Make Follow-up an Obsession

Ah, the mundane: following-up. What a pain. No pain, though, no gain. Even if you do just a pretty good job of Web Content and Web Location, you can kill the competition with better Follow-Up. It seems nonsensical, but a huge majority of web players who invest significant time and money in their website and getting seen online fail miserably when it comes to Follow-Up. But you don’t have to fail.

Just...

Be faster
Be more professional
Be more persistent & consistent
…than your competitors
And measure your results

(Lack of) Speed Kills

Nashville web marketing E-commerce sites must flawlessly and quickly handle orders, transactions, confirmations, shipping tracking, and then deliveries…at a minimum. Non e-commerce sites need to respond to inquiries NOW – ideally immediately, if not within the hour or certainly same day by email and/or phone ((within reason, during business hours) for truly individual responses.

I’m not talking just about auto-responders (automatically generated emails that indicate that an information request or order has been received). Those are good, but you need to get them the “goods” (actual products or services if they’ve paid) or whatever you’ve promised (in return for their contact information) ASAP.

Your visitors are likely visiting other sites, as well, to find what they want. Your ability to respond quickly is the first indicator of the competence and quality of your business. Get them the information they want when they want it – NOW. Send them that white paper (or link) NOW. Schedule that demo NOW. Get that custom quote out NOW…not tomorrow or next week after several competitors have beaten you to the punch. If you respond quickly, you’ll be way ahead.

Professionalism Wins Online & Offline

Nashville search engine marketing Here, I am talking about the quality of the response itself and not just how fast it is delivered. Do you provide exactly what you promised (without any tricks)? Are you polite? Is your response “customized” if possible? Do you offer help if it’s evident your product or service is not up their alley (or vice versa)? Would you, as a person inquiring, be impressed with how your company handles an inquiry? Has this function been delegated way down the line to inexperienced staff who have little idea how to communicate with the inquirer? Are real people available by phone if prospects or customers have questions – and ideally NOT outsourced folks from another country or planet? Be a pro online and on the phone, and you’ll dazzle your prospects/customers compared to your competitors

Do it and Do it Again…and Again

One follow-up is never enough. Try at least a couple initial follow-ups by email and/or phone as appropriate—and then more over time (always letting people opt out e.g. of emails or tell you flat out that they are not interested). Use some common sense: this does not mean spamming your customers or pestering them daily phone calls. But you need to be persistent and consistent in your online and offline follow-up to get the maximum online marketing results. Your customer list and your prospect list are pure marketing gold if you put them to use, regularly, and creatively. In fact if you have multiple things to sell, it will grow be your best source of ongoing business. You need to stay in touch with prospects and customers at least on a monthly basis.

Track Your Results to Get the Best Pay-Off

Measuring your results (contacts, sales, sales $ by client, type of client, online campaign, keyword, etc) is part of Following-Up. There is no perfect way to measure exact marketing results, but it’s actually a lot easier to measure online results than other offline marketing efforts. You need to use a website traffic monitoring tool (a free one like Google Analytics or one of good ones out there that aren’t too pricey like