I am sometimes talking about conversion and social media. I wrote a post that I called Online Marketing Matrix a couple of months ago where I posted this model. This model works well for ME. I suspect you can use it as a starting point in your discussion about where to go next. This post will explain in further detail how I think about this model and hopefully inspire to some discussion in the comments 🙂
1. Using The Online Marketing Matrix
The model is meant to help companies visualize the next step they have to take in order to increase the revenue in their online visitors. Some reacted to this model by saying that SEO is indeed a very profitable way of making loads of money. I completely agree with that, and I feel like I have to explain the model in some further detail in order to make it make sense.
Most companies that sell something on their website should start out by trying to generate some traffic to it. If you have no customers then you probably don’t have any e-mails (if you haven’t bought or scraped them) and you most definitively don’t have any relationships with your customer base online. Thus your only option is SEO and SEM. That’s why this box is the starting point of this model.
The bottom line however is that if you learn more about your customers behavior and you use that to build relationships then you can give them offers that will be received built on that relationship. If such irrational values that trust or relationships build are added to your product, then you will also be able to increase the revenue on each sold product as it is valued more than a competitors product by the receiving customer. yey…
2. SO, what’s the next step
Well that is what this model is about. If you have high conversion, then you should probably turn to working on customer trust in order to get a lot of return customers. If you have a strong relationship with your customers then but you have problem with revenue, then you should work with making them return to the shop. (DUH… that’s a no brainer… well… are they just loyal to your brand or are they buying often? Do you have the right products for them to have a reason to buy often? etc etc.)
If you are running customized e-mail campaigns and SEO landing pages, then you should probably look to revenue and loyalization of your customers. What I mean with this is that you should probably introduce some kind of loyalty program for frequent visitors, commentators, reviewers etc.
Through increased interaction and transparency you will both make the important and active customers loyal whilst showing other customers that they can trust you as they can see the reactions other users have exerted on your stuff. So… now to some examples.
3. Increasing your Revenue through SEO
The best way to increase your revenue from SEO/SEM activities is to optimize your web pages so that the most relevant traffic reach the most relevant page. That way you will increase your volumes of traffic at the same time as you are building a highly usable website. The next step is to look at conversion. You do this by analyzing the traffic and where it drops of in the sales funnel.
4. Learning Behaviors adding e-mail to your SEO model
Well, you get some data from the keywords the visitor come to your website through, but you don’t really know that much about your customer. The best way to get some more information about who they are and what they like is to collect their e-mail address and start analyzing what links they click.
Equally you can learn this information by engaging in Social Media. That way you can analyze how different users are interacting with your content, and with each other when it comes to your products and brand.
Once you manage to establish a relationship to the user through one of these options you can also learn how they behave in given circumstances. By knowing how they behave you can also offer more relevant products which will make the customer more satisfied.
5. Increasing Revenue through customizing E-mails
When you know more about your users you can also customize your communication with them. When you do that you will see your conversion rates go through the roof. Now… don’t use this as a lame excuse to start spamming. Remember you have reached this far in building the customer relationship by keeping one type of promise. If you change the circumstances of that promise, then your customers might not like you as much anymore.
Customize with a name, or a related product, or a “people who buy, also buy”.
If the user gets what they want, you and you keep to your promise, they will also start trusting you. It is simple. If you started out doing something and people like you for it, then don’t change.
Now you might ask… well what if some continue to like it and others get bored. Well, that’s what we have the customization, win back and sign up campaigns are for :). Get to those in next weeks eMail specials 🙂 Modern e-mail tools enable you to communicate to each and every user out there and put them into different sales cycles that will autopilot a lot of your work.
6. Increasing your Revenue through Irrational economic decisions
If you have your conversion at max, then you have to focus on trust in order to help your customers understand that you deliver what you promise. This will in turn make them into returning visitors.
If you at the same time have worked with building their loyalty through customization and dialogue, you will end up in the best possible position you can. You are now in a position where you have a priority position in your customers life and you will be able to charge more for the same that your competitors are offering.
7. Taking one step back – THINK FIRST
Basically all modern website projects should start by acknowledging the limitations of your product. With this I mean you should think about how easy it is for the customer to buy the product over the web. Some things simply require an IRL experience before a purchase can be made.
Secondly, you should also carefully examine whether or not you are staffed in the proper way to make the next step. If you don’t have the proper organization for it, you will be stuck in a place you do not want to be in.
Your step by step aproach is great, as always,
Do you rember when you wrote about this last time, then I gave you a hint that what you call “irrational” is called “emotional” in branding terms. Nothing important but mayge just nice to know.
Keep your good blogging up. From what I´ve heard we can espect a lot to come during the near future.
Hehe… yes.. it is the behavioral economist in me that can’t change 🙂
Yes… 😀 some nice opportunities have opened… as well as some sick goals I’ve put on myself… hopefully I will be able to increase the quality in this blog a bit!!
Twitter has sort of taken away the edge of comment discussion… but I think I’ve found a solution… but I am not quite there yet..