Hint: a great digital strategy starts with your website!
Your website is an essential part of your business because it is a digital extension of your sales team. It welcomes new and returning visitors and introduces them to your offers, products and services.
Even if you’re not directly selling a product online, your website drives sales by giving visitors the information they need before they pick up the phone or send an email.
A visitor’s first experience with your company is often a website visit. Your website needs to capture their attention, make a good impression and portray your company’s values clearly and accurately.
As more Millennials and Gen Z-ers move into decision making positions, it is smart to give them a chance to research and connect with your brand before they contact you. Forbes reports 62% of millennials say that if a brand engages with them digitally, they are more likely to become a loyal customer.
So, how do you create a digital strategy that will attract and convert leads?
Start by going GIANT.
Transforming Your Website for a Strong Digital Strategy
Websites communicate so much about a business. When we work with Giant Clients on their digital strategy, the first thing we consider is their website.
Is your website mobile responsive and easy to navigate?
Are you using an up-to-date website platform?
Does your website communicate your brand values?
If the answer to any of the above questions is no, there are three smart ways to address design and functionality to improve user experience on your website.
1. Site Migration
If you haven’t updated your website in a while, chances are it’s set up on an older platform. We can migrate your website—as-is—to a modern, mobile-responsive platform. This will improve the visual appeal of your website while making it easier to use on phones and tablets.
2. Updated Design
Migrating a site to a new platform, such as WordPress, may inspire you to update the look and feel of your website. Small updates to your navigation and content can go a long way to improving usability. Revisions to design may also be needed to ensure a seamless user experience.
3. Site Redesign
A complete site redesign will transform your web presence with a fresh design, streamlined navigation and optimized content that attracts and converts leads.
Don’t overlook mobile responsiveness when improving your website. More people are using mobile devices to access the Internet and HubSpot reports that one-third of people primarily access the Internet with a smartphone.
Keep in mind that Google plans to roll out a mobile-first index that will prioritize mobile-friendly sites in search results, so making sure your website is designed with mobile in mind is a smart way to get ahead of the game.
Your website is the foundation of your digital strategy and marketing efforts. It has the potential to directly improve sales performance—but there’s more to consider when it comes to increasing quality traffic and leads.
Schedule a FREE Discovery Meeting
The Giant Voices digital team is ready to take your digital strategy the next level. Our experience in website design and development, content creation, SEO solutions, digital advertising and social media helps us transform websites into sales and marketing tools that drive revenue.
Contact us to schedule a free 30-minute discovery meeting so we can learn more about each other and determine if we’re a good fit.
Social media platforms and the prominence of mobile devices have led to a shift in where audiences spend their time. As a result, brands have had to find new ways to reach their target audience.
Seemingly, content was the best way to engage with consumers and build trust in the brand by providing valuable, relevant information on a regular basis. Social platforms are now saturated with so much content that brands are finding it difficult to stand out from their competition.
Following up with prospective customers was made easier with the explosion of mobile devices and widespread access to the internet.
Email provided a way for marketers to reach consumers in a more personal space and entice them with offers as well as create a more personal style of marketing. An email addressed to the consumer with a message just for them… what’s not to love?
Today, so many brands are using email that inboxes have become saturated, resulting in a lack of interest from consumers, low open rates and even lower click-through-rates. Email has become less personal as the same email is being sent to hundreds or thousands of consumers at the same time and does not reflect the individual receiving it.
The Answer?
Does digital marketing have the answer to combat declining impact of email as well as personalization and trust issues within digital platforms? Possibly.
Chatbot technology has lifted off in the past couple years, allowing brands and businesses to create relevant, personalized messages delivered to the consumer, instantly.
So, what are chatbots and how can they improve your marketing process?
What are Chatbots?
Bots are computer programs which automate certain tasks, in the case of a chatbot, the task is to communicate effectively with human consumers.
Chatbots use machine learning and defined rules set out by the programmer. These rules define how the bot will react to questions and interaction with the consumers.
Consumers can interact with the bot through a chat interface such as Facebook’s Messenger app or through a third-party bot service, such as Botsify, which will enable chatbot technology to be utilized on a website.
Chatbot technology allows businesses to connect with consumers on an individual level, making interactions more personal and allowing consumers to feel closer to the brands they love.
Chatbot Marketing Benefits
In this digital age, consumers are searching for meaningful, personal information which can be delivered to them at the right time and through the correct channel.
Chatbots provide consumers with a direct line of communication to brands with minimal friction. Offering consumers a helping hand and valuable advice as well as current offers and coupons they might be interested in through a chatbot allows the consumer to feel that there is always someone looking out for them.
There are numerous benefits to employing chatbots as part of your marketing strategy.
Customer Service
By using chatbots you take away the stress of dealing with customer service inquiries, improve response times as the chatbot is available 24/7 to interact with consumers and increase customer satisfaction with the brand.
Consumer Analysis
Collect valuable data on the consumers through the language they use when interacting with a chatbot. Keywords and demographic information are valuable pieces of data that can be used to optimize future sales and marketing strategies.
