3 Ways to Keep Consumers on Your Website for Longer

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website Optimization| 3 Ways to Keep Consumers on Your Website for LongerAs a modern-day business owner, you know just how important it is to have a website that attracts traffic. Attracting visitors to your site is, however, only half the battle. You actually have to keep them there if you’re to stand any chance whatsoever of, one day, turning them into customers of yours.

In order to ensure that consumers stick around on your site long enough to see all of the great products and services that you make available, you’re going to have to put the following pieces of advice into practice.

Focus on speed optimization

A whopping 47 % of consumers expect a web page to load within 2 seconds. In order to ensure that the speed at which your website loads doesn’t affect your ability to keep consumers on it, you need to focus on speed optimization.

Do you feel like you have no clue where you would even get started in this instance? Fear not, as there are plenty of people and companies out there that are waiting and willing to help. Pixel Panther, a company that offers SEO services Romsey, are one such professional entity that you could turn to. They would work alongside you to ensure that your website is quick to load whether it’s accessed on a desktop computer or a mobile device. One of the things they would do to optimize your speed is fix any sticky menus that you have — this will ensure that none of your site’s pages fall foul to the plight of slow loading.

Be clear about what it is you do

Consumers aren’t going to stick around on your site if they don’t deem it relevant to them. They need to know that they are going to be able to unearth the information that they need to know, and they need to know this quickly. If they are unable to figure out what it is you do and what it is you can offer them within a few seconds of accessing your site, they’ll move on. For this reason, you have to be clear about what it is you do. Don’t waste anybody’s time — get straight to the point of what your business is and what it offers.

Keep it simple

Similarly, consumers won’t feel the need to stay on your site for too long if what they see confused them. What you should do, then, is keep everything as simple as possible. Do not litter your site with huge chunks of writing or, on the other hand, over-compensate with clever interactivity if the content that you upload doesn’t engage with your consumers. Everything that you do has to find the perfect balance between being both informative and intuitive.

After working so hard to attract them to it in the first place, why would you want consumers to leave your website within seconds of accessing it? To keep them around on your site for longer in order to, subsequently, give you a better shot of garnering more custom and profit going forward, you need to consider all of the above advice.

Inbound Strategy Vs Outbound Strategy: Which Is Better For Your Business?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Inbound Marketing |Inbound Strategy Vs Outbound Strategy: Which Is Better For Your Business?When it comes to marketing your business, your strategy will depend on so many things, but ultimately it can be separated in to two types of strategies – both of which are great for business, but are implemented in different ways and usually at different times in your business.

These strategies are inbound marketing and outbound marketing, and before we go into the benefits of each strategies, we’re going to explain a little about what each is and and overview of how they work.

An inbound strategy is typically what you’d call a long-game strategy in that it can be implemented right at the beginning of your business, but it can take a while to see results and it’s something that’s going to continue to be implemented throughout the duration of you running your business.

Examples of an inbound marketing strategy in action would include things like content marketing, your website and social media – these are all things you have out there that allow people to come to you by finding your marketing material, so it’s obviously something that takes a little time to build up.

An outbound strategy on the other hand is something that tends to see quicker results and is usually not something that will be implemented consistently in your business, but will be something that you’ll do every once in a while or especially at the beginning of your business.

Examples of outbound strategy in action would be something like you’ve just started a service-based company where you provide professional writing services for the medical industry and since your first priority is to get clients then part of your outbound strategy is to create a cold outreach campaign to places like hospitals, medical credentialing companies, and other medical industry companies that you could write for.

As mentioned above, each strategy works great, but they both have their time and place, and each also is better to implemented depending on how much time you have in your business to spend on marketing. Outbound is going to see faster results over a shorter period, but inbound will see consistent results over a longer period and can be a great way to plan your growth in terms of customers and revenue, so below we’re going to list some of the benefits of each strategy to help you see which one is best suited to your needs right now.

