This article 'Online Marketing Solutions for Business Growth' gives you an insight into building an interactive website.
From online marketing solutions to integrating your website with email marketing, chatbots, online campaign management tools, and resources designed to help you grow your sales, maximize ROI and succeed in online marketing.
And as always, for any one-on-one consulting and assistance, you may mail me at tariq@bloggersbloom.com
While I wouldn’t necessarily say we can eliminate the human element completely, I am aiming towards reducing the dependency and create a seamless environment to generate leads, provide information, and eventually, a faster closure in sales.
I suppose most business heads, marketing & sales heads would agree on the fact, that the quicker you respond to a prospect, the better are the chances of closing a sale.
Studies have shown, prospects get bombarded with a number of similar products (thanks to remarketing), when they eventually start searching online.
So, if a prospect starts enquiring online on various websites, what are the chances they are going to recall your brand? Unless you are a HUGE brand with a BIG recall value, chances are slim.
But let’s say a customer visits your website, enters their email ID for a free eBook (or a discount coupon), chats with a representative and gets all the relevant information, and eventually, submits their details for a callback.
Such instant gratification really works. And in the process, you’ve collected the customer’s contact details and are now, within your grasp to close the sale.
Research has shown that instant gratification is such a powerful force that an ability to control it is a great indicator of achieving success.
Does that mean all businesses can afford a 24/7 team ready to address their customers?
And would it make sense considering we have to look into, potentially, the new norms in the industry, viz., social distancing, reduced workforce, work from home, reducing overheads, the gig economy, etc.
By the way, I really feel the gig economy is going to hit the job market in a big way. And on the flip side, help freelancers & consultants big time.
From what we see in the current market scenario, going forward, a majority of the operations are going to be online.
We’ve already seen a surge in the number of Webinars, Zoom calls & conferences, online events, and activities, online coaching & tutorials, etc., in the past 30 days.
And there are fewer chances of these reducing in the future.
Before we start, take a minute and go through ‘The Ideal Process‘ below.
Remember. The key is to set up your systems seamlessly. It does take time to set up these systems. But once it’s done, your website works on autopilot 24/7.
Ok, so how do we create a fully automated online system to improve sales?
Step 01: Your Website
Your website is your online presence. Your website, unlike your offline business, works 24/7.
Let it not be just an online brochure. Ensure you collect the contact details of every customer that visits your website.
How?
Offer a freebie, offer a free ebook about your business, product, service, free consultation, offer a discount coupon, among many more.
DO NOT have the cliché ‘Subscribe to our Newsletter‘ popup or included somewhere on the website.
It’s being overused and fewer chances that a customer would give you their email ID to get spammed by a number of mailers.
Give a lot of emphasis on the user interface (design) of your website, the speed of your website, etc.
Use reliable hosting service providers such as BlueHost, SiteGround & DreamHost.
In addition to using these hosting service providers extensively myself and for my clients, these have been recommended as the top 3 hosting service providers by WordPress themselves.
Step 02: Email Marketing
I guess you’ve heard the saying “the money is in the list“.
If you want to build a successful online business, you have to build your list. Your list is the data you collect from your customers. Be it, their email address, name, contact details, etc.
It’s surprising that a number of business still do not make use of the full potential of email marketing.
Email marketing is not just blasting mails when you have a product launch or to sell a product. The key is building long term relationships.
Offer value first, build trust, build long term relationships and your sale is inevitable.
For example, consider a customer visiting your travel website. You offer a free ebook on ‘20 Top Destinations to Travel Under ₹ 35,000/-‘.
The customer is going to enter their email address and they then receive the link to download your free ebook. (Without hitting your customer hard, you have captured their email ID)
You can now set a series of automated emails to be sent daily, starting from the welcome email, to talking of various other destinations and a checklist of to-do items when you do visit a particular destination.
And on day 7, you send across a package offer for that particular destination, as part of your automated email series.
