Digital, Ecommerce and Successful Business Growth
The post pandemic bounce is facing significant headwinds, with global supply chain issues, labour shortages, and the impact of the war in Ukraine. On top of this customer behaviour is shifting with increased environmental awareness, a desire for local sourcing and changing customer needs as consumers and businesses switch to a world of hybrid working.
The result is that customers are looking to interact with brands and manufacturers in new and different ways. Digital ways to be exact!
During the pandemic many companies enhanced their digital footprint. From launching social ecommerce campaigns, to investing more time and money in PPC advertising, and transforming websites into ecommerce hubs to respond to a world of closed retail and work from home restrictions. The result is a busier digital marketplace, making it more difficult and far more competitive for your brand to be seen and heard. Consequently, there has been a huge uplift in digital investment the world over.
So, why should you join the digital movement?
Your company website is a key tool to allow your customers to interact with your brand, guiding the customer journey, providing interaction, information, and a clear route to purchase. When customers visit your website, they leave a “digital footprint” allowing you to analyse their behaviours on site, what drives interaction, and critically, what drives sales. Building a strategy that links all digital channels with other, more traditional, sales channels supports these customer needs and increases the opportunities for growth. Investment in good website design should be seen as a necessary business investment and not just a discretionary marketing item.
When developing your website, you will quickly be faced with the term “search engine optimisation” or SEO for short – Often seen as a “dark art” driving people to your website. As Gary-Eoghan, Head of SEO at Loud Mouth Media points out, the devil really is in the detail with SEO:
- Make sure you analyse what keywords are actually converting for your brand: Some will drive traffic, others will be less successful. Tools such as Google Search Console can help with this in identifying the success of different keywords for web searches.
- Website performance, including loading speed, is one of the key ranking factors Google openly talks about. A website that is slow to open will discourage customers and result in the site being overlooked by Google and other search engines. In other words, your potential customer may leave your site if it’s too slow, or they may not find it at all.
- Make sure your Meta Titles & Descriptions make sense and are aligned with each other. We have all clicked past the sites where the search for say contact details takes you to the products page. This happens when the titles and descriptions are misaligned making it impossible for Google, and other search engines, to correctly include the listing.
Ultimately selecting a digital partner that can enhance your customers journey, whilst ensuring that the SEO and technical aspects of the site will maximize your visibility on the web, will be key to the success of this part of your digital journey.
But will a great website on its own equal successful business growth?
Whilst for a small number of businesses the customer may be happy to interact and buy from one single ecommerce website, most customers are more nuanced. Ecommerce may satisfy a segment of the customer base, but other customers may be seeking a more service driven or consultative approach. Building this thinking into developing your sales channels and your digital strategy will enable your company to maximise both sales and information on your customer’s needs.
Let’s look at a manufacturer of garden sheds as an example. The pandemic has increased demand for garden buildings for leisure, garden offices, and general home improvements. Each customer will have different needs and requirements, and the garden shed manufacturer will need to be able to meet all of these needs and more if they are to maximise sales. This is where your website becomes a central hub for an omnichannel digital strategy.
What do we mean by this?
The website needs to be able to direct customers the right garden shed, information on the shed, show reviews, and give options for delivery and installation at a minimum. Other considerations are how do B2B buyers access products? And how are partners and the services they offer shown to customers?
However, having a website optimised for conversions won’t make a business stand out. The best way to drive traffic is through other active digital channels such as:
- PPC Advertising – With the Google Display Network getting in front of 92% of internet users, PPC or ‘Pay per Click’ advertising is an exceptional way to drive digital growth. It can also offer 200% Return on Investment – the data doesn’t lie! This allows you to target audiences based on key words or search terms a customer might use on Google, and can allow you to track brand terms or competitor’s brand terms.
- Social Advertising – Social media platforms have huge audiences, allowing you to refine audience targeting by interests, hobbies, demographics, and previous websites visited.
This is only scratching the surface, the digital landscape and potential within it is huge. However, the UK is one of the most mature digital markets in the world and competition is fierce, and not everyone is able to harness the power of digital right, but if you can, you too can experience growth and benefit from the data that digital growth drives. With the right digital partner it can feel a lot more achievable.
In conclusion, digital sales channels and marketing should be a key element of all business growth plans in 2022. Building a great Ecommerce website is vital, but not enough to ensure success, you have to drive traffic to it too. Otherwise, you’ll be missing sales potential and more importantly providing opportunities for competitors to take your customers by focussing on their new and different needs.
For more advice and expertise on how to optimise your website or digital channels, and to link these to your overall sales approach for growth – Loud Mouth Media in partnership with Where Now Consulting can help.
About Loud Mouth Media Ltd: Loud Mouth Media are a multi-award winning Digital Marketing Performance Agency, specialising in PPC, Paid Social, SEO, Digital Strategy, Performance Creative, Ecommerce and Video Marketing. Get in touch with their team today to discuss your digital performance in 2022!
About Where Now Consulting Ltd: Where Now Consulting is a management consulting company that focuses on helping its clients to grow and compete. The company offers a range of consulting services, including sales and channel strategy and management, customer experience development business turnaround and performance improvement, market entry strategy, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and alliances partnerships Get in touch with our team today to discuss growing your sales in 2022.