Inbound:

  • Helps you establish trust and credibility with your audience over a longer time;
  • Is usually great for SEO and organic reach since you’ll be creating a lot of content;
  • Can be automated to run over longer periods of time, so it doesn’t require so much attention.

Outboud:

  • Great for getting yourself known quickly;
  • A great way to build confidence when selling;
  • One of the fastest and most effective ways to get new clients fast.

Hopefully this post has provided you with a little clarity on the differences between these two strategies and helped you see which one could potentially be best for you depending on your business needs right now.

The Trust Issue

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship management Article |Consumer Relationship| The Trust IssueBusinesses want to have strong and long-lasting relationships with their consumers. That relationship is built on trust, but in a post-truth world brands are faced with a serious challenge: so much of modern life is defined by mistrust.

I believe that for brands, trust and truth are the most important games in town.

The ‘trust issue’ is a central theme for organisations in any sector, and it’s one in which I’ve conducted a mass of research into how a post-truth culture is impacting brands, across an array of business sectors, on a global basis. To quote The Economist “consumer trust is the basis of all brand values, and therefore brands have an immense incentive to retain it”.

Why is this so important? Because, if a brand isn’t seen as credible and trustworthy, then when choice is available it’ll be rejected in favour of one that is – by those who view themselves as being ‘informed’ as opposed to ‘passive’ consumers.

This is due to a weakening of the vital trust connection between brands and consumers and is causing enormous problems for businesses. The ramifications for brands in sectors of all description are deeply serious, when ‘reputation capital’ is of such immense importance, regarding our belief in those core questions of ‘is a business honest, competent and reliable?’

But just running an advertising campaign stating that a brand is trustworthy isn’t good enough. This isn’t a marketing issue, this is a business-wide issue, involving every facet of the organisation, hence leadership being so important.

Companies have to be consistent in their behaviour, from top to bottom, and right along the supply chain, from the ‘first hand of production to the final hand of the consumer’.

And this genuinely has to go all the way. Make no mistake, organisations and brands that want to earn and keep our trust have to ‘live it like they say it’. Business has to be about more than just profit. ‘People plus Planet’ and to quote a much-derided word ‘Purpose’ have to be in there too.

The ‘actual’ difference between ethical brands with a moral code and those exposed as being without one, is increasingly a key factor in consumer brand adoption or rejection. This approach very much links to social innovation and indeed conspicuous altruism.

‘Social Purpose’ is a phrase used obsessively by modern, forward-thinking leaders, and links directly to joint value creation where both shareholders and society benefit from business. Yet many still attempt to portray, or indeed dismiss, the demographic most associated with this ideal as being one where, as The Guardian newspaper put it recently “the idea that market activity should have a purpose other than purely profit is roughly where it always was on the spectrum, somewhere between Marx and Jesus – one for the rioters, the subversives, the people with beards, unsuited to mainstream discourse.”

To illustrate that this thinking goes right to the top of hard-headed business thinking, in their ‘Reflections from Davos’ report regarding the meeting of the World Economic Forum, the managing partner of McKinsey was quoted as saying “the next innovation imperative will be social innovation – business’s role will be critical here.” The report went on to note “society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose”.

This is set against research from those such as Deloitte who show how millennials are fast losing faith in business; and against a backdrop where people are scrambling to find solid ground in an era when we’re told that the very notion of truth is subjective, and indeed much of public discourse has become increasingly anti-fact and anti-expert.

Fortunately there are numerous shining examples of organisations that are showing us all ‘how to do it better’ ranging across the business spectrum, in sectors ranging from beauty to finance, and from fashion to beverages.

With good leadership at the core of these businesses, all members of the organisation are enabled to understand and demonstrate ‘why they do it, what they do and how they do it’. And this means leaders of companies taking deliberate and definitive action to ensure that their businesses demonstrate ‘corporate social leadership’.

This will also enable the truism that ‘good business is good business’.