Personalization
Depending on the responses programmed into the chatbot, interactions can be personal and friendly. This increases trust with the consumer. Personalized conversations with consumers in real-time are much more effective than email blasts with general messages.
Lead Nurturing
With the information chatbots can collect about a customer, marketers can create customized messaging that guides the consumer along their buyer journey. This ensures the consumer is moving in the right direction, driving higher conversion rates and more qualified leads.
Data Driven
Chatbots provide businesses with the ability to talk to individual customers in real-time, engaging in automated two-way conversations, at scale. Through these conversations, businesses can monitor and measure interactions with customers and optimize experiences.
Constant Contact
Human customer service representatives can only communicate with one consumer at a time, whereas chatbots can converse simultaneously with thousands of people. No matter the time of day or the number of people contacting your business at any given time, chatbot technology ensures each consumer is taken care of immediately.
Additional Sales Channel
Chatbots allow businesses the ability to sell products directly from the interface. With the growth of eCommerce, consumers prefer to shop online rather than go to a store. Chatbots can serve product suggestions to consumers within the interface as well as providing the ability to check out and purchase products directly from the chatbot conversation.
Factoring chatbots into your sales and marketing processes can lead to better customer service, higher engagement rates and more sales. With more businesses using chatbots and seeing the benefits, there has been a drive towards automation of more marketing processes.
Marketing Automation & Chatbots
Marketing automation allows businesses to streamline, automate and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase efficiency and grow revenue faster.
The main goal of marketing automation is to target the right customer with the right content. In order to achieve this goal, you must analyze customer data.
Name, contact information, and transactional data are critical as they allow you to build a strategy that targets customers with the right message. Through conversations with chatbots, it is relatively easy to obtain all the information you need to be successful in targeting customers.
Marketing automation also leads to enhanced efficiency. Businesses can use the consumer data to send personalized, relevant messages and offers at the most appropriate times through the ideal channels. Chatbots are a vital step in marketing automation.
Gathering consumer data, responding to questions, concerns and requests as well as suggesting products that may be ideal for the consumer are all areas which improve the customer experience.
All in all, chatbot technology can be vital to improving and maintaining a quality customer experience. Ultimately it will benefit your business by driving more qualified leads through your sales funnel.
For more information on how you can improve your marketing strategy, contact Giant Voices. We have experience in digital advertising, SEO solutions, social media and more. A few of our digital offers include:
According to a study conducted by Harvard Business Review, 79% of businesses use social media but only 12% feel they are doing so effectively.
When you consider the time and energy that goes into a social media strategy, it’s no wonder so many businesses feel this way. Integrating social media into your day-to-day operations can be daunting.
Is it necessary?
What should you post?
How often should you plan to post messages?
What sites are most applicable to your business?
These are a few of the questions that Giant Clients inquire about when we develop social media plans for their organizations.
6 Key Steps to Making Social Media Work for Your Business
1. Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is critical. Take time to define your target demographic and persona, identify what social media channels they frequent, and learn their lingo. Curate content that speaks to their problems and passions.
2. Choose the Right Networks
Each social media channel has its own conventions and strengths, and people use them accordingly. Get to know the channels your audience uses.
LinkedIn, Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook and Pinterest are a few of the standard social media sites that should be on your radar. People visit each network for different reasons and it’s important to distinguish the differences early on in your strategy.
For example, you probably wouldn’t post a business case study on coffee manufacturers to Pinterest, but it would be perfect for LinkedIn, which tends to be more professional. Present your content in its ideal context.
3. Post a Variety of Content
Give viewers new information. Post a variety of content… and don’t make it all about you.
Engage viewers with videos, photos, industry trends and even humor. Link to third-party content, both to reduce the time you spend on creating content for social media and to illustrate that you are there to solve problems and provide solutions, not simply to make sales.
Linking to relevant, reputable blogs and news sources in your industry also helps demonstrate your credibility.
4. Use Keywords
Weave keywords into all your social media content. Keywords should be used for your target audience first, search engines second. Clever or compelling phrasing will help your content stand out in a sea of tweets, statuses and search results.
For example, if you run an online shop specializing in small-batch-roasted coffee, one of your major search keywords might be “Guatemalan coffee.”
So you could write a blog post on some interesting aspect of Guatemalan coffee and promote it on your social media networks with a teaser and a (shortened) link to your website. Like this: “Here are four scientific reasons Guatemalan coffee is less bitter then other coffees. www.tinyurl.com/12345″
“Companies that tweet average 200% more leads than those that don’t” – Hubspot
5. Engage
Social media isn’t a soapbox – it’s a kitchen table. Ask your followers to share their questions, thoughts and expertise and respond to the comments they provide – positive or negative.
If you ignore a customer’s problem, they will look to someone else for a solution.
By engaging with your audience, you make your brand humanized and more likeable. Also, the more people who engage with your content, the more that search engines—and other people for that matter—pay attention.
6. Build a Social Media Strategy that Works
The results you get from social media are only as good as the work and strategy you put into it.
Ready to take your social media to the next level? Get in touch with our team.
