With all the talk about different ways to market your business, there’s not much to be seen on the simple things. Here are some easy steps that could improve your digital marketing and your bottom line.
Call Tracking
While I was at Pubcon in Las Vegas, there was plenty of talk about social media, search, paid search, and more. Marty Weintraub and Michael Dorausch both mentioned call tracking, something we hear very little talk about.
It’s a technology that we’ve experimented with for over a year, and the information that can result is all useful. You can use call tracking by simply embedding a “throw-away” phone number on your landing pages, your website, social media profiles, and print ads. Using unique numbers allows you to then track the effectiveness of that placement.
Additionally, you can write conditional code which will show different numbers depending upon how they entered your website. In other words, if someone enters via an organic search query from Yahoo!, they’ll see a different number than if had they entered from a search on Google.
And there’s the metrics. You can learn the geographic origination of the phone call. You can see how long they talked. How many times they called. More. This information not only helps understand the effectiveness of your marketing, but can also help evaluate your customer service by studying call duration and repetition.
Talk to Your Customers
When was the last time you really talked to your customers? I’m not meaning just sending off email surveys (which are good), but actually talking to folks. Ask them for a few moments of their time while they are visiting your location. Or simply give a them a quick phone call.
You can find out helpful information such as what social networks they use, and what they thought of their experience with you. Simply ask them for their time, ask the questions, and give them a little something for their effort.
Customer Service Training
Do you train your employees on how to better serve your customers? Tony Hsieh at Zappos, requires ALL new hires to go through customer service training. Everyone there can answer the phone, answer your questions, fulfill your order, and on and on.
Think that’s helpful during the holiday season? What do you think that would do for consistency of customer interaction? Hint: Satisfaction is through the roof at Zappos.
It’s easy for the big companies, right? They have the budgets. Small businesses are faced with a number of different obstacles when it comes to implementing a customer service training program. Budget, time, and know-how are all factors which no one seems to have enough of.
But putting forth the effort to create training programs can have a tremendous impact. What if you raised your conversion rate by 1%? 2%? 10%?!
Sometimes, simple is the answer. Training can help you make the most of your marketing spend. And it helps focus on conversion and customer service.
What are you doing to boost conversion rate?
