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On May 06, 2022 by Josh Arrowsmith
Explore more: Experiences & Industry Insights | Case Studies | Testimonials
There are many ways that a company can choose how it is going to manage its digital presence on various online platforms, and depending on which crucial decisions you make, these choices can often lead to lasting effects on a business’ brand, such as its level of exposure, customer awareness, and even business to customer engagement.
Before you begin researching new ways in which you can improve your business’ digital presence, first just take a minute to think if YOU have ever been guilty of making some of the following digital marketing errors that countless companies across the globe will have also made; Not taking full advantage of the no-brainer opportunities, getting involved with the latest trends/strategies because you assume that there is limited chance of pulling it off, taking yourself out of the running against your competitors before the race has even begun by presenting an out-of-date version of your brand to the world?
Our experience has shown that by reflecting on the dos and don’ts of digital marketing, and by knowing how to capitalise on the right opportunities, these tips are usually the steppingstones to what can inevitably lead to a more credible and authoritative website, which in turn, will help generate a larger customer/client roster. This collective following would therefore be subject to viewing occasional, yet extremely impactful email marketing campaigns, as well as receiving social media posts, updating your audience of any beneficiaries of being a customer, client, or partner to the company. These tactics are just the foundation of what truly constitutes as valuable digital marketing techniques.
To find out more, learn how we have embraced our digital side over the past two years. Read our Experiences & Industry Insights.
The internet plays a pivotal role in our lives. And the pandemic only accelerated our reliance on digital information, with those habits being further cemented by remote working in most online sectors. This is why digital communications have become an essential part of our working lives. New technologies have changed how we interact with people and businesses and has completely transformed our ideologies when it comes to always expecting an efficient service online. There go, we all want immediate answers to questions, solutions to problems, and products to our door. In response to this, we took a critical look at Finishing Line’s digital footprint and had to accept that we had some work to do in modernising how we were putting ourselves out in the world.
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Like many businesses, we set up our website some years ago, which was then left untouched, and wasn’t being updated. Suddenly realising how much research was taking place online, and how unlikely it was that we would feature in this online research because of our poor digital standing, we took charge. And we are so glad we did!
Whether you are a B2B or a B2C company, online research before purchase or even research before making an enquiry is now commonplace. Why have a 20-minute sales conversation when you could do some online research? And from a company perspective, why give up 20 minutes to a prospective caller who hasn’t yet had the opportunity to evaluate whether you’d be a good match, or who is just gathering data for the decision maker?
The expectation that a salesperson will clinch the deal in the first phone call is long gone. Due diligence means that there is much more information gathering that takes place, which is often best done via internet research. Ensuring that you are going to show up in specific searches that your potential customers might be browsing for is important. This level of visibility often comes at a price, by purchasing keywords through sites such as Google Ads, which offer companies to invest in PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns. Some businesses in this case delegate a particular budget towards purchasing keywords in order to show up on Google’s first results page, while making sure they are as close to Google’s search bar as possible.
This can benefit any company who utilises its web sources, by drawing in as many potential customers as they can, by enticing them to click on their website link. This is what is referred to in digital marketing terms as leaving impressions upon those who are browsing for a particular service or product. (Each impression constitutes to how many times your website’s ad is shown on a Google results page), which, if executed correctly through Google Ads, can be a lethal digital marketing tool that will increase monthly acquisitions, which will generate a higher number of conversions and sales.
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Aside from offering access to compelling information about your company, its capabilities, sensibilities and scope, your digital footprint also offers up social proof.
If you are active on social channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, etc., you can connect with prospects and develop a relationship with them, as well as proactively engaging with potential leads. Sharing informative content helps to ensure that prospects and customers have an up to date understanding of the business, while making it both engaging and enjoyable.
This level of transparency in showing your existing and potential customers exactly what the company does, as well as its aims for the future, significantly increases the chance that it will reach more of the intended audiences. Social platforms also provide information for proactive prospecting, enabling you to seek out and connect with people whose profile offers some commercial benefit for you – from prospects to strategic partners, referrers, and even potential employees.
To demonstrate how effective these techniques can be, at Finishing Line, we adopted sharing content on our LinkedIn profile, and the responses we were given was insightful and showed a huge impact in customer and internal/external company connections. By making all of our platforms more naturally coherent between our website, email newsletters, LinkedIn profile and other sites such as our Vimeo and YouTube channels etc., these consistencies throughout Finishing Line’s branding sparks up a considerably larger conversation on a much broader spectrum.
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As previously mentioned within this article, getting into the habit of producing and sending out emailing newsletters using creative services such as Mailchimp, Eshots, eblasts etc., can pay dividends in getting your audience engaged on a monthly basis (or even better, engaging with your consumers on a weekly basis).
Expanding upon this, by creating a branded template on a platform like Mailchimp and sharing information with your rationale of customers and clients couldn’t be a more effective way of drawing in new faces, and like any other company, as much as it is a crucial objective in trying to convert as many new and interested customers to the business as physically possible, there is also an enormous amount of responsibility and importance as a businessperson in being able to remain focused and attentive with your existing customers – keeping them just as interested.
In this case, Mailchimp allows its users to copy over their own personalised database of professional contacts, i.e. every individual or company that is, and at any point was involved within your business, and transfer those contacts instantaneously into your tailored emailing list.
Releasing thought-provoking material that is designed solely to captivate and impress your audience must never be over-looked. It’s not about quantity in regard to sending out emailing newsletters, it is all about diligently catering the right information directly to the type of audience you have, and curating it from a standpoint of addressing their needs and interests, answering their potential questions, adding a message that comes across in a more personal manner, and as the creator of the piece, just remember to imagine reading it from your audience’s perspective on the other side of the screen.
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By updating our digital presence, not only are we becoming more visible, constantly improving our brand perception, and demonstrating our capabilities as a thriving multichannel fulfilment company, we are also tracking our valuable customer data.
By recording and managing the analytics from our customer data, which is extracted from our website, email marketing campaigns, and social media channels, we’re able to deep dive into integral insights that enable us to make data-led decisions.
These insights can be used to define new services, assess the potential of new products, attribute budgets to the top-performing acquisition channels, show leads to be followed up, and much more.
There is still a lot more we are currently working on in our ambitions to constantly introduce new interest to our services. Our priority from the beginning has been to invest in growing our team of specialists to ensure that over the coming years we’re taking greater advantage of the opportunities in this space. As each day presents a new challenge, whether it be continuously keeping up with newly introduced digital trends or finding new ways online that are totally accessible for the purpose of better promoting the company, Here at Finishing Line, we are proud to impart this knowledge, especially if it’s educating and informing customers and other businesses alike.
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Hopefully, this article has given you the confidence and the knowledge to get started on your journey towards improving your company’s digital presence. Should you have any questions about the above article or require assistance in planning your digital change, we would be more than happy to talk you through the experience we’ve gained since taking control of our digital presence.
If you like what you’ve read within this article and would like to find out more about our services, feel free to contact us today to see how we can scale up your business. We can even talk you through the experience we’ve gained since 1987 to see if we’d be a good fit for your next project in ecommerce fulfilment, returns management, contract packing or warehouse management.
Please get in touch with us, send a live chat message, or call +44 (0)1268 498 950
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Head of Commercial & Innovation
