Online marketing is something which requires meticulous ongoing management. Outside of innovating and coming up with new marketing ideas here is a list of must do’s for your online marketing department.
1. Tracking Your Online Advertising
One of the best things about online advertising is that you can track and monitor your progress. It’s important to not just track the number of clicks you are getting but also what pages being visited, how long a user spends looking at a page and how many customers are converting. You can use this data to assess what changes need to be made to your online advertising and website in order to optimise your conversions. Tracking your online advertising will help you make sure you are getting the most out of your online investment.
2. Locally Targeting Your Online Marketing
As a small business there is a good chance a large majority of your customers are based locally. You may find that bidding on certain keywords locally will bring you a good stream of business and cost less than targeting these keywords nationally. Even if you are targeting keywords nationally it is useful to target locally as you will find the majority of you repeat business will come from local customers.
3. Claiming Your Google Place Page
You may already be investing in SEO to help your website rank well in organic search. A Google Place Page is another valuable tool that can help your small business show up in desktop and mobile search to local consumers searching for a business like yours – and it’s free to use. Claiming a Google place page will help boost your SEO and gives you a certain amount of Google shelf space where you can post information about what you do, where you are, and link to your site.
4. Optimize Your Landing Page for Conversions
You may have optimised your paid search accound and gained high rankings on google but if you do not optimise your landing page you will lose out on conversions. Make sure your contact information is clearly displayed and easy to locate at the top of the page. Place all of the vital information on the product or service above the fold. Make it easy for a user to place an item in a basket and make a purchase or fill in a form to request a call back. Make the page aesthetically pleasing and easy to read. Include as much high quality content such as video, images and text as possible. Be informative, and thorough.
5. Training Staff on Lead Handling
So you have invested heavily into generating leads from a range of different channels and you gain a wave of interested leads ready to find out more information and buy from you. You need to train your staff so they know how to close a sale. The more your sales rep knows about the customer the better, so put together a list of questions which can be asked to help sales staff convert leads. You’re investing a lot in generating leads, and every lead counts! That’s why training all your staff on how to properly answer the phone, respond to a customer request, and handle leads is so critical.
6. Provide Good Customer Service
Making a sale is one thing but providing customer service is another. Customers need to feel as though their queries or problems were solved when they gave you a call. It makes a big difference across your entire customer base when customers are satisfied with your service and it will benefit greatly in the future when they recommend you to friends and family. Be good to your customers and they will be good to you.
7. Monitor your online reputation
The above two points have an effect on your online reputation. The majority of communication that goes place day to day is online, so if you get recommended the chances are it will be with a short description and a link back to your site. However there may be competitors or unhappy customers lurking around on forums and other sites ready to post negatively about your brand or business. Keep an eye out for negative comments by signing up to Google alerts for your brand name. Have someone in charge of monitoring a list of sites which you are most likely to be mentioned on.