Using Your Website to Help Your Stakeholders Win
Using your website as a marketing hub that helps you and your audience win means understanding both your own KPIs and those of your target market. For our purposes here, your brand “winning” means securing business and advancing as a leader in your vertical. Your clients/customers “win” when your product delivers for their needs. Ultimately, putting together a winning streak leads to a greater share of your marketplace, and your website can help! In this installment of our series, we will identify some easy ways to win online, focusing on how your website can serve as a central point of connection and promotion for your brand.
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Organize Your Talent Network
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Using Better Web Development to Win with Your Website
Understand your competition
Consider what your users ultimately need to achieve and what their existing options are. If you’re an online clothing retailer and a customer needs to make a return, do they need to call your place of business during operating hours or can they start the process from your website? For better or for worse, massive online retailers like Walmart or Amazon have redefined how customers seek support from businesses. Your brand may not be on the same scale, but your audience probably has the same set of expectations. Fortunately, thanks to automation, features that make things easy for your customers generally save your business time and effort as well.
Automate critical internal chokepoints first
Overhauling your entire communications process is a daunting task that is better done piece by piece. Look internally at where you are spending the most time and create tools that promote efficiency and recover value currently left on the table. Once a solution is developed, move on to the next choke point and keep repeating this process.
Design a User Experience that Wins More Business
Guide your audience through their buyer journey
We talk a lot about providing actionable steps for your website’s visitors. Determine what matters most in their decision-making process and deliver checkpoints that advance them toward making a decision. If your portfolio seals deals for you, make sure it’s the first place someone can go when they visit your site. If it’s your flexible deal structures and your goal is to get prospects on the phone, give them every opportunity to call. Having great features has little impact if they are buried on your site.
Create Content that Produces Brand Loyalty
Express how your success benefits others
As you grow, what can customers and clients expect? Will they get even more great things from you or will they be forgotten as you move on? If what’s good for you is also good for them, they’ve got an extra incentive to continue working with you. Using your blog to share organizational news gives your audience an inside look into what their business helps achieve outside of their internal goals. Consider where your brand values overlap with those of your clientele and create deeper connections with your audience through common ground.
Offer online exclusives to drive traffic to your site
Online exclusives can be discounts, limited release products, or anything else that drives traffic to your marketing hub website. Your email list, social media channels, and advertising can all promote these deals, which further incentivizes your following to pay attention to your updates so they don’t miss out. Tune into your cost of acquiring new customers and think of discounts as a marketing investment in your brand rather than a dent in sales revenue. Rewarding your loyal customers for their attention will continue to serve as the backbone of your brand.
While your brand is competing within its vertical for a share of the marketplace, successfully meeting internal KPIs can take several forms. As sales go up, are you simply taking business from other brands or are you giving more to the marketplace than they can currently find elsewhere? As all marketers know, there are more competitors than ever. Long-term success comes from giving your customers a reason to stick with you. Brands can avoid churn by ensuring their audience feels like they are already a part of the winning team–the best way to do so is to make it true!
Chris LaFay