consultancy or a museum. Measure Your Results Even if you're a one-person operation, when you embark upon a digital marketing plan, you need to set goals and track results. What types of posts and promotions do people respond to? What brings people to your website or brick-and-mortar location? Adaptability is the small business advantage here. If something isn't working, you can drop it and try a new tactic immediately. Small businesses cannot afford to neglect digital marketing these days. Identifying where your customers are socially and what digital devices and media they use to communicate, can have a profound impact on your success in achieving your business goals. With a carefully managed strategy, small businesses can see huge returns on their efforts. If you are a small business and are considering a fresh campaign for 2014, why not leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you. There are many small business owners who have yet to embrace social media or adopt any structured content strategy, so perhaps these 3 ‘key‘ tips will encourage you to bring in the New Year with a 2014 plan of action.  |
| 10 Practical Ecommerce Tips to Increase Holiday Conversions Posted: 09 Dec 2013 07:44 AM PST The holiday season is here and for most merchants, this is the peak time to start implementing smart strategies for boosting conversion. There's still just a little bit of time left before the rush, so if you've been looking for some last-minute tweaks to make before you start fulfilling orders full-time, here are some of the best things you can do to boost conversions this holiday season: 1. Review Your Return Policy:Visitors are ready to buy, but your return policy will probably be one of your top pages this season. Review your policy to make sure that it's up to date but see if you can make tweaks to the language to give it a more "feel good" tone so that customers feel confident making their purchase from you. Examples from REI.com. This banner is on the main page but is also repeated on every single product page. When clicked this pop-up shows: 2. Reminders are You and Your Customers' Friend:Send reminders through email and social media, as well as on the site itself, to outline important shipping deadlines. Shoppers want to know that they'll have it in time for the holidays, so be firm about the cutoff times and implement messaging across all of your channels and your site to be sure that it's clear. Dorothy Perkins are using that on their homepage offering special discount and when is it going to end. 3. Review Last Year's Results:Review last year's holiday shopping data, or if you have it, look at the past few years. Take note of peak days, times, or periods and plan out your offers and promotions accordingly. If you are not tracking your data or your Google analytics is not set up properly on your store head over to our web analytics services to set up tracking code and conversion funnels properly. 4. Ramp Up Responses:Customer service is going to be buzzing this holiday season and you want to be accessible, so be sure that you have enough support to handle all of the inquiries. Roll out customer support channels on the site by using live chat and making your contact information prominent so that customers can easily contact you. You may want to shore up your customer service team with temp workers or a third party support to ensure that you have enough coverage. On social media, host chats, answer questions promptly, and keep your reputation and response stellar – now is the time that it counts. 5. Eliminate Links that Distract or Draw Away:Take a look at your top landing pages and check for links that don't really serve a specific purpose or that might take away from the user staying on that page. Make the objective of the landing page clear and compelling, many retailers remove the left-hand navigation on product pages to increase the size of product image, reviews and call to action more prominent. After all, one of the key conversion factors is actually persuading your visitors to buy your product. 6. Rework Landing Pages:Make sure that your most important information is at the top and be sure that your calls to action are powerful, your design is easy to use, and your path to conversion is clear and simple. Now is not the time for a full redesign or anything (which we strongly advise against at this point in the season), but review your landing pages and make small changes to boost conversion e.g Adding red banner and changing the images gives a different feel altogether. 7. Simplify Registration:Do you normally require registration for orders? If so, think about implementing a guest checkout or simpler checkout option during the holidays to reduce bounce rate and eliminate customer stress. Remember – they want to get in, buy, and get out as quickly as possible. Make it easier for them to do so. As per a survey, only 2 out of 10 retailers in US force registration before buying. Almost everyone is now allowing Guest Checkout. This helps customers to complete the buying cycle as soon as possible. 8. Create a Sense of Urgency:Messaging about what you have left in stock, or "while supplies last" or "for a limited time" can push people toward conversion if they're teetering on the edge. Reiterate throughout the entire sales process how much the customer is saving on an item while also creating a sense of urgency. An even better example is how Amazon uses a countdown timer for its recent Black Friday Deals. Now one thing to remember is that adding these elements are not enough, you need to drive traffic to it and big retailers run PPC Advertisement with themed text ads to these landing pages to increase conversions. 9. Give Good Prompts:People often buy what they are told to buy, so design your promotions around giving specific actions and working with certain psychological triggers. Promotions like "Buy 10 for $10", "Buy One Get One Free", or "Buy X Brand Item, Get a Free Gift" work well during the holidays. 10. Add a Special Offer to Confirmation Page:Did your customer place an order? Great! Now thank them for their purchase with a future use coupon, a similar item offer, or similar. In the same vein, you can also maximize their engagement at that point by prompting them to sign up for a newsletter or follow you on social media, which can improve your future conversion rates with that customer. Conversion rate optimization is an ongoing science, so it's important to work consistently on it in order to see the best results. However, as you move into the holidays, proceed with caution: make conversion tweaks that don't fundamentally change the user experience or the site itself. People who visited your site recently shouldn't feel like they're coming to a completely new site (plus, you don't want to alienate your most loyal customers). Make subtle changes and compare data through A/B testing to see how certain tweaks perform. The holidays is a great time to test, but be sure to do so in little ways as to not cause a conversion catastrophe. The focus needs to be on making things as simple, fast, and efficient as possible for the shopper – while also upping your overall customer service prowess.  |
