Driving Better Sales Figures: How to Improve your Online Marketing Strategy

How to Improve your Online Marketing Strategy

Online marketing is the trend you can't ignore if you're looking to bump up your sales; it is the tried and truly proven magic you need to spice up your marketing and add more zeros to your sales figures. Digital marketers use these lines always — and of course, they sound tantalizingly true, but online marketing is not a magic strategy. While it promises great results, you'll need to create a strategy that works for you and invest in it to enjoy the benefits.

Many businesses are online today, but not many are making the most of their online presence. In this post, you'll learn a few tips to help you improve your online marketing strategy and ultimately grow your sales figures. See how to build a formidable digital marketing strategy for your business.

Importance of Having an Online Marketing Strategy

Online marketing or digital marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how your business will use online channels to achieve its marketing goals. In today's digitally oriented world, sales and marketing have taken an entirely different trajectory than traditional ways of doing business many years back.

Your online marketing strategy will typically define which online channels, digital marketing strategies, and how much you're going to invest in these strategies. Once this is in place, it is only a matter of time before you begin to realize the benefits. In case you haven't heard it elsewhere, keep in mind that online marketing requires as much diligence and planning (and maybe more) as traditional marketing to be successful. Be that as it may, if you use these tactics (assuming you already have an online marketing strategy in place), you'll experience an increase in your sales.

1. Define Your Sales Goals

Critical to the success of any marketing campaign is having clearly defined sales goals with which your sales teams can run. According to Harvard Business Review, “When 10–20% of salespeople miss goals, the problem might be the sales team. But when most salespeople miss, the problem is their goals.”

In essence, before launching an online marketing campaign, you must have done some research to understand the target market and determine which online channel would be most effective for reaching them. With your sales goals clearly communicated, marketing is easier.

2. Get Your Website Optimized for Different Channels

Before we go too far, let’s not forget the importance of optimizing your site for both desktop and mobile users. Especially as a significant number of users access the internet via mobile devices, it makes more sense that your website is designed to offer the best user experience. This will also help your SEO metric, as Google crawls and indexes sites based on the experience that visitors are likely to have when interacting with the websites.

If you put out a fantastic ad, but users find it difficult navigating your landing page content, the purpose may be defeated altogether. So confirm that your site is functioning optimally across various devices.

3. Use a Conversational Marketing Sales Funnel

Conversational marketing allows brands to engage prospects with real-time conversations that easily lead to more conversions. You don’t have to get actively involved in the process; if you incorporate conversational marketing into your sales funnel, you essentially make each customer’s journey with your brand as interactive as possible. One striking benefit of conversational marketing is that it shortens the sales cycle by providing real-time answers and solutions to customers.

That way, your sales team can focus on actual sales. An intuitive chatbot directs them to a human representative that takes up the conversation and closes the deal. This is why 79% of customers prefer real-time chats to waiting for customer support to send an email. A 24/7 chatbot can produce amazing results. Get more information about conversational marketing and how you can use it to grow your online marketing sales revenue.

4. Improve Your SEO

Here is it: the better your SEO, the more the traffic you pull to your site. And the more traffic you generate, the higher your chances of acquiring leads that’ll lead to paying customers. SEO is one of the biggest and most profitable online marketing strategies that any business can use today. The good thing about using SEO is that it is completely organic, that is, you retain your results for the long haul. Unlike pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, SEO is a gradual growth strategy that may not necessarily bring in paying customers immediately but will build a system that pays off massively in the near future. But, despite being organic, it doesn’t come on a platter either. You need to invest in your SEO strategy to get the results.

5. Use Paid Advertising as Often as Necessary

Just like SEO, paid advertising is another strategy that definitely works, only that the results reflect quicker with paid advertising. In this case, you pay to have your brand on the top of search engines results or to reach more audiences across social media channels. With this strategy, you can reach more prospects than you normally would with SEO or traditional marketing at a single shot. The only disadvantage here is that you pay per impression whether you make sales or not; as visitors click away on your ads, you’re paying.

To ensure that you convert as many of these visitors as possible, your website’s bounce rate must be very low; your content should be concise and convincing enough to keep customers around longer and also get to make purchases. But most importantly, the website must offer what people are looking for. Otherwise, the chances that they’ll bounce off as quickly as they click on your page is pretty high.

6. Offer Incentives for Every Online Purchase

In order to address people’s reluctance to buy online, e-commerce businesses may use incentives to drive sales. You may offer prospects discounts, a money-back guarantee, or a free trial without commitment to encourage more purchases. The chances that more people will buy after authenticating a product or service are higher. Many businesses report increased sales from offering free trials for a limited period.

7. Use Social Media to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Getting on social media is just as important when it comes to improving online marketing strategies. Fortunately, several of these channels exist today to help businesses grow online and attract more customers. Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are just some of the most widely used options today.

Many social media users also follow the brands they like on social media. New customers will also see your business as authentic if you have a strong online presence. Without a doubt, social media is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies in use today.

Final Thoughts

There are many effective ways to improve your online marketing strategy and drive better sales figures. The most important ones are creating a strategy based on the perceived needs of your target market and making their interactions with your brand conversational and seamless. For more insights and expert guidance on how to improve your online marketing strategy, we recommend using our expert advice at Mission HR.

Based on our digital marketing expertise, we help businesses successfully implement the best growth strategies for their businesses. Also, as leading partners in the PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing marketplace, we provide result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors, serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing.