Bridging the Gap in Digital Marketing

With the prominence and importance of online marketing in the marketplace today, the #1 question you may be asking about your company’s online efforts is, “am I doing it right?” Your website, social media, email marketing, online reputation, PPC, SEO, ….the list goes on and on…. are all so incredibly important right now that you may be losing sleep. If you are like most businesses you are counting every like, retweet, subscriber, click, follow, and positive Yelp review as an amazing personal victory! As well you should. These achievements are digital currency that can benefit your company in many ways. However, as these transactions become a bit more normative, you – especially if you are the owner of a terrestrial business – need to be thinking beyond your digital assets and begin asking, “how are my online activities translating to offline transactions?”

So many businesses tout their social numbers as a proof of actual currency. The truth is, if you are only interested in social numbers, there are a host of questionable services that will trade you “likes” and clicks for dollars. What results is a hollow following with no potential for any offline transactions. With every resource that you put into your digital strategy you should be able to gauge your ROI by placing equal value on having a prominent online presence AND on how it trickles down to your bottom line. Do not allow your online efforts to simply remain there on the web. Get them in the door!

Here are a few concepts that may help:

1. Try to devise ways to use your message to incentivise actual visits.

2. Focus more on the quality of your following and not just quantity. Active local followers are 10 times more likely to turn into a conversion.

3. Balance your “calls to action” to include both growing your following, as well as, nurture store visits. “Sign up for our newsletter” should hold equal footing with “Visit Us” or “Call Us.”

4. Pair your online offers with codes that can be redeemed in-store so that you can benchmark your message’s effectiveness. Use A/B testing to see which message generated more in-store traffic.

5. Make sure your online messaging is consistently worded and branded with any print/radio/tv so that uniform brand recognition exists with all of your outreach.

Of course, you should also be doing everything you can to get your in-store guests to engage with your online presence. We will save that for future posts.