Don’t get lost in the noise: 5 ways to reach, engage, and convert customers

THE problem with digital marketing today is that many businesses get into it for the sake of being in the bandwagon. Like any marketing campaign, digital marketing needs to be focused for it to work.

Strategies should be aligned with the overall business goals. Otherwise, your campaigns might just be contributing to the noise.

A Proxima study reports that 60 percent of digital marketing spend is wasted. $37 billion went down the drain in 2015. With consumers getting bombarded by various campaigns across channels, it can be tough for your campaign to cut through the noise. Consumers will be unresponsive if they can’t connect with the message.

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So instead of wasting your digital marketing investment with a shotgun strategy, being deliberate can give your campaigns the cutting edge. Consider these five ways to make sure your marketing campaign gets you the customers:

Data is king: Track customer behavior

Some businesses that fail in digital marketing fail to ask fundamental questions – Who are our customers, and what do they need? Campaigns should speak to their interests, but that’s impossible to do without knowing your customer first.

For online channels, it is now quite easy to do with web tracking analytics like Google Analytics. By implementing web tracking, you will be able to monitor who lands on your website and how they got there. Tracking can tell you the search terms that helped customers land on your webpage and what links and pages they click through your site.

These trackers can now even give you details like demographics and interests about your website’s visitors. Knowing their particular points of interest could help you identify the ideal way to engage them.

Nurture leads: Engage, but don’t be pushy

A number of businesses may think that the “buy now” button is the end-all-and-be-all of their online channel. Some believe that there may be something wrong with their website’s design if people aren’t adding items to their shopping cart. But generating leads is just the first step. As much as half of all leads aren’t ready to buy.

Sometimes, getting contact details can already be a win for your website. What’s important is to nurture them by keeping the engagement game going. You have to reach out to them and speak to their specific needs, but this can only be done if you are prepared to take on a variety of selling scenarios.

You can use a marketing automation tool like GetResponse, which allows you to create complex scenario-based campaigns through a drag and drop system. Such tools can trigger actions like sending specific content through email or tagging target subscribers depending on conditions like customer’s clicks, searches, or abandoned carts. This way, you can provide a more targeted response to address their needs. Say, a customer spent considerable time browsing a specific product page, you can set up your system to send them a brochure of that specific product.

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Go beyond the product: Provide useful content

Each customer is unique. Generic emails, even if they miraculously escape the spam filter, will be marked as such if they don’t encourage your prospects to open them. This is why it’s important to engage them with content that they care about.

Using the information that you have about them (keyword searches, online activity, and demographics), reach out using custom content that they will find useful. It could be something related to the niche your products and services are in so you don’t have to always be hard sell in the messages that you send them.

In fact, some of the more successful content campaigns truly provide a service to their clients like trading white papers and reports in exchange for signing up to the business’ newsletter. This gets these businesses several wins – they get their customer information and the permission to be contacted again. This opens up opportunities to build trust and influence their buying decision. Customers often reciprocate such a service with a sale.

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Educate them to help with the buying decision

Aside from providing useful content, another great way to build relationships with prospects and customers is to educate them through their buying decision. Webinars have emerged to be a great lead generation and engagement strategy especially for B2B ventures. Thanks to speedy internet and easy ways to stream video, webinars are now easy to organize.

A great strategy for webinars is talking about a current issue or prevailing concern in your niche. Don’t forget to create an information campaign to drive interest to your webinar through social media and email. If you can, gather attendees’ questions beforehand so that you can answer them in your webinar. Product mentions and case studies that highlight the strengths of your product are acceptable, but focus on providing practical information rather than hard sell.

Expertise still counts a lot in projecting your capability to service your customer needs. Through educational content like webinars, you can position yourself as a thought leader in the industry, and who doesn’t want to get the services from the experts?

Recover abandoned carts

Nearly 69 percent of e-commerce carts are abandoned. Many business fall into the trap of neglecting them but these are actually a great source for conversion. Oftentimes, business lose such customers due to extra costs and complicated checkout processes. Granted that you’ve fixed possible issues that may concern your e-commerce front, it pays to re-engage these customers.

These people have actually decided to buy! It’d be a shame if you lose them entirely over some little detail that should be easily fixed. Your actions from here should be geared towards fixing the issue (a scenario that can easily be set if you’re using marketing automation) rather than driving interest.

Remind them of the items that they’ve left abandoned in your cart through a well-crafted email. You can also incentivize them by offering discount or free shipping coupons. The email can even contain an express checkout link that enables them to readily checkout with the items and discount code applied through a simple click. Platforms like Retargeter and Adroll can help you automate this process, particularly if you are running an e-commerce solution.

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Remember: It’s a campaign

Many digital marketers often lose sight of marketing campaigns being campaigns. It’s not just about generating X number of clicks or Y number of downloads. Campaigns should involve strategy and cleverly implemented tactics. Take a look at each activity you engage in and see how they work towards the end goal and improve on your ways at every step. Your customers and your bottom line will thank you for it.

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