What are the probabilities of the sale going through?
Very high, I assume!
The key is information, information, information for 6 days, and the actual sale on the 7th day. And guess what, all this is done on autopilot.
When the customer decides to go ahead, he makes the payment and you get confirmation.
Again, a welcome mail goes to the customer and you automatically shift this customer to a new group, let’s say ‘existing customers’.
And a new series of emails can be set for these clients.
Here again, the shifting of the customer to a new mailing list happens automatically.
How cool is this entire process?
Here again, there are a number of tools one can use. I highly recommend ConvertKit and GetResponse.
GetResponse also has landing pages, sales & conversion funnels, webinar tools, automations, etc., that you can make use of.
Step 03: Chat Bots
A search on Google Trends for ‘Chatbots‘ will reveal that there has been a steady demand and in fact, of late, a growing demand for Chatbots.
A Chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially online.
Chatbots are becoming more and more popular. And to be honest, it’s not a surprise. You have bots which act purely as a lead generator by collecting user details.
While there are other bots via which you can integrate multiple workflows. And this, personally, is what I highly recommend.
For example., let’s consider I integrate a Chatbot for a Real Estate website.
The first iteration would be on the basis of if the client was looking at buying, selling or renting.
Based on their response, e.g., if the response was Buy, the chatbot could be programmed to check if the customer was looking to buy a primary property (builder sale) or a secondary property (re-sale).
If the response was ‘Primary Property‘, the chatbot will be programmed to throw up ‘Location Preferences‘, ‘Budget‘, ‘Possession Time frame‘, etc., as subsequent queries.
In the similar manner, the workflow can be taken deep to retain the customer and finally provide relevant information.
Towards the end, all that the customer will have to do is come over for a site visit and discuss payment terms.
Again, all done on autopilot. No human intervention at all.
Here too there are a number of Chatbots you can integrate. But by far, the best you can use is MobileMonkey.
MobileMonkey connects with Customers in Real-Time via Web Chat, SMS & Facebook Messenger. Get more leads, Get more sales, Build customer relationships. Brilliant tool!
Step 04: Traffic & Analytics
We have set up the systems and all we require now is website traffic. There are a number of ways to increase your website traffic.
Some of the traffic sources are organic search traffic (SEO), referrals, social media, email marketing, paid search, etc.
The idea is simple. Treat your website as the central hub. And drive traffic some various sources into the website (as shown below).
From the various channels shown above, be it social media, search engines, email marketing, discussion forums, paid traffic, etc., the traffic is directed to your website or your landing page.
Your website or the landing page acts as a funnel and captures the customer details.
Integrate Google Analytics or even Google Search Console and understand the source of your traffic. If a particular channel mentioned above is generating more traffic, start focusing more on that particular channel.
While you can look at paid ads in Google and Social Media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc., for immediate traffic, the ultimate aim should be to build your engagements on various social media channels.
These social media channels, SEO, etc., are organic traffic that you can count on and you needn’t pay for them, unlike in the paid ads.
However, these channels would take time. And hence a good mix of organic and paid traffic needs to be worked on for the first 6 months at least.
Step 05: Additional Tools
While there are a number of additional tools that you may consider, I feel the above should suffice.
I have created a Resources page with a list of tools, software, and online courses that may be of interest to you. You may consider them if it’s of interest.
But as mentioned, the above should be good enough for your online marketing solutions to help you grow your business.
Final note
I guess it goes without saying.
Online is the way forward. And more so, automating most of your online processes.
And in particular, the sales channels. After all, sales are the lifeline for any business to stay in existence.
Many of the tools mentioned above are paid tools. More than the cost, these are investments you would need to make in order to seamlessly create a successful online business.
The above tools can be integrated from your end.
As always, if there is any assistance you may require, I offer my consultation to build and set up the systems.
I can be contacted at tariq@bloggersbloom.com.
For any inquiries please email
