As an online business owner, you work hard every day to survive in the competitive digital market. You will also follow a good business model and create marketing plans to grow your business. But are you still failing? Are you struggling to find your right audience? What is it that you need to learn and unlearn? Are you digitally well-connected with your customers?
There are 6 common mistakes that you could be committing and they could potentially kill your business online.
1. Not maintaining a customer database
If you don’t bother to maintain a customer database, you not only lose out on potential customers but also fail to lend a personal touch to your existing clients. For example, you may have interested customers taking the time to browse your site, but once they leave, that’s it. There’s no follow-up. One of the best ways to keep your customers engaged is capturing their database like email addresses and mobile numbers (if provided) and sending them regular updates about your store and fabulous discounts/offers you may have. Keep track of your ‘return customers’ who are good indicators of the service that you provide for your business.
2. Not being able to get customer leads via social media
If you are not having an online presence and connecting with customers through social media network, any slapdash efforts at increasing the visibility of your site will not have any substantial benefits. Expand your business network on platform like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google Plus by sharing your products, promoting offers or engaging audiences with product tutorials. A strong SEO package and having unique title tags for your text also helps in customer leads.
3. Not generating leads
A major issues faced by online businesses today is unable to generate enough leads. If you are not considering unique ways to generate leads, you might reach a point where business expansion becomes difficult. Various ways through which you can generate leads are social media networking, extracting email and having permission to contact them, using referrals, spreading the word in local community, sharing product videos and tutorials on social media and so on.
4. Not being able to launch an e-commerce store
If you are still relying on phone to connect with customers or have a website for business purposes but not an e-commerce store, you are not meeting most of your potential customers. You need a bigger space. Your customers need a marketplace to view your products, choose the ones they like, shuffle items in the shopping cart, use a secure payment gateway and keep a track of the order.
5. Not getting referrals
Are you dealing with the same set of clients from more than 6 months? Your mistake is you’re not interacting with customers or spreading the word in the community to get some referrals. You need to do some manual work here. Send emails in your circle and request them to refer your business. You can do the same with indirect marketing on social media. Another good way to get referrals is to offer some discount to your customers when they refer a friend. This way your business will get some attention and credibility also.
6. Not being able to protect my computer data
You might think, duh! … I don’t do this! But the fact is at times we save important information about our business like account figures, customer database and product lists on the computer but do not backup the files. You never know when bad luck strikes and you lose precious data. Always store your data in more than one place and protect it from anti-virus.
If you do not commit these 6 common mistakes, you can become digital-ready in the market and stay ahead in building a concrete online presence.
Introducing 6DOT Digital Ready Method to Assess your Digital Readiness!
Cloud, mobile, social and big data–these mega trends are going to transform businesses big and small over the next decade. Being digital is an equalizer that allows small businesses to compete with the larger corporations in a very real way. On the other hand, many small businesses are struggling even to set up basic technical infrastructure to support their businesses.
Despite the fact that two-thirds of the jobs in the United States are generated by small businesses and online buying is increasing 10% year over year, 67% of small businesses today are not transacting online. To capitalize on the growing ecommerce movement, small businesses need to embrace digital, to provide customers with alternatives bundled with the shopping conveniences they demand. Boston Consulting Group conducted research with 4,000 small businesses and classified the businesses into laggards, followers and leaders. While laggards increased profitability by 3%, leaders increased profitability by 14%. Despite the significant difference in profitability, the difference in IT spend between the laggards and leaders was only $400 dollars a year.
Inspired by Boston Consulting research, 6DOT digital ready method was developed by Meylah.com and International Media Partners to holistically assess the digital readiness of small businesses in the areas of technology, ecommerce and marketing. The methodology allows every business to develop a personalized game plan to develop a digital ready businesses.
The 6Dot Digital Readiness method is a holistic approach to assessing digital readiness for your business. Digital readiness means that you and your business have the ability to:
Attract new customers
Generate new revenue
Remove business process inefficiencies
Protect business and customers
6DOT digital ready method was designed to help businesses to achieve the following goals:
To easily understand digital state of your business
To quickly identify priorities to become digital-ready
To strategically invest time and resources
To effectively grow your business and reach new customers
To effortlessly build additional income stream
The digital-ready report card you receive will help you build your plan to make your business ready to attract new customers and revenue online.
Start your free assessment today!
Attend the Handmadeology Digital Ready Clinic on May29th to develop a personalized digital ready game plan for your business.
© Guest for Handmadeology, 2015. |
Permalink |
No comment |
Add to
del.icio.us
Post tags: