The emergence of the internet, smartphones and social media has taken the job of marketers beyond the traditional methods of selling. Regardless of what industry, goods or services one sells, the people who patronize such goods or services have one place they all gather: social media.
To get out of the confinement of the ‘ancient of days’ techniques of marketing, marketers and brands are all scrambling for space on the new media provided by the digital ecosystem. Knowing that not everyone finds it easy to move their businesses online, we created this easy-to-follow 5-step process which would guide you to take your business online. Starting is important but starting well is critical for success. If you are ready, let’s start well…
Step one: Define your audience
The digital market is very nested, immersive and nearly inexhaustible in terms of reach. However, in reality, there is a limit to what everyone can get from the digital space. The limitation is defined by the services or products you offer. As a result, the first step to establishing a digital presence is to define what type of audience your business needs. That will help you to develop a persona for your business.
To define a persona, one needs to embark on customer profiling. It is simply a way to help you understand who your customers are. Ask questions about your customers’ age group, gender, interests, behaviour and other questions that would help you understand the customer. The people online are real human beings just like you so understanding what excites them, what their pain points are and where they spend their time is crucial towards reaching them.
After understanding who your customers are, choose a platform where they would likely be. Their age, interest and the services you provide can give you a hint on which platform to start with. Be careful not to want to capture all the platforms at once. Such a decision is the fastest route to doom, especially for starters or those with small teams, limited budgets and skills. Start small with one or two platforms and gradually adopt others.
The final part of step one is to develop a strong and uniform brand profile. Your brand online represents your physical business so keeping it consistent across the various digital platforms is crucial if you want to aim for long-term success. What is a brand? According to American author Seth Godin, “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” That simply means your brand goes beyond colours and symbols or logos to include the relationships you nurture, the memories you create and share and the stories you tell to your audience.
Step 2: Create and optimize the channels
Having identified who your customers are and what platforms they likely would be, your next step is to create the channels. If you decided to develop a website or mobile application for your business….Perfect.! But if you also decided to leverage existing social media platforms…Great! Create the handles on the various social media platforms you have decided on, optimize them to ensure they stand out from the crowd and begin to work by showing what you have got. This is dearly linked to step one. The logos, addresses, contact details, relevant links to other platforms, profile and cover pictures would all be used here to properly set up your brand. Be sure to leave a brief but prominent description of your services/products in your bio, a feature available on most social media platforms.
Step 3: Engage, build and nurture relationships.
We mentioned in the first step that a brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that you nurture. The expectations are natural, they come from your customers or prospects who have a desire to be served with something. Based on your customer profiling you would have identified what your customers’ core expectations are. Use that to tell stories through content to create memories and establish relationships. Engaging your audience through your posts, participating in community discussions and responding to private messages are important towards nurturing relationships and turning customers into loyalists. I must warn you, this is easier said than done. So do not underestimate what this step entails. Here is where your audience will leave reviews and comments under your posts that will leave you reeling in pain. However, never go berserk when the tempest rages out here, things can get messy with just one slip.
Additionally, train and equip your team and even if it is you alone, train yourself to deliver a seamless experience to your audience. Prompt and warm responses even to the reviews and comments that are distasteful help your brand image. Many people invest so much to attract customers only to drive them away with bad experience. Imagine you have posted about your product or service but have not provided a way for people to contact. Others turned off commenting for their posts but complain that people do not engage their content.
ATTENTION: Check out these 7 steps for creating an effective digital marketing strategy.
Step 4: Provide excellent customer service
Creating a digital profile doesn’t mean people have stopped being human because they engage virtually. The people behind the phones and screens are humans who have feelings just like you. People will reach out to you just like those who visit your physical shop. Step up your customer service game and ensure you are offering customers an experience they will savour for a lifetime. Being timely, courteous and useful in your approach to customer service will win you more customers than a 90% discount would.
Human beings are sensitive so unless you are passing a one-way message, you should enable the options to receive feedback on the content you have posted. There are options including using the social media platforms native buttons or allowing comments or specifically adding contact information where necessary.
Customer service is essential for nurturing relationship, promoting brand experience and building trust with your prospects. So be intentional about it and learn from your engagement with the audience so you can improve. Let the next effort always be better than the last.
Step 5: Measure, repeat and adjust
The advantage the digital space offers over traditional forms of marketing is that you have access to live data from nearly every platform. You can easily also analyze the data to draw patterns. With the digital ecosystem rapidly changing, you have to be in your game constantly to stay relevant. You can do that by measuring the performance and adjusting based on the available data. Analyzing the data would give you more information about the customers’ behaviour, content performance and areas for optimization. Take advantage of these insights and boost your online presence accordingly.
And here we are, with the 5 steps to take your business online. While these steps could be broken down into multiple steps, we believe these are pretty simple enough to elicit understanding. However, if you get overwhelmed and need support to move your business online, many agencies are available to help you through this. 360 Ideas’ team of professionals would gladly help you out. You can set up a consultation by using the contact form to leave us a message which we will promptly respond and gladly help you explore the opportunities in the digital world.
