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3 key elements of a smart Digital Strategy for Small Businesses

5 MIN READ

A website is the foundation of any Digital Strategy. Many small businesses just open a website and leave it at that, but like a brick-and-mortar store, appearance and build is everything. It affects customer experience, and business activities. A smart Digital Strategy ensures that customer’s experience is optimized and business is not lost to competition. The key elements of a smart Digital Strategy are: Marketing, Conversion and Retention. This is a cycle because the last element leads to the first, and over and over. A successful Digital Strategy ensures the cycle is never broken.

The main objective of the first element of a smart Digital Strategy - Marketing, is to attract visitors to a business’s website through various online marketing activities. Online marketing is the use of the internet to reach potential customers. It is a broad field that includes various mediums such as email, advertising, social media, search platforms, and more. Online marketing is on the rise and marketers must keep up with how various channels work, to effectively market their products or services. Capturing customers’ attention has become increasingly challenging as they are inundated with competing ads.

Small businesses have to strike a balance between marketing costs and results, because of their limited budget. At Stacked Digital, we have developed a digital marketing strategy focused on analytics that ensure maximum results, click here to launch your winning digital marketing campaign.

Visitors to a business’s website are said to be at the top of the sales funnel. A website is a business’s online reception and gives the customer their first impression of the business. It determines if a visitor will remain on your digital premises. A website should represent a brand, product, and/or service in a clear and memorable way. It should be fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to use.

The next element of a smart Digital Strategy is Conversion, its main objective is to create a frictionless customer experience from the top of the Sales funnel to when a purchase is made. Today’s customers have been trained by Amazon and other big businesses to have a low tolerance for friction. Friction occurs whenever a customer experiences a roadblock or delay on their way to a purchase on your website. Examples include slow loading pages, inadequate information or visuals, inability to make a purchase or book an appointment on the website, etc. Oftentimes, the website of small businesses redirects their visitors to third-party apps to make a purchase or lists a phone number to call.

Customers are looking for one-click buys and websites that do not provide this convenience are leaving money on the table. For example, a restaurant that redirects its customers to Uber-eats to order their food, risks losing that customer to competition on the platform. A smart Digital Strategy would employ third-party apps as a sales funnel, thus customers from Uber-eats would be encouraged via discounts, to make repeat purchases from the business’s website.

It is imperative that businesses keep visitors on their website until they complete their purchase. If your website does not include a food-order or booking platform, click here to get one that is fast, easy to use and optimized for mobile.

Most business website end their relationship with a visitor after a purchase is made, and even when the visitor makes a repeat purchase, they are seen as new visitors. This strategy is not only expensive to the business, it also prevents the business from maximizing their share of the customer’s wallet. A smart Digital Strategy seeks to collect as much customer information as possible. Customers’ payment information can be saved through trusted payment partners, so that the customer does not have to input their payment details every time they make a purchase. This significantly improves the customer’s experience on that business’s website. Also, data can be collected to understand the customers’ preferences and interests. This will significantly impact the success of future marketing campaigns and ensure that the business is maximizing its share of the customers’ wallet.

This leads us to the last element of a smart Digital Strategy - Retention, the main objective here is growing a loyal army of Brand advocates. Customers are the best ambassadors of a brand; they advocate for their favorite brands through online reviews and referrals. Recent studies show that customer reviews influence consumer decisions and strengthen a business’s reputation. It is often said that customer reviews and revenue go hand in hand. Over 70% of online shoppers are more likely to engage with businesses that have positive reviews. Furthermore, they play a significant role in your online visibility in search rankings. Thus, your customer base could be a significant source for your sales funnel as their reviews are more likely to bring new visitors to your website.

A major challenge for small business owners is their inability to execute a smart Digital Strategy, because their time is focused on running their business. Hence, most small businesses often have a dis-jointed Digital Strategy in place often focused on digital marketing, or employ different people to manage different elements of their Digital Strategy. This method even when they produce positive results, do so at a significantly higher cost. This is why Stacked Digital – a one-stop shop Digital Agency was launched in Toronto, to enable small businesses have an effective and smart Digital Strategy in place to grow their business, by the use of powerful and unique technology solutions. Contact us today .