Do You Need Digital Marketing?
I want to take you on a quick journey through your own mind. Yes. I’m trying to get in your head so let’s just pretend I’m in there right now.
Now that I’m in here…let’s pretend you have a date planned tonight and you have no idea where to go. You want to make sure it’s a “great” date. That means you are going to choose based on where it is, what kind of food they serve, the atmosphere; the overall feeling that you and your date will get from going to that restaurant.
Now, at one point in time, before the interwebs, you made your decision based on what your friends and family would say, fully and truly. There was a hot new restaurant you HAD to try. Or, you had a favorite spot that you’d always frequent. Old reliable. It served the best burger around and you knew exactly what you were getting every time you went.
And then, there was a point in time (post-internet but pre-social media) where you heard about a place and you did your homework on it, because you could. You “looked it up” online, while downloading music on Napster, went to the website, and evaluated based on the photos, the menu, everything you could consume and access. You formed a vision in your mind of what that restaurant experience would be like, then made a decision. You actually physically picked up the phone and fat-fingered the numbers to make a reservation.
Mobile and Local Search Growth
Soon after, local listings and social media took the world by storm, and you added “what do my friends think” to your deciding factors along with what the restaurant posted on their Yelp page.
Soon after that, mobile phones came out with location detection, and you made your decision based on all the prior variables, plus new factors, including how far of a drive it would be to get there and whether the phone number was easy to click on their website.
Maybe, if you looked up the website on your phone and the site “didn’t work on mobile” you kept looking. Hint hint.
Fast forward to today… Now, you can speak the word “restaurant” into your smart, i, Android, low-on-battery, mobile phone and get a result that shows restaurants in a 3 mile radius. You read reviews, filter by price, sort by food type, cost, whether it requires shoes and a shirt, then click to “follow” the restaurant on social media, visit their website, and book a reservation right through the phone.
Now, ready for me to blow your mind? This is the world as it exists for EVERY business. It’s not just restaurants. The customer service and business engagement experience (what it will be like to work with you, or buy from you) just like the “find my restaurant” experience can be felt and imagined online before a customer steps into your office.
And, since the digital portrayal of your business is what customers use to decide to buy your product or service, you should treat it with the same attention to detail as you do the sign outside your restaurant, the lobby of your office, or the way you speak to a prospect on the phone. It’s out there for people to see, and people are reading your website, talking about you on social media, and evaluating you as a business whether you like it or not.
“The first page of Google and what people say about you on social is your brand”.
~ Mitch Joel
Let’s go back to the restaurant for a second now, if you owned that restaurant, and you watched someone walk by, then look at your storefront, ask other customers what they thought of the experience and then just keep walking on by, what would you do? You might get help from someone that can change that. You’d want to change the experience of those passer-byers so they “turn into” your restaurant and don’t just walk on by. You’d start to test things, change the menu, work on your appearance, control what others are saying about you through being authentic.
Guess what! This is happening with your brand EVERY DAY, EVERY MINUTE, EVERY SECOND on your website, social media, and local listing pages.
What To Look For In A Digital Agency?
So, if you’re still with me (and haven’t started making dinner plans) then I hope you are starting to freak out a bit. And if you are savvy about it, your next question or curiosity might be “I wonder who is coming to my website and social media” or “I should Google my and see what we look like to prospects” or my favorite question “How many people are falling off when they see my site and deciding NOT to reach out or not even finding me at all?” I’m sure you’ve thought about this, but have you really done what it takes? Do you know where to start to get the measurement and insights you need to make the decisions you need to make?
THAT’S THE VALUE OF AN AGENCY. A good digital marketing agency assumes that you are not reaching your audience and that people are constantly not filling out your form, calling you, or checking out of your eCommerce store because of some factor they have yet to determine. We know what works and has worked for others and apply them to your digital marketing. We tinker. We test. We optimize and we keep tabs on what’s new, hot and fresh and keep your digital presence up to date.
A good digital agency CAN give data and insights as to who is coming and going, why they are leaving, which people that come convert more often and empower you with the tools to make changes that will increase the number of customers that do “turn in” to your business.
Let’s forget about restaurants for a second now. Let’s imagine that you are a business selling widgets. A widget is $1,000. You have to talk to a prospect to sell them one of your widgets, but not everyone you talk to buys a widget. Really, only half do (50%). So, for every 100 people you talk to, you’ll sell 50 widgets and make $50,000. With me?
Now, your website gets 100 visits a day, but not every one of those visitors fills out your lead form. Really, only 1 person does every day (1% conversion rate). Maybe because they can’t find what they are looking for, the image didn’t strike them, they weren’t convinced you were the right “fit” for them, or they didn’t like/notice/see the shade of green on the button linking to “Contact Us”. What if you changed some of those design factors such that 2 people out of 100 (2% conversion rate) a day filled out the Contact Us form. In a 30-day month, that means you’d have 30 more leads coming in. With half of those people resulting in a sale, do you realize that you would make another $15,000 per month selling your widgets (15 * $1,000)?
We “turned in” just one more person into your business, per day, and look at the impact it had. That’s awesome right?
Increased Traffic Leads to Profits
But wait…there’s more…
Now, since your website is a money-making machine, what if a digital marketing agency could increase the traffic to your website and go from 100 unique visits a day to a modest 150 a day? That means that you would get another lead a day (at a 2% conversion rate), which is another 30 leads a month. That’s another $15,000 a month.
Summing up, with a little bit of love and attention to the site, we’ve boosted your monthly sales by $30K. Ok, so maybe all of that isn’t profit. Maybe your gross profit percentage is 30%, so we really only made another $9K a month for you. But, the steps needed to make those improvements and get more traffic most likely are not going to cost you $9K.
All of this means that by not working with a Digital Marketing / Conversion Optimization Agency your opportunities likely just keep “walking on by”, meaning you are leaving new clients, more money browsing the web for your competitors to snatch right up. We know. It’s hard to care when you don’t see them coming and going, but we’d be happy to show you how much money you are leaving on the table. And even better, we’ll work with you to make the key edits to your website to increase your conversion rate and draw in some additional traffic.