This piece of article is focused on various tips & tricks to Effectively Strategise Website Marketing that Actually Works.
What do modern consumers want from a brand in this day and age?
- A fast and reliable service?
- The ability to contact the team to get inquiries solved?
- A brand experience that provides ‘value’ to people’s lives?
All three please, and more. Right???
You can find a multitude of marketing automation tools to help make your life easier. But it’s not as simple as installing the system, sitting back and watching your sales figures rise. You need to make sure that you are utilizing your automation tools in the right way.
Here is how to Strategise website marketing and not let your audience down.
☲ Table of Contents
Make The Customer Your Top Priority
Customer service should be at the forefront of any marketer’s and business owner’s mind when choosing the right automation tools.
Over the years, consumers have become used to things like automated customer service helplines, using the phone keypad to select the right extension. Critics of customer service automation may scoff at the robotic-sounding voices, but it’s hard to argue with the convenience. They save the customer’s time by scheduling callbacks and prioritizing more urgent enquires.
Gartner Research predicts that by 2020, 85% of businesses will handle all customer service inquiries through automated systems (read details here).
Therefore, in your cost/benefit analysis of your customer relationship management (CRM) systems consider your company objectives:
- Do you need to generate more leads?
- Do you need help increasing your website conversion rates?
- Are you making too many errors in your operations?
- Do you want to scale-up your offerings over time?
There are a wealth of CRM features available, all of which can help nudge your customers down the sales funnel.
You may want to consider options to Strategise website marketing;
- Chatbots – Live A.I chatbots can be programmed to answer common queries at the time of purchase. Over time, they collect customer response data and can let you know which web pages might need ‘tuning-up’, as well as advice on how you can improve your services.
- Order Tracking– Self-service checkouts are commonplace nowadays. Consumers are used to tracking their own orders, raising customer service tickets etc. at their own convenience. Oftentimes, customer tracking can be more efficient, as your customer is likely to inform you urgently if something has gone awry, saving you time in monitoring. You can also use scheduling tools to coordinate maintenance calls or visits, ensuring that your customers always get the best service possible.
- Content Recommendations – Tools that can automatically recommend content to different audience segments can help you stay on top of changing audience trends and prime your customers for your ultimate marketing pitch.
- Geo-Targeting – Artificial Intelligence can also be used to split your customers and leads into segments based on their location. Marketers and online business owners can use these tools to set pricing structures and monitor local competitors in real-time.
Gather Website Data to Create Actionable Marketing Strategies
It’s all well and good investing in marketing automation services, but if you haven’t got the content to play with, no machine can help you.
A winning campaign strategy begins with in-depth customer research powered by content analysis and reporting tools like Google Analytics and Buzzsumo. Build a set of detailed ‘customer personas’ and begin the process of content auditing with these demographic profiles in mind.
Content auditing automation can supercharge your editorial strategies in a number of ways:
- Monitor the health of your website’s SEO– Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress can provide real-time feedback including preview snippets on Google search, rating systems for blog content, and much more.
- Examine your backlinks – Check-up on the health of your backlinks and find the best-performing links you can capitalize on further.
- Research your competitors – Monitor the successes and failings of your competitors real-time with competitor analysis tools (find here). You can use these to grade competitor sites in seconds, saving you time and hassle.
Once you have gathered together your insights, look for ways you can create a content calendar schedule.
Consider content like:
- Social media posts, hashtags, and contests. You could also look at influencer marketing and user-generated content strategies.
- News and blog posts based on keyword research of common consumer questions.
- Webinars, podcasts, short and long-form video.
- Industry reports and published survey results.
- Case studies and product demonstrations.
- e-Books and PDF resources.
The characteristics of your customer personas will inform which content types most suit your customers’ preferences. Sticking to these profiles will help you take much of the ‘guesswork’ out of the creative process.
Make Your Email Marketing All About Your Audience
Most of us are very particular about the emails we wish to receive from businesses. If the message contains no incentive to find out more, many of us will hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button in a matter of seconds.
Getting stuck in the habit of whipping up the same old monthly newsletter (comprised of your recent blog posts) is no longer enough to secure email subscribers. To not let your audience down with your email marketing then, provide ‘spicier’ content that really puts the focus on the audience, rather than your products.
Whether you’re hoping to get your audience to fill out a survey or check-out your latest sale, put the onus on them to take action. Tempt them with a link to a free, downloadable resource, or referral link that offers your readers an incentive to spread your brand message. In exchange, send out discounts or alternative special offers.
Take a look at this review of SendPulse, an email marketing tool recommended for mid-size to larger businesses and bloggers. The features are extensive: you can manage your web push, email and text message mailing lists, as well as create reports and test campaigns.
Strategise Personalized Deals and Offers
A highly-personalized service harks back to the ‘good old days’ of traditional retail, where your local shopkeeper greets you by name and tells you all about the latest goods they have in stock.
Personalization technologies can be installed from your online storefront to provide this tailored service. For example, you can use them to craft the perfect abandoned cart email (link) or create retargeting campaigns that line-up irresistible offers for returning visitors. Make the most of tools and plugins that give your customers the ‘V.I.P’ experience.
Let The Robots Handle Your Website Testing And Analysis
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) bots are being cleverly utilized to help marketers save time in testing their website and ad campaigns. As you will need to ensure that you are doing all you can to maximize your ad spend, don’t skip this crucial marketing step. Split test your headlines, images, calls to action, and links to find the optimal times of day for posting.
Make sure that you are also approaching your reporting proactively. Look to solve problems by seeking out relevant data points and monitor any improvements from there.
Wrapping It Up
If you want to keep your audience happy, don’t waste the time and effort in collecting the right data. Use data insights to help you maximize your ROI. Automation can also reduce the instances of human error, providing your customers with all the information they need to make an informed purchase. Keep your customers’ needs in the forefront of your mind and you can successfully automate your website marketing without letting your audience down.
Further readings you might find interesting…
15 Essential WordPress SEO Plugins to Improve Search Rankings in 2017
How to Write a Great Blog Post or Web Content
Why You must Use Gravatar in WordPress?
11 Free DNS Hosting Services to Speed up your website in 2017
This post is written by Victoria Greene, She is a brand consultant and freelance writer, blogging at Victoria E-commerce. She regularly shares advice ways to make marketing easier and infinitely more effective with the right automated tools.
Hey, Victoria! A fantastic article, thanks for sharing. I have a quick question though: Can you please give a brief comparison between marketing automation tools like Hubspot and Aritic PinPoint? It would be of great help, thanks.
Thanks for great tips. A strategy like this needs some careful planning. Marketing automation for many seems daunting, but if you choose the right tool and have an idea of what you want to do then it’s not as bad. We’re using Getresponse.
A piece of erudition unlike any other!