As you scroll down the analytics pages, all metrics point to the positive end of the scale, some even are better than you’d ever hoped for. Traffic to your (or your client’s) website is at an all-time high, ads receive good engagement, the clicks are there, the banners appear at all the right places, yet somehow, you’re not closing any sales. Or, way less than anticipated.
What’s the problem – you ask? You’re doing everything by the book, still, the sales numbers remain the same, no revenue increase, nothing.
The Nature of the Game
As a marketer or a business owner, you’ve probably noticed that the ways of closing a sale has dramatically changed over the course of the last five years. Heck, some of you might say that closing a deal this week is different from last month – and you’d be right.
The changes in the digital realm are fast-paced with new algorithms, methods, and technological possibilities you either have to embrace or tackle.
Just a few years ago, a well-placed and written Facebook ad with a few great pictures was enough to make you money, get new clients, or raise brand awareness. Today, these simple tactics yield little to no results, even though the pictures are still top-notch, the copy is first-class and everything else is optimized.
Times have changed. Social platforms are getting more sophisticated and rigorous when it comes to giving out ad space, the criteria is constantly getting higher and higher, not to mention, there are probably tens, hundreds, if not thousands of other companies from your niche, fighting the same battle as you for said virtual ad space.
How can you emerge from this gigantic melting pot and reach your customers?
The era of the digital ecosystem
If you’re already familiar with us, you know that we always talk about the importance of creating a digital ecosystem for your clients and/or your business. This means, creating a digitally optimized environment for your brand, in which your website, social media channels and other virtual channels of communication are all optimized to help your brand grow and enable your audience to reach you and to eventually purchase your products.
In order to create the optimal ecosystem, you need to put in the effort in SEO, ad management, web development, social media marketing, blog writing, content marketing, email marketing, or at least a few of them.
Now, we’re getting closer to the infamous Omni-Channel Approach we’ve talked about earlier.
Let your audience find you, and put them in charge – anywhere, anytime
With creating an optimized digital ecosystem, you can really start to focus on things that matter – brand development and your audience. We’re not saying that you can’t put in effort in building your brand and reaching out to your customers without a balanced digital ecosystem, however, it’s more fruitful and effective with it.
When everything is optimized and in perfect harmony, chances are that more people will notice your brand, more of them will become followers, and eventually, more will purchase from you. However, driving those sales is easier said than done.
You see, there’s one element missing from most strategies most agencies and entrepreneurs implement. They are all experienced when it comes to driving traffic to the site, yet, out of those numbers, only a fraction will decide to buy. Why is that?
- First of all, they aren’t driving sales, they’re driving traffic. There’s a huge strategic difference in generating visitors to a site and customers.
- Second of all, they rely more or less on a one-dimensional sales strategy. Instead of exploiting and combining every asset to close a sale (the Omni-Channel factor), most marketers and business owners treat every platform as a different sales funnel.
- Lastly, they aren’t ready to sell when the customer is ready to buy. This way, it’s not the customer who’s in charge.
To put all this into perspective, the Omni-Channel Approach uses all your assets and platforms, leveraging what they have to offer and they focus on closing the same deal or deals.
In practice, this would include a well-timed pop-up that asks potential customers to join your newsletter and later on, targeting them with automated, carefully-crafted, and personalized emails that encourage them to purchase your products for a certain discount in specific time periods.
Or, a Facebook ad that takes them to a landing page to download an eBook. This then engages another automated email sequence giving them further info about your brand and services with well-placed CTAs to encourage your prospects to reach out.
All this is a well-mapped out customer journey with carefully crafted ads that lead the customers to their preferred channels of communication, upping the chances of making a purchase even more.
It can also be a Facebook post with trigger-words initiating a messenger communication with the prospect if they comment with said trigger words.
The point here is to create an environment where your prospects feel that they are in charge. That they were the ones who found you, who discovered your brand’s story, who engaged with you and who finally decided to close a deal with you (make a sale).
The focus of the Omni-Channel Approach is to target your prospects from every possible angle with the same message in a way that appears to be their own discovery, and not a fully-blown, aggressive campaign.
What’s the extra benefit?
A strategy that makes good use of all your channels and the best of what modern technology has to offer (automation, for example), you can finally tip the scale from traffic-driving to sales-closing.
With the right approach:
- You’ll still drive traffic to your site
- The visitors will become your subscribers/followers
- From subscribers/followers, they become your buyers
- Buyers will eventually become brand ambassadors, helping you build awareness and sell even with less effort.
Drawbacks?
No system is perfect, however, with the omni-channel approach the only drawbacks are mostly human errors. Creating campaigns, landing pages, visuals, copies, automated workflows can be an overwhelming job if done by only one person, and as such, chances are that key features won’t be exploited to the limits. Also, there’s the potential danger of not implementing the strategy or pieces of software as required. Luckily, if you have an entire team handling all this, the error margin drastically decreases.
Finishing thoughts
As you can see, this approach relies on cutting-edge technology and time-tested sales tactics. It perfectly blends your entire digital ecosystem together with proven strategies, enabling you to build brand awareness and close deals at the same time.
In other words, it gives you the best of what digital marketing has to offer at the moment and lets you integrate all your assets with also enabling you to still tell your brand’s story.
If you need help with creating your own omni-channel approach, feel free to reach out to us by scheduling a free consultation.
