Make 3 New Year’s resolutions for your business online.

The world of digital marketing has evolved way beyond the hedonistic days of only having to have a website and maybe just maybe paying for some advertising space on a search engine before the customers came to the door. With each passing year more and more competitors enter the market. Technology evolves to meet the modern consumer and those same customers’ expectations are higher than ever. Then if you factor in mediums like social media entering the fray as genuine marketing channels, then there is plenty to consider for 2016.

You’ve probably seen a lot happen in 2015 and you are trying to gear up for this coming year. With so much happening in your business it’s very easy for your digital presence to become a status quo.

What do I mean by this? Simply put another year can go by and not much might change with your online performance whether it’s your website, the volume of new business generated by your digital marketing activity or the brand presence you have online.

There is so much benefit a company can have by taking stock of their digital activity and making small or large changes to how they work or think about it. We are currently working with our clients at strategies to make 2016 even better than 2015 for both the clients and their customers in their online market space. As part of this activity we thought of several little things a business can do that might help shape their thinking for this coming year and provide the foundations for a positive change.

So without wasting any more time we’d like to share how to – Make 3 New Year’s resolutions for your business online.

1/. Conduct an unbiased Website Audit

This sounds obvious, but is your website portraying your business how you would want it to? You might have had a website built at significant expense or with a lot of time resource required and therefore you have left it to run on completion for a long time now. Alternatively you’ve never worried about the impact of your site on your customer so see it as an expense and a focus that is unnecessary.

Converted have worked with countless clients who have had minor issues on their site. Whether it’s spelling mistakes, confusing menu systems, a lack of thought into the user’s experience (which we will come to) or just that it has been allowed to age so much it now looks dated.

Your site is the very foundation on which all your online work is built. Therefore this has to be worked on and improved as any other part of the business must be.

Here are some basic areas to audit when it comes to your website.

Content – Sounds obvious, but more often than not content can be produced to fill space in a new website design rather than the site being built around the best possible content. Have you looked at all the major pages on your site for grammar issues or whether the messages are the right ones for your customers? Spend a couple of hours just reading through your site as a user and not as the owner of the site.

Aesthetics – Does your site look good? It is that simple. The issue with aesthetics is that they can be opinion based. One person’s perspective might not be shared by another. However there are some basic things you can look at.  Is your site in keeping with modern styles and current site expectations? For example is your site responsive for the mobile user? Are your images good quality? Are the fonts looking dated? Compare your site to market leaders and to competitors. Look at digital agencies websites and web design sites – these are always a good benchmark for what is the current design preference for the online user, especially in the b2b arena.

UX – User Experience is a buzzword in the digital industries and for good reason. With so many touch points available to a digital property owner and their prospective customers and with so many options available to those customers, it is important to give them the right information, in the right way with the least amount of confusion or pitfalls in order to get the result you want. Are there stumbling blocks on your site you never even thought of that put a customer off? Would a change to a small section yield a better result? We won’t go into UX much more in this post, however its worth discussing this in more depth with an expert UX design and marketing agency like ourselves.

Google Analytics – For those of you who use this, then this is an obvious one. For those who don’t…why not! Google’s free tool provides so much insight on your website. How people find it and what they do when they are on it. This makes it an invaluable piece of the online kit. For those of you who do use it are you getting what you can out of it or are you covering the basics such as traffic levels and revenue? What about which pages are putting people off? What are the most common paths through the site? How does your site perform on mobile devices Vs desktop computers? What do people type into the search bar of my site? These are just a handful of the useful questions you can ask in Analytics and whose answers can shape your decisions for your site moving forward.

Google Webmaster Tools – Do you know who is linking to your site? How your site is viewed by Google?  Are there any errors you are not aware of? This is the system webmasters use to understand the basics of how Google views your site and therefore things you should do.

SEO Basics – Search Engine Optimisation is the art of getting found online organically. It’s all about increasing the volume of relevant traffic to your site. Another often overlooked part of a website is its configuration to help achieve good SEO results. Google’s robots do not look at your site the same as a human. Therefore to improve your chances of ranking well on Google’s search engine you need to make it easy for them to understand it. So does it have the right titles, tags, descriptions, image tags etc..? If you’re not sure then there’s

Benefits of this resolution – The answers to this may be obvious to those of you who are more experienced in working in the digital arena. However let me clarify just a few of these anyway. You will make sure that when a customer reads information on your site they are getting the best representation of your company they can have. You will have identified potential issues with your site that put customer off, therefore potentially improving performance and you will have a better grasp of your SEO and should be able to influence this more positively, which can increase the number of visitors to your site.

2/. Digital Performance Audit

So you have now looked at your site in detail. So what about the actual results you get from your online activity. How much do you know? Do you receive reports and give them a quick glance over then move on or do you manage it yourself to the best of your knowledge? If your online activity is profitable then great! However how much more profitable could it be with a bit of attention? Converted have talked to new clients come to us with their old agencies marketing reports, which paint certain pictures, but rarely show the full one. Think about the tv show catchphrase and its main game. They will show you a couple of panels, but there’s a big picture behind it you have to guess at.  They’ll show you overall return on investment from all channels but do they break them down accurately? Is it SEO or PPC driving performance? Is it brand terms or all new customers? There’s lots of information that you could use to improve your business in simply understanding what’s delivering what. So here are some things to look at in the New Year so you know you are getting the most out of the online side of your business.