| Using Social Media For Great Customer Service Posted: 09 Dec 2013 05:57 AM PST
When approached in the right way, customer service through social media can lead to increased loyalty, brand advocacy as well as publicly addressing customer dissatisfaction almost immediately. Some businesses may shy away from social media for the precise reason that they do not want customers to be able to contact them any time, anywhere and in front of everyone. However, this is ultimately a losing proposition because there will always be competition willing to engage those customers ignored by businesses that lack social media savvy. Communicating with Customers Effectively The first step in understanding the role of social media in customer service is realizing that social media can function in two different ways. It can interact with customers in a way that makes them feel more engaged with the company, and it can address specific customers problems and complaints in a timely and public fashion. Many studies show that real and tangible benefits to this aspect of successful digital marketing campaigns, result in a more loyal customer base. Your customers will be your biggest brand ambassadors. Customers who regularly offer other customers product support information on a forum, “chat” with a business via Twitter or receive and respond to regular updates in their Facebook news feed, begin to feel more invested in the company. Using Social Media to keep your Customers The result is customers who are less likely to turn to competitors even when there are price discrepancies. Furthermore, loyal customers will recommend a business to others, become your brand advocates and with social media, it can have a viral effect in the form of far-reaching and higher social media visibility, like re-tweets. Addressing customer complaints promptly, effectively and publicly can pay off handsomely for a company. Many online review sites offer businesses the opportunity to respond to customer reviews. A poor review can actually turn into an opportunity for the savvy business. The best tactic is to respond promptly and without defensiveness. In extraordinary circumstances, an explanation might be offered, but it’s important to ensure this doesn’t come across as making excuses. A business owner can then offer the unhappy customer some form of compensation or contact information. Firstly, there is an opportunity to bring back the original unhappy customer. Secondly, other potential customers have the opportunity to see how the business responds to customer complaints. Build a lasting relationship with your Customers Responding promptly to customer concerns and engaging through a preferred social media channel, is a sure way to build and consolidate your businesses reputation and enhance the brand. Most people don’t expect a company to be perfect but to have a system of dealing with things going wrong, and a competent response does just this. Another way of using social media to deal with customers complaints is by monitoring not just social media accounts but blogs and other mentions online for indications of people unhappy with the company. Complaints addressed directly to company social media accounts should be responded to as soon as possible. Ideally, the response should be solution-oriented as opposed to simply advising the unhappy customer to contact a customer care number. Some businesses shy away from social media believing that increased contact with customers will lead to more problematic interactions. In fact, a good social media strategy includes opportunities to re-engage even disgruntled customers to a greater degree than has been possible in the past. What innovative ways do you engage with your customers socially and how does this enhance your brand?  |
| Email Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing – And The Winner Is? Posted: 08 Dec 2013 09:26 PM PST Driving New Sales and Customer Acquisition
Plan for Mobile in your Email Marketing Strategy Mobile devices are here to stay and 45% of users check email on their smartphones and mobile devices. This within itself provides a challenge for most companies email marketing efforts. 65% of all mobile users will unsubscribe if the email message you are sending has rendering issues or doesn't look right on their mobile device. Optimizing your email marketing messages for all platforms is critical to the success of any email marketing strategy. Losing Sight of Home Plate while Rounding Third Too many companies are looking for the next best thing and losing sight of the most important and proven methods of marketing their businesses. Being the first company to use a new social website or a new marketing strategy isn't always the best idea, especially when you forget the core marketing practices that are proven to work. Being well ranked organically, utilizing PPC, email marketing and insightful blog articles to drive sales should be at the top of your list. Don't get blinded by all the hype of the "next best thing" when it comes to marketing your business. Stick with what works and try to improve upon them. While social media might be anenhancer to your overall marketing strategy, it shouldn't be what you focus on to drive sales and new customer acquisitions. Is Social Media Marketing a Huge Waste of Time? I think social media as a whole is a monstrous waste of time in an attempt to acquire new customers. Let's look at Coca-Cola and their 50+ million Facebook fans as an example. They seem to do a good job in providing a constant flow of content in their social media stream. How many of Coke's 50+ million followers do you think they'll reach with a status update? How about 5%? If Coca-Cola wants to attempt to reach the other 95% of their Facebook fans, they will have to pay Facebook to do so. Who wins in this scenario? I can give you a hint – It's not Coke. This isn't 2008 and the perceived "Like" value isn't what you think it is. Likes are worthless, well almost worthless. Focus Your Marketing on What Actually Works and Generates Results The secret to good social media marketing: Sell and deliver good products and offer great services. If you can't trick people into "Liking" your brand, maybe you can try to make them actually – you know – like your brand. How you ask? Under Promise and Over Deliver. Sell and deliver quality products and offer services that are really, really good. That's not to say you should completely forsake social media marketing communication altogether. Every once in a while if you have something interesting to say, then by all means use Twitter or Facebook to say it. But stop posting pictures of cute kittens in an attempt win cheap, meaningless Likes.  |
Social media and customer service can be turned into a win/win situation for companies and customers alike, but only if 
Everyone seems to be talking about and spending a lot of time focusing on social media marketing these days for their business – But Why? Research shows that | You are subscribed to email updates from Popular Articles | Business 2 Community To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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