It’s a Challenge To Market in The Digital World
Digital technologies have profoundly influenced the way we interact and socialize. Millennials have shown utmost interest with emerging technologies. Forcing business entities to implement complex marketing strategies to position their brand propositions and grab the customers attention. Albeit their efforts in making use of uninterrupted visual platforms like virtual reality to reinforce the brand value, there seems to have a linear growth in channel hopping.
Is Discounted Strategies A Threat to ROI
The raging war between online entities to grab hold customer’s attention have paved way for innovative digital strategies. In the virtual world, it’s hard to get a customers attention and harder to retain the same customer. Brands that throw high volume discount sales to convert a customer, need to revisit their strategies. Your ROI cannot be justified with a single sale. Most marketers dread the reality of a one time purchase. In most cases, you end up tagging a 40% discount, just to display the product. So that the CTR (Click Through Rate) will be high. It is so vapid to believe that an increase online traffic could result in sales.
The phrase “One Time Purchase” comes with a big challenge. You made an upfront investment hoping the customer will revisit the online store and will make multiple purchases, to the least down the line the customer will come back and make a purchase. On the contrary, your competitor will run a discount sale just a few days after your campaign gets over, or even directly competing with you at the same period, leaving you no option but to compete with the price. A business should operate on the return it generates. If it fails to do so then it is of primal importance to mull over the data and understand, WHY? Also, a discounted strategy could affect the overall profit margins, make sure that your sales volume will be high enough to offset the losses.
Recurring sales happen when you position your entity as a trustworthy domain which could offer a feasible solution to whatever puzzle your customer is trying to solve. When the customer thinks about the problem your solution should pop up in their mental realm. Through digital technologies, you can incentivize your customers with compelling discounts and offers, even inspire them to purchase your merchandise. If your objective is to make sure that the customer will revisit and will buy more of what you sell, then you need to foster a lasting relationship with the customer.
When comes to sales the intangible matters. People buy from entities they trust. A single sale is not going to build trust. A single sale might help you gather information about the customer. How you use the information to offer a personalized experience and build trust, depends on your business strategy.
Business Over Technology
Use technology as a means to do business. Digital transformation is a buzzword in the professional circle. With a soaring tech-savvy audience, it’s important that business organizations need to create a centralized arena to accommodate and integrate technologies that help a business grow. Caution to the word. Digital transformation doesn’t mean that you should integrate all available technologies, in that case, you end up with digital up-gradation. Your objective should be to identify technologies that encompass business transformation and help meet the market demand.
Technology plays an important role in today’s dynamic world. Digital enablers give you an added advantage to offer a hyper personalized digital experience to the end customer. Business entities need to innovate and reinvent their business strategies to meet the customer expectation and to establish a strong foot in the market. Technology should empower the business and help add value to the end customer.
Inbound Vs Outbound
Inbound Vs outbound, it strikes as a frequent question for most managers. Which channel to invest and what will be my ROI. Inbound tactics like high-quality content have shown great potential in generating quality leads. The value transaction without human interference has opened a new door to marketers. Natural learning AI driven chat-bots will be the right example. The cognitive systems are designed to take over the conversations and to deliver instant gratification. Fast reaction, no delays, help trigger a sense of caring among the customers. After all, it’s wise to hammer a rod when it is hot. A machine learning system could analyze data over a set period of time, recognize the hidden patterns and deliver the customer with specific information. Better than a lousy support team that inundates the lead with too much information, or responds after the lead leaves the system and seeks an alternate solution.
Note:- Your conversion rates can depend on multiple factors. For eg, a study conducted by Vtldesign revealed that adding an additional field (asking phone number) to a micro-conversion form has decreased their conversion by 47%. Use a concierge approach, invigorate prospects to give genuine information.
Support team plays an important role in an organization. Technology is great, but people don’t trust technology (mainly when it’s a bootstrap), that would be one great reason why people ask, Am I speaking to a real person (Occasionally you will hear it when you call customer support).
Good customer support will kindle confidence among people. Most startups have a dedicated support team who are well trained in the niche segment. Virtual technologies will help generate quality leads, your outbound team can reach out to these leads and solve their pain points. That’s how you deliver service to people. A proactive outbound team that reaches out to leads within the first few hours of the inquiry, tends to have a better chance of closing the deal.
Try to integrate your inbound and outbound strategies. Streamline the process and add value to the end customer. If the outbound strategy is, hey most likely we will drop you an email by end of this week, then guess what, Such a waste of time and effort.
Customers are Smart! They Expect more than a Quotidian Experience
A prosaic experience is not going to compel the customers to take an action. People are either smart or afraid to interact with most virtual platforms. With data privacy being retorted as a sensational subject, it important to be proactive and promise people how the information is used, and how the information will only be used to add value to people.
With a plethora of websites providing more or less the same product or service, it’s likely that people may forget your website, but it’s unlikely that they forget the experience you provide. Customer experience is of paramount interest. That is one good reason why we hear about the semantic web. If a person searches for a query “How To Sell Bags Online”, then the technology enabler will pull out the best article that meets the customer’s expectation? The article should enclose all actionable insights that help the end user to Sell Handbags Online. The content on your website should serve a purpose. A value transaction is necessary. Not that people are ready to invest 5 minutes to read an article and realize that it’s another bogus approach.
Customers are smart, they want to stay well informed. If your business entity fails to predict the need for a service and overlook the necessity to educate customers with the right content then you will fail to meet their expectation.
Parting Notes:-
The marketing landscape is becoming too challenging. A customer-oriented strategy is the best option to stay relevant to the market. Technology would have radically changed the way we perceive a brand. Albeit we remain the same. Our aspiration and preferences have mildly modulated. A decade ago it’s was cumbersome to track and inspire the customer. Credit goes to technology, in the digital world, your business will be able to offer a customized experience to the end user. What more to a customer than a personalized experience that delights him the most.