About the Author

Sean Pillot de Chenecey, author of The Post-Truth Business: How to Rebuild Brand Authenticity in a Distrusting World, has over 20 years’ experience as a brand expert, combining marketing consultancy with ethnographic activity and trend research around the world. His clients have included Unilever, Swatch, Heineken, Diageo, General Motors, Beiersdorf, AXA, Costa, Vodafone, Kerrygold and Starwood. He’s collaborated with numerous international advertising, branding, design, media and PR agencies. He is a lecturer at the University of the Arts London, and has written for Dazed, Admap, Brand Strategy, Marketing and Contagious. A public speaker, he’s given speeches for over a decade in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America. For more information, please visit www.koganpage.com/post-truth-business

Since when was marketing not human-centric?

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Marketing| Since when was marketing not human-centric?It’s been said that death and taxes are life’s two certainties.

To that list we’d add evolution: evolution of technology; evolution of science; evolution of intelligence. This constantly moving frontier of knowledge has a powerful impact on marketing and ensures that we can never consider it mastered.

In an age where influencers on social media have an ultimate say in what is good and what is bad, only the best companies survive. There is no doubt that today’s oversaturated economies are driven by social media’s connectivity and an increased consumer awareness. It is no longer viable to convince consumers that your product or service is better than of your competitors. Today, to stand out you must create a movement, a mission around your product or service, incentivise and convince third parties like influencers to endorse your product / service and promote it to their audiences.

The product or service that is powered by an authentic message and provides the most utility to it’s consumers without compromising the human and ethical side of it’s message, will prevail. This means that, to succeed in your marketing strategies, you can not just differentiate your product or service from your competitors. You must create a whole experience dictated by a legitimate cause that your audience feels proud to be part of.

Not sure how to do this? There’s a not-so-secret hack: engage the individuals in your audience who are influential and they will do the job for you! Having the right Influencers beside you in your marketing campaign will make everything more effective and help your message reach as many people as possible. Whatever your business – whether you’re selling gas or garden gnomes – you’ll have to work diligently to convince your customers that you’re superior to a competitor who is just a Google search away. Influencers can give you that edge.

We know when it’s great and – just as importantly – when it’s not. We have developed theoretical models and practical frameworks to help explain how influencer marketing works, its potential, evolution and most importantly the marketing hacks that can give you an edge.

The other 11%

89% of e-commerce businesses and startups fail every year? We hate that number. We know that behind every failed company is thousands of hours, and buckets of blood, sweat and tears. Here’s a stat we do like: the global spend on influencer marketing is predicted to grow by 500% from between 2017 and 2020; that’s $2 billion to $10 billion.

For any business operating in this period it’s clear that influencer marketing needs to be an intrinsic part of your strategy. One of the biggest problems around influencer marketing is its perception – by some – as a wooly form of marketing.

The lack of knowledge in the industry is the main cause of distrust, and the reason it’s rarely utilised to its potential. There is a painful amount of terrible advice in the influencer marketing space. Talented entrepreneurs and marketers are wasting so much time, money and energy on strategies that do not work.

In addition, it is worth mentioning the fact that the industry as we know it now is still infant and because of that it still lacks the order needed to institute the certainty business people love. That’s why we’re trying to establish a universal baseline for influencer marketing. We want to establish a collective understanding of the industry and the parties involved and give you the tools to growth hack your business. Lesson number one? Forget automation and remember that we’re all just humans, after all.

We believe that marketing is going back to its human roots and a successful business is one that can adapt to these changes. In some ways, we are seeing the industry’s transformation into an industry dominated by human influence (more specifically: consumer influence). To stand out, you need to build your own “cult” — not an actual cult — of customers that advocate and endorse your cause. Instead of focusing on engaging each and every consumer or prospect, this model emphasizes on engaging key people who already have an established base of followers.

Social media has enhanced human connection by creating a digital world where humans interact. All our relationships have been digitized: from the high-school boyfriend who Facebook tells you has four kids at 24 – well served with that one – to the Director of your dream employer who you’ve just connected with on LinkedIn.

