In business, the fewer high-pressure decisions you make, the better. Due to COVID-19, business owners are making rapid decisions, under tremendous pressure, and with ever-increasing levels of uncertainty.
While we don’t want to pretend to know all the answers, we can at least try to alleviate some of those uncertainties that we are in by stepping back and relearning a proven process for digital marketing. This process is designed to guide your business in this time of uncertainty.
The Process:
- Track everything, and make data-driven decisions
- Treat your website like virtual customer service and sales rep
- Maximize your online space, starting with search engines
- Continuously optimize your landing pages that have a goal of conversion
- Establish and promote your business as the AUTHORITY for what you do
Let’s go through the details of each step of the process.
Track Everything and Make Data-Driven Decisions
Digital marketing allows you to create precise, specific, and measurable marketing campaigns. That precision leads to better and more quantifiable results than traditional advertising campaigns.
When times are tough, you want to refocus your advertising, marketing, and promotional dollars to correct marketing channels that will deliver the best return on investment. While this might seem like common sense, it’s amazing how many business owners rely on their gut intuition instead of looking at the data.
By tracking everything, you will have the ability to see opportunities and problems that your competitors cannot.
Treat Your Website Like a Virtual Customer Service and Sales Rep
Your website is arguably one of your most valuable online marketing assets. It’s one part customer service rep and one part sales rep. Your website is the face of your company, day or night, 24/7, 365 days a year. Your website is immune to COVID-19, and it doesn’t need time off.
Treating your website as a virtual customer service rep means thinking carefully about the needs of your customers and coming up with ways your website can address those needs.
Go to your website and make a list. What key messages are you trying to convey to your customers? How clearly are those messages displayed throughout your site?
Of course, your website isn’t just a virtual customer service rep, it’s also your company’s hardest working and highest performing sales rep. When treating your website like a sales rep, you need to set goals. Your data determine if your website is meeting or exceeding those goals and you must also ensure the sales-oriented pages of your site represent your best pitch to prospective customers.
Your website is an economic engine capable of continuing to conduct business regardless of outside influences.
Maximize Your Online Space, Starting with Search Engines
The web is a game of providing the best answers to your customer inquiries. You and your competitors are competing to be found at the top of Google, and every inch you move up on the page means an increase—sometimes an exponential increase—in leads, sales, revenue, and profit.
If time and money were limitless, you would put your business everywhere online where a prospect or a customer might be—everywhere. Considering everyone is limited by budget, you need to set marketing priorities. Priority number one should be putting your brand in front of prospects who live within your service area and who demonstrate a need for your products and/or services.
Search engine marketing—pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization—allow you to target prospects based on their intent and location. Displaying an ad for your real estate business on Google after someone searches “homes in West Vancouver” is going to offer a much better ROI than someone seeing a display ad on Instagram for your business.
Redirecting more of your marketing budget to search engine marketing is a great way to protect your business during challenging economic times.
Continuously Optimize Your Landing Pages That Has A Goal Of Conversion
Most business owners have no idea what their website’s visit-to-lead conversion rate is. This is unfortunate because there are clear benchmarks by industry. Improving your site’s conversion rate will get a greater return from every dollar you spend on advertising and marketing.
Your mantra should be: Track > Test > Tweak > Repeat.
Think of your website as a sales funnel. By “track,” we mean that you should track each conversion point along the funnel. By “test,” we mean that you should be constantly running tests to try and maximize each conversion rate, and “tweak” and “repeat” are obvious.
You’re already spending time, money, energy, and other resources to increase leads, so it only makes sense to do your part in ensuring these leads convert into sales.
Establish And Promote Your Business As The Authority For What You Do
Years ago, consumers relied on salespeople to educate them about a product or service. Today, every consumer has the world’s largest library at their fingertips—the internet. Your goal, through the content on your website and your overall digital presence, should be to educate prospects and customers to the point that they see you as THE AUTHORITY for what you do in your respective market.
When you go to Google and search “home improvement store”, who do you expect to come up? For most people, the answer is The Home Depot. How about when you search “outdoor store”, who do you expect to come up? For most people, the answer is REI. Both The Home Depot and REI are recognized as authorities in their respective spaces.
Look at their websites. Look at their digital presence. You want to do a scaled-down version of what they’re doing. That’s how you become a recognized authority, as a popular saying goes, “authorities always win”.
Great leaders embrace chaos, conflict, and crisis because they know that times like these help leaders stand out from the rest of the pack.
Likewise, great companies embrace economic uncertainty. Great companies know that the tendency when economic conditions go south is for weaker companies to retreat.
There is no better time to lift your company’s authority than a societal or economic crisis.
While some of your competitors will start to slash budgets and cut back on services, you have the unique opportunity to get a leg up on them and become much more trustworthy. During all of this chaos, you can establish yourself as the authority in your respective industry by continuing to deliver genuine value to your customers. You can provide them with stability, which right now is worth its weight in gold.
Conclusion
Anyone who thinks they make better decisions under pressure is delusional. In times like these, you need a proven process to rely on and a partner you can trust.
At Ubertor, we specialize in crafting websites that will draw in traffic, make searching easier, and turn website viewers into clients. Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel – let us do it for you! Contact us today for more information and get a FREE consultation on what needs to be done with your website presence!