It is a question that companies the world over are asking themselves “What is the best way for me to grow my business online” and it is a question which leaves a company with decisions to make.
There is now a distinct shift from the High Street and with more and more companies competing in the online space to sell their product or service, competition is likely to be stiff. In order to reach your customer base, you have to become visible to your customers, they have to know that you are there and you have to be able to tell them that. You will have to use Marketing techniques that involve not only having an interesting and engaging website but techniques may involve marketing strategies which will bring you to the first page in the search engines or which will allow you to interact on social media platforms.
Companies may choose to build their own team or do it alone depending on the size of their organisation. Building a team takes time, effort and expertise because as we will shortly see, a digital Marketing campaign has many strands attached. If you plan to work your campaign alone, you will need to educate yourself on many of the techniques and strategies and then be good enough to be able to compete with some of the expert marketers who have already spent time perfecting their technique like Conklin Media focuses on growth.
For any campaign, you will need to consider the following:
Your Website
How engaging is your website? Is it colourful, are the graphics up to date and would they draw attention to your product or service? Is it easy to navigate and can potential customers find their way to you should they need to make contact? If you are selling a product, could a customer easily find their way through the checkout process? In addition, you have to make sure that your site has reliable hosting so that it is stable at all times and can cope with any amount of traffic that may arrive. A website should be regularly updated as more products or services become available. All of this work will require you to have access to a Website Developer, a Graphic Designer, a Content Writer and perhaps a Programmer.
Your Visibility
How are your customers going to find you and what techniques would be best for you to achieve your optimal customer base? Not all techniques are suitable or helpful for all businesses and a reputable consultant would be able to examine your business needs and recommend particular suitable strategies for you. Consideration would be given to the following:
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO is a technique used by a company to increase their presence on the search engines. A company would choose keywords or phrases which are relevant to their brand and for which customers would search to reach them. Techniques are then used to increase their presence on the search engines for their chosen keywords. SEO is not a technique which can be used to bring overnight results, it requires patience, often over a number of months. Companies would normally see the spend on SEO as an investment as the results of more visibility will hopefully bring increased traffic and therefore sales. SEO has the advantage in that once a site is ranked, you no longer need to continue with a large monthly spend, it will normally hold its position. You do however have to bear in mind that other companies are also trying to increase their rankings, so vigilance will be required in order to maintain your position.
Paid Marketing Techniques
Social Media Marketing and Google Ads are examples of paid marketing techniques. Each time you want to be put in front of a potential customer, you would pay to do that. Each platform has its methods of operating and for some businesses, it allows them to have a scalable model for their advertising needs. Unlike SEO, paid marketing continues to have a cost attached.
CRO Charting
If traffic arrives at your site, hopefully in volume, it is up to you to keep it engaged and motivated to buy either your product or service, and that can be tricky. People will come on to your website to find out information, to have a look with maybe a view to buying later either from you or one of your competitors or they may in fact be a motivated buyer, ready to purchase. You have to be able to engage all of the visitors. You will have to keep an eye on your traffic and out of the traffic you are getting, you would wish to know what percentage of your visitors become buyers.
That's where CRO or Conversion Rate Optimisation comes in. Traffic is expensive and the sensible business will want to use every piece of traffic to its advantage. A CRO expert will be able to tell you how you are faring. He / she will be able to watch recordings of the traffic on your site and look at the points when your visitors click off your site. By considering all of the data, a plan of action can be put in place to help you increase your conversion rate. It may be that pages of your website may need to be reworked or processes simplified, you may need to spend time making it more engaging. Sometimes it will be down to trial and error to find what works best, so try, then test, try again, test again.
It may be that you, as a company feel that you can cover all of the areas of building your brand, Marketing and assessing but for many company’s it makes sense for them to outsource this work by bringing in an agency who has experience and can cover all of their needs and offer direction. Other benefits of bringing in a specialist company would include:
Time
Using a specialist company allows you to focus on your other projects.
Expertise
You do not have to build your own team or spend time learning new techniques, you can rely on the expertise of the company. Reputable companies will usually have a proven track record and should be able to show you examples of their success.
Staff
There is no need to have to involve yourself in the management of a team of staff.
Cost
In the long run, it could save you money as by trying and testing your own methods, there is the potential to spend money in the wrong places.
Worry
A specialist company will take the worry and concern from you by arriving with their team of experts to take the project out of your hands.
