How Online Businesses Can Counter the Economic Downturn
With all the recent news stories surrounding the British economy, how can an online business give themselves a brighter future?
The following Top 5 tips focus on how businesses can work smarter to survive these tough times. If anything, these simple steps just highlight where you can cut back on the fat and make your businesses learner, meaner and ready for the battle ahead.
Work Smarter
Advertising on search engines such as Google is a great way of encouraging online traffic to your site, but simply doing it is half of the work. Indeed, constant monitoring of your online activity is the key to creating an optimised well oiled form of advertising. Therefore, check that you are getting return on your investment and that you are generating enough revenue to justify the advertising spend. If you are not, then perhaps cancel any poor performing campaigns or alternatively lower your spend.
Furthermore, it may be a good idea to review all pages — including your landing pages — you are sending customers to. This is in addition to optimising your content to ensure you are meeting the needs of your visitor; otherwise they will just bounce away.
Quick wins
The online world can change on a daily basis and a lean company that works efficiently is vital when keeping up with the changes. So, take time out with just yourself or key staff, and re-review your internal processes. It can have surprising results, such as realising new opportunities, streamlining a process or noticing gaps that need to be filled. In fact, it could be an hour or two well spent if you end up saving money, as well as potentially making some.
Relevant marketing
Now’s not the time to waste your money with too much broadcast communication. Where you can, try to ensure that you are marketing the right products, with the right messages and to the correct audience. For example, if you are sending promotional emails, ensure that if they click-through on any links, the landing pages are relevant, or you may run the risk of losing your audience.
What’s more, it can prove beneficial to test your messages, including the subject line and the promotional messages in the email, as well as the landing pages. It is therefore good to know that there are free tools out there to help you perform basic A/B tests to more complex arrangements. Test with a small group and just build upon your experience; it can make all the difference to the bottom line.
Advertise for free
As unlikely as it sounds, it is possible to advertise for free. Writing press releases and articles are a great way of raising your profile and directing traffic to your site. There are a plethora of free press release websites and portals that let you share any new related stories, which can help you to distribute your message as soon as possible. But make sure your release is newsworthy and interesting, otherwise it can come across as chest beating and boring, which as a result will lead to no one paying attention to your message.
Furthermore, why not consider the latest social media channels? If it is relevant to your target audience, it may be a good idea to promote your brand on social networking sites by displaying a profile page, or alternatively create an attention grabbing video and upload it onto a suitable social media website. As it goes, it is important to be as creative as possible to help stay ahead of your competition.
Hug and hold
Increasing your customer base should always be at the forefront of your mind, but existing customers are worth their weight in gold. If you have customer data at hand, it can prove a lot cheaper to advertise to existing customers rather than attracting new ones. As such, encourage repeat orders from them but if it’s proving too difficult, why not test an incentive with a small group, such as money off your next purchase.
In fact, from performing such a tactic it is possible to benefit any type of product you are offering, whether it be furniture, display stands, or your everyday convenience products. In addition, you can use those customers to help further build your customer base. For example, try a member get member scheme, offering customers a reward for recommending you.
Either way, from following such important tips, it is possible to reduce the affects created by the recent economic difficulties, whilst also creating new opportunities for your business; regardless of the type of business you own.
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Victoria Cochrane writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.