Relationships, connections, and contacts have moved online and exist in a realm outside of the purely physical. And no matter how sophisticated technology becomes, the foundations of human psychology remain the same. We trust the opinion of those who are close to us, those we admire, and those we can relate to. From a purely business perspective, social media influencers are just consumers with influence.

Once you understand this concept and incorporate it efficiently with your current marketing strategy, you will have edge over your competition.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Jad MawlawiJad Mawlawi is a Cyprus-born, Beirut-raised, and Brighton-based entrepreneur, who recognizes that human-to-human interaction is the winning formula in an economy with progressively declining margins. Jad is both a co-founder and CEO at Dooply — a cutting-edge and rapidly growing influencer marketing startup based in Brighton, UK.

Sometimes You Just Need To Know When You Should Complain

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Compensation |Sometimes You Just Need To Know When You Should ComplainThere is no denying that we live in a world where complaining and seeking compensation for things has just become normality. If something doesn’t go as we intend, If we don’t receive what we expect, or something that happens that wasn’t your doing, we can often expect that we should be able to complain about the incident and seek some financial reward. In some cases, this is exactly the route to take. After all, you should only be thinking about yourself and your family. But are we inas intuition where things are just taken out of control and context now? Here are some of the scenarios that you may find yourself involved in at some point in your lives where you absolutely should seek out advice, complain about it and get some compensation.

Being involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault

You may be going about your business one day. It could be driving on the roads to work, or boarding a plane to get to a business meeting. You don’t expect anything to happen, but then out of nowhere you are involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault. In this instance you have every right to complain. This could be someone’s fault, it could be negligence that needs highlighting, and this is when aviation lawyers or attorneys specifically for road vehicle accidents could help you seek out what you deserve on a legal side of things. The same can be said for accidents in the workplace, and while it may not feel like the right thing to do, there are always going to be insurances in place to cover for these eventualities.

Mis-sold financial products or services

Some people choose to buy things through finance options. These days it can be the easiest and simplest way for you to buy a car, get work done on your home, and let’s not forget that most people have mortgages these days. However, you enter into these agreements in good faith. You think you are aware of what you are buying but the truth is, you may have been mis-sold a financial product. This is when you can complain because often these things are mis-sold to benefit the financier or the company that is handling the deal. Always check the small print before signing anything.

When you have been billed incorrectly

There will be times in your life where you pay your bills, and often this can be done through a direct debit format. You agree a figure, you pay the bill and that is it. But because of this convenient way of paying for things without ever missing deadlines, are you really paying for what you are using? Sometimes you can be billed incorrectly. For example, with energy bills. Energy providers can estimate your usage but this can turn out to be an unproven reflection, which means you pay more than is necessary. If you have ever been billed incorrectly then the first port of call is to raise the complaint directly and take it from there.

Complaining when things haven’t gone your way

We have all grown accustomed to expecting a certain level of service these days. This could be specifically noticed when making telephone calls to customer service departments, or how we are treated when out in places like restaurants, for example. You expect that you will be treated with respect and you also expect that the goods you order, for example, food is up to scratch. Of course, there can be times when this doesn’t go to plan. You don’t get a decent level of services from staff, you order something and it isn’t right. It is always worth remembering that you need to be respectful yourself, but any case such as this, you do have every right to complain about the service you have received,

Food poisoning from a restaurant or while on holiday

Finally, when you book a restaurant, or when you go on holiday, the last thing you expect is to become ill because of the food you consume. You expect a level of hygiene front he kitchen, and you hope that the food is cooked ot the right standard. But, this can happen more often than you realise, and if you do end up with a case of food poisoning from your holiday hotel or at restaurant then you do have every right to flag up your complaint and report the issue to the relevant governing bodies. This is because food poisoning, if not handled right, can go on to cause major problems for people and it can be fatal in some cases.

Let’s hope this has given you the confidence to know when you can and should be complaining.