Is Your Business Slowing Down, Now is the Time to Pivot to Digital
Internet marketing is undoubtedly one sure way to increase traffic, leads and sales for any business—but only if done right. We often hear that running a business requires you to be a risk taker of some sort. What does this mean? To make it in business, complacency goes out the window. Quite frankly, the ever-changing business environment simply won’t reward laxity.
Internet marketing is the key to increasing your visibility, reaching a wider niche and boosting your revenue. A progressive business owner needs to learn to adapt to the ever-evolving competitive business landscape. And as of now, positioning your business to take advantage of the digital ecosystem is crucial. Now is the time to pivot to digital. Why? To put it simply, that’s where your customers are!
Why should you consider going digital?
How do you go about it?
Is it worth it?
We’ll answer all these questions and more in this article.
Signs Your Business is Slowing Down
Before we discuss the ins and outs of going digital, how about we take it from the top? What situations would prompt you to revise the way you do business? In other words, at what point should you consider re-evaluating your business model?
You should really consider changing your current business strategy if it’s failing to service your current market as evidenced by the following tell-tale signs:
- Decrease in sales (lower than your projections).
- Decrease in revenue resulting in cash flow problems.
- High employee turnover.
While our list isn’t entirely exhaustive, if you experience any of the above scenarios, know that your business is indeed hitting a plateau. And it’s time to switch things up. You need to pay attention to the red flags – you should be tracking them.
Your Solution: Embracing Digital Transformation
Gartner says that if you’re not embracing digital transformation, then you’re indeed falling behind. For any business, pivoting to the digital landscape is more of a necessity than an option. That’s why it’s dubbed “the great industry pivot” because it’s indeed a matter of survival.
The concept basically means embracing digital technologies and absorbing them into various aspects of your business. It’s no secret that technology has taken over almost every area of our lives. And if we’re to be honest, it has certainly changed our lives for the better.
Thankfully business owners can also share in a piece of the pie because you’ll find multiple digital transformation strategies to pick from. Today we’re discussing an effective strategy that you should consider incorporating. And that’s using E-commerce and Pay Per Click –more commonly referred to as PPC.
What is the Relationship Between E-commerce and Pay Per Click Marketing?
One thing you need to realize is that customers love convenience. Given an option between walking into a brick and mortar store and risk contracting covid-19 or conducting an online store purchase from the comfort of their home, most would opt for the latter—and with good reason.
Online purchases are more convenient, less time consuming and you don’t have to deal with salespeople that are having a bad day. Plus, you save on petrol!
As such, if you decide to go this route, you could incorporate a Search Engine Optimization strategy to boost traffic. But the reality is that with organic strategies, you’ll only reap the benefits after some months. It can take as long as six months before you start realizing any noticeable returns.
The question is; will your business survive that long? How will you sustain your business in the meantime? If you’re in need of an instant boost in your revenue, then rather take a more drastic approach—run a Pay Per Click campaign focused on e-commerce. In this case you optimize your content by incorporating long tail keywords as opposed to regular keywords.
Advantages of using long tail key words include the following:
- Your cost per click is reduced due to less competition.
- Long tail key phrases show true intent to engage.
- High click through rates lead to lower bid strategies and an increase ROI.
Book a free 30-minute call with a coach for some more obligation-free insight
Effective Paid E-commerce Strategies
Note that there are quite a number of different paid e-commerce strategies that you can pick from. The following are likely to yield favorable results:
Shopping Ads
It’s in your best interest to take advantage of shopping ads to increase your brand awareness.
However, you basically have two types of shopping ads to pick from: traditional text based ads and Google shopping ads. We’d advise you to go with the latter. Why? Google shopping ads are simply more eye-catching. And if the goal is to create engaging content, then Google shopping ads are more ideal. Besides, according to Search Engine Watch, Google shopping ads dominate more than half of retail marketing searches!
Shopping ads will help you include elements such as pricing and promotion into your campaigns. Plus, you’ll be able to use an ad that appeals to your niche. Just make sure that you use the following:
- High quality pictures that will captivate your audience.
- A specific product title.
- Make sure that you use the correct prices at all times. If you use prices that are different from those on your site, Google simply won’t run your ads.
Embrace the “Power of the Mobile”
Just how often do you use your mobile phone? If you’re to be honest, that should be quite a LOT. Our phones are always in our hands and that means your customer’s mobiles will constantly be in their hands too! According to Google moments we pick up our phone upwards of 150 times a day.
So what better way to position your business strategically than to make yourself available on mobile platforms? Make sure your website is mobile responsive. But even so, that’s only the first step. You need to make sure that your site operates at high speeds and is user friendly. That also means avoiding confusing checkout processes. These will only frustrate and alienate your customers resulting in a loss in sales and consequently a loss in revenue. Make sure you are using google analytics and google search console for error checking and thumb size checking on button placement – yes thumbs size checking is a thing.
Retargeting Ads
If you feel like shopping ads aren’t giving you that much needed instant boost in revenue that you’re after, consider retargeting your ads. Retargeting your ads forces consumers to revisit your online store even soon after making a purchase.
This is because they’ll see the same products that they are interested in appearing on each platform they visit. And this applies whether they use their Facebook app or visit your online store directly. The following platforms allow you to run remarketing ads:
- Bing
Use Negative Keywords
In this case you instruct your ad platform not to show ads that contain certain words.
Let’s say your company specializes in selling real grass(lawn). But you find yourself getting hits from users looking for artificial grass. This is essentially a waste of your advertising budget. The solution here is to include the words “artificial grass” in your negative keywords list. And each time someone searches artificial grass, your ads are suppressed.
Book a free 30-minute call with a coach for some more obligation-free insight
Paid Media Tracking
Just bear in mind that whichever paid media strategy you use, tracking is key. How else will you know if your campaign is effective! Tracking allows you to ascertain which ads to optimize and which ones aren’t the least bit profitable so you can sack them.
You can either use Google Ads or Google Analytics to track your campaign. Or even both for effective results. Make sure you have goals set up and conversion tracking set up.
Conclusion
It’s apparent that with the endless digital strategies at your disposal, lagging behind as a business is clearly optional. By switching on to the digital landscape, you could immediately boost your sales and increase your revenue.
Are you keen on leaving your competitors in the dust? Get in touch with one of our digital coaches and we’ll gladly give you sound E-commerce and internet marketing strategies to help catapult your business to the next level.
Book a free 30-minute call with a coach for some more obligation-free insight
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The Digital Coach bridges the gap between CEO strategy and technical implementation. I am fully bilingual; fluent in corporate jargon and technical vernacular. I work to translate this mixed communication into actionable points for the technical, web, and marketing team to execute for maximum ROI, while giving the captain of the ship exactly what he wants.