Understand Revenue Sources – Sounds simple and a lot of you reading this will have a good handle on this. However there will be some who aren’t as sure. Some might not be able to answer questions such as ‘how much is your ppc campaign worth to the business in the last year?’ – Or – ‘How has your SEO performance improved in the last 12 months?

We would recommend you look at your PPC and SEO performance 2014 Vs 2015 and understand your headline KPI’s from each. Measure your whole ROI so the cost of advertising, management fee’s software and order fulfilment and factor all of it into a basic annual digital channel report.

You might be surprised to know one channel is propping up another. Maybe your brand is converting 90% of the new business and SEO is not delivering new opportunities to you or ppc is above the cost per acquisition target – By knowing the true performance of all of these digital mediums will you be able to effectively plan for the new year.

Identify gaps in your digital marketing – There are so many ways to connect with your potential audience that there is every chance you are not maximising your reach and potential. Whether its social media marketing, remarketing, email marketing, in app advertising, mobile specific marketing or a host of other avenues, explore your options and ensure you only set aside a budget you are happy to write off to marketing to then test these.

Audit Your Suppliers – It is very easy to just continue with what you are used to. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the standards remain in place for all concerned. Consider what you expect from a supplier and the reality and see how closely these things match. Are you getting regular communication, are they working in line with business goals? Are you getting the right data for them to make decisions about your business? Do they offer value for money? All these questions are valid and should be reviewed annually and expectations set for the coming year. As a service provider it’s only by challenging ourselves and being challenged we remain at the top of our game.

3/. Planning Your New Year

There are many, many clients who we have encountered over the years who will manage the internal plans for their business right down to the microscopic detail. Yet they will not take the time to plan how digital marketing fits into their annual plan. Some of you will have a good grasp of this and some of you might find this section useful. Either way let this serve as a reminder to get your business prepared for 2016!

Learn from the past –You will probably be reading thinking while reading that headline ‘obviously.’ You are right this should be fairly easy to do for any savvy business owner or director; however what level of learning is taken is a different matter entirely.

When looking at the past this is easily split into three questions:

What have I tried in the past and it has not worked?

What have I done before that’s worked?

What have I not yet tried to do?

Let us look at each of these in turn.

What have I tried in the past and it has not worked? – This can mean many things. What actions connected to your online presence and performance have you undertook in the last 12 months that have not yielded a positive result? This can include any service providers you use to do the work on your behalf. If you’re not sure ask them the question. What have they done that has not been so successful? Learning from what has not worked is often just as valuable as finding new things that could work. Compile a list of main headline actions that have been part of your digital activity and a few bullet points as to the potential reasons why they failed. This can often give insight into how to approach these same things differently.  Then are there things you have tried years ago that you avoided returning to because they didn’t work then? Could things have changed and could approaching these failures again differently yield different results? It can be simple problems up to more difficult issues for example did adwords not work for you in the past? Did you fail to increase organic traffic? Did you try image advertising and fail to see what part it played on overall sales? Did you have trouble tracking what’s important? Has an experience with a digital agency or a digital marketing medium left you reluctant to re-engage?

What have I done before that’s worked? –Again obvious to most. This is just about recognising success. Have you a list of what digital activity is yielding the best returns? Where are the opportunities for investment this coming year, which you know stand the best chance of further improving revenue with the least amount of risk? Are you going back and recognising successes and opportunities for further success in what you are doing already online? It is easy to focus on things that you feel need to change and not always as obvious to consider what things can be enhanced.

What have I not yet tried to do? – You know what you know and you don’t know what you don’t know…..so go find out! Compile a list of the options available to you on all digital channels in all your digital activity. Understand the pro’s and con’s the potential issues and the costs involved in all and prioritise them. This can provide the framework for a digital plan for the coming year.

Learn from the past…continued.

When we speak to a client for the first time we often ask about seasonality in their business and their industry.

While often times there are these trends and periods of peaks and troughs clients will often be so busy they do not prepare for these periods appropriately.  Look at this simple 3 step process to avoiding making the same mistakes.

Step 1 – Use your digital data to analyse what these trends mean to your online business. Does the Christmas period spike traffic for you as an eCommerce site; do the summer holidays hinder your businesses performance? – If so which months are worse? Which are the best months for which digital marketing medium? Take a small amount of time to plan these out into a calendar.

Step 2 – Then you can then consider what you will do different for these times to improve your performance overall. Look at what actions you could take that would positively affect these seasonal trends.

Step 3 – Once the last exercise is done then you go to the next stage and plan and calendar-in when you will implement these actions or begin implementation.

By doing this preparation then you are able to preempt any leaps or slumps in your digital activity and be organised, pro-active and prepared in your steps to minimise or maximise these times.

Conclusion

While none of what we have highlighted here is earth shattering or a revelation to most seasoned business owners or decision makers, hopefully there are some timely reminders and little nuggets that will help focus you on this vital part of any business while you are in the midst of running your own. Make sure you take advantage of the many opportunities there are out there, be even more involved with potential or existing customers through your digital activity and ultimately improve the performance of your business online.

If you want more information on Converted or you would like to discuss your own plans for next year then feel free to get in touch for an informal chat.

In the mean time good luck with all you endeavours and we hope you have a fantastic 2016.