It is no more news that the world wide web (online) has a huge amount of audience which is easily accessible if well harnessed for business marketing and product/service awareness, hence the dire need of the application of these strategies to boost business growth.
Before commencing, let us see this list that was created based on some interesting statistics that affect how we reach our target audience and how we market them.
Check this out:
• 86.3 million Nigerians, approximately 46.1%, have access the internet on mobile phones;
• Recipients of email marketing campaigns purchase 28% more often than those who are not email subscribers;
• 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine (such as Google, yahoo or ask.com);
• An online shopper is 144% more likely to purchase a product after they have watched a video;
• 42% of small business owners are worried about finding new customers;
These statistics should raise some concerns and tremendous opportunities for us as entrepreneurs and business owners. Here’s what I suggest you do in 2014 with these numbers and ride the opportunity wave they present.
1. Build a Mobile Friendly Website
Right now, consumers are using their mobile devices to find types of products and services your business offers. Can those consumers easily access the information they need about your products and services using their smart-phones and tablets? Is your business website mobile friendly?
From the statistics above, 3 out of every 10 visitors to your business website accessed it through mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets (e.g iPads), enough reason for your business website to be mobile friendly. If you don’t have a mobile friendly version of your website, you’re most likely turning away potential customers without knowing it.
What is mobile friendly, you may ask?
Have you ever accessed a website on your mobile device and you find it difficult accessing information from the site as a result of delay in loading pages and scrolling horizontally. If you answered yes to that, then that is what a non-mobile friendly website has caused. Potential customers don’t spend an extra time on such site before opting out, and you know what that means – loosing potential customers.
So, if you already have a website for your business or are yet to have one, consider having the mobile version of it or better still, make use of responsive themes for your wordpress website to save you extra cost of setting up mobile version of your website. Another approach to setting up a mobile friendly website is setting up a mobile application for your business. For example, a large segment of airline customers typically want to accomplish a few specific tasks when they’re on the go. They want to check flight times and status updates, and they might want to make reservations. A mobile app that is strictly used for scheduling, ticketing and alerts would be extremely useful to these consumers.
Point of emphasis: mobile friendly website increases visits to your website by 50% compared to a non-mobile friendly website.
Google Research: 72% of customers want mobile-friendly website. Upon arriving at a site which is not mobile-friendly, 61% of customers are likely to go to a competitor’s site.
2. Create an Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing simply means sending commercial message to a group of people using email. Email marketing is fast becoming the most reliable and profitable marketing strategy in this part of the world, reason is because you are actually marketing to the right audience of your products/services. Email marketing works perfectly well and from the statistics above, a recipient of your email campaign is more likely to patronize you, hence the need to set up email marketing as soon as possible.
One of the best ways of setting up an email marketing strategy is offering a FREE subscription of a particular feature of your product/service, which will require interested or potential client to willingly provide their name and email address. With this, you have successfully captured the email of interested prospects to your products/services, which is useful for future marketing.
Following up with your subscribers is essential to the success of your business and will prove to be critical in 2014 and beyond. Get ready by asking your visitors to sign up for email updates (or a free offer) so you can leverage the power of email marketing in this New Year.
If you are not using the email marketing strategy in your business, you are definitely missing a whole lot of patronage from prospective clients.
3. Optimize for the Search Engines
I was going to purchase a pair of shoe, and I went online to make a search on Google on where to get best price of quality shoes in Nigeria. I clicked on the search button and guess what, a lot of shoe companies were listed out and I had several options to choose from. The question is; if you happened to sell shoes, will your website appear amongst those that were suggested to me by Google?
That is what Search Engine Optimization does. Google has over 5 billion searches daily and almost 2 trillion searches annually (2012 statistics). These are as a result of people looking for a product online, getting to learn new things, shopping, and many more from all over the world, and the ability for Google to list your site amongst search results is if your site is Search Engine Optimized. Optimizing your website for search engine requires a whole lot, ranging from your website content, Meta tags, header tags, anchor links, reference links, navigation, site mapping, naming of pictures, etc. and this should be accomplished by your website designer.
You can also submit your Website manually to Search Engines. That said, the search engines give no guarantee of ranking your page because you have manually submitted it. It is a tool that we use to let the search engines know that we have new information to share and it is efficient to an extent in the listing of our website on search results.
4. Use Video to Sell Your Stuff
This one shocked me; 144% more likely to buy after watching a video. This is a great opportunity for you to improve conversions on your sales page or affiliate offers. You can do a few things with this:
• Record a video interview with the product owner
• Record a video walk-through of the product you’re trying to sell
• Record a membership site tour of your own site so your audience can see what they’re buying (own product)
Videos are engaging. People’s preferences are moving from text and audio to video because studies shows that majority of people enjoy watching videos as they are more interesting and engaging than reading, and thus more effective for businesses to use for promotion.
Videos will increase your brand credibility. I’m sure you will agree that person to person, face to face communication is the best way to get your message across to someone. But what if you can’t meet someone, perhaps because of geographical location or time? If you are using a well planned video on your website, you’ll be able to connect to your audience, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year almost as if you were there. People get to know, like and trust you after they have connected with you, in-turn, getting to buy from you and do business with you.
Make your videos increase your reach and grow your brand for you today, even when you are not there!
5. Create Immense Value and they’ll Find You
Content marketing is still the best way to drive sales. If you focus on creating in depth articles, awesome podcast episodes and high quality videos for your audience, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t share your content with the rest of the world.
Invest in quality content creation and Sales writing. There is nothing that convinces a visitor or customer than a well and strategically written sales letter, because it is what speaks for you when you are not there.
Finding new customers won’t be difficult for you if you put them first.
Article by Abbey Oyetunji