Standfirst: This step-by-step approach can make your marketing responsive to the needs and expectations of today’s consumers, even if all you have now is an outdated website.
All businesses, whether they’ve existed in the same bricks-and-mortar shopfront for a century or they’re a recently opened online-only operation, need to do one thing to survive: meet, and ideally exceed, customer expectations.
Businesses often overlook the need to meet these expectations throughout the entire customer journey. Two areas that are particularly likely to be overlooked are the pre-purchase stage, when they first discover your business, and the consideration stage, when they’re evaluating whether to engage with you.
In the modern world, customers are spending the pre-purchase stages online. This means it’s essential for a small business to have a modern online presence that makes a positive first impression.
“Reviews have the same influence as traditional word-of-mouth marketing.”
If you’re a business with a minimal online presence, or if you haven’t monitored and updated your online information for a while, it can seem like a difficult and time-consuming task to modernise it. The best approach is to break it down into easy steps that can be rolled out one-by-one in a manageable timeframe. Below you’ll find a six-week plan to modernise your small business with a big digital strategy.
Week one: SWOT analysis
Before you can make any meaningful changes, you need to gather a full picture of your business’s relationship with technology and the online world. This should encompass everything from your Google search results through to post-purchase communication. I recommend doing this through a SWOT analysis, where you identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Since you know your business inside and out, you may be able to initially fill out a SWOT analysis from just thinking through each point. However, I’d encourage you to spend some time in the shoes of a prospective customer, and go through the motions they’d undertake when first searching and engaging with your business online.
For bonus points, you can also search and engage with the online presence of your competitors – just make sure to keep the SWOT analysis focused on your business. While doing this, if you see things you’d like to implement, jot them down as a note outside of the SWOT, so you can incorporate them at the right time.
Week two: reviews
For week two, focus on the first thing customers focus on: reviews.
During your SWOT analysis, one of the first things you probably noticed was your Google star rating. That’s the same case for potential customers.
Reviews have the same influence as traditional word-of-mouth marketing, so when customers assess your business for the first time, they’ll look towards reviews for reassurance on whether to continue with your business.
Google reviews are often the best place to start, but you’ll want to find out what customers say about you on other sites aligned with your field. For example, if you’re a hospitality business, you should look out for your rating on any food delivery apps, restaurant rating sites like Zomato, and tourism sites like Tripadvisor.
Pay attention to the average rating, the number of reviews, and any comments people leave. Any recurring themes should definitely be noted, but it’s also important to notice any errant experiences. If somebody has had a negative experience, engage with them and see how you can rectify the situation.
You can then optimise your review processes to increase the number of positive reviews you’re receiving. An easy way of doing this is directing customers to the most appropriate platform after a purchase. Through Podium, you can automatically invite customers to leave a review with almost no effort on their part, drastically increasing the chances of them leaving a valuable review.
Week three: interaction management
Week three will focus on how customers are able to interact with your business. After looking you up online, how can a customer contact you? How do they learn more about your services? Some typical answers here are by coming in store, by email, through a contact form on a website, or by calling.
Some options to consider that will help you stand out from your competitors are automated webchats, and text messages; Podium data shows over two-thirds of consumers indicate that texting is their preferred method of contact.
For the modern world, it’s important to offer a variety of contact options across a range of channels, like Google, Facebook, and your own website. This doesn’t have to be daunting or time-consuming, as there are systems that can integrate all your messages into a single access point.
Week four: website
Over week four, optimise your website. Customers want local businesses to have a website, and they trust it to have the most up-to-date information on your service offerings, opening hours, and contact details.
It’s important to think beyond the basics, and to make sure that your website is strategically designed to convert leads into customers. The way to do this is to upgrade from a static website to one that uses integrations that will engage with visitors and analyse their behaviour.
A great way to do this is to adopt a webchat function, which will pop-up on any page of your site and allow visitors to ask questions. From there, you can pre-program answers or engage in a real-time conversation. Webchat establishes a relationship between visitors and your business, which can result in 11 times more leads.
The next integration worth having is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that will track your website traffic, providing you with useful information about how customers are finding and interacting with your site.
Finally, incorporate some search engine optimisation (SEO), so that your website is findable. We’ll focus on this next week.
Week five: SEO
The point of SEO is to legitimise and localise your business, so that when a customer is searching for ‘independent bike shop’ in a nearby suburb, your store appears as a top result.
Start enhancing your SEO by setting up your Google Business Profile. This will keep your information up to date on Google, and ensure your business appears on Google Maps.
Next, populate your website with any terms that may be used to describe your business, such as ‘custom cake decorator in Camberwell’ or ‘Brisbane e-bike specialist’. It’s important to make sure these terms naturally appear on your website, don’t just throw them randomly onto a page.
As a final step, claim listings on other local directories, and make sure your business name and contact information are the same everywhere.
Week six: marketing
For week six, you’re going to upgrade your visibility with marketing technology. Consider where and how technology can fit into your existing marketing strategy. Things to think about include: lead generation, tracking and reporting; how you determine whether your existing marketing efforts are successful; and your social media presence.
It can be fruitful to consider what your competitors are doing here. While you might not be able to determine their back-end processes and technologies, you can assess their marketing strategies. Thinking back to your initial SWOT analysis, determine what marketing efforts or support would be most worthwhile for your business, and you’ll undoubtedly find appropriate technology to support you.
By the end of these six weeks, your online presence will now be in pretty great shape, and your site traffic should continue to grow organically. Remember to stay on top of your visibility by regularly updating your information, checking out your reviews and continuing to adopt worthwhile integrations.
This article first appeared in issue 38 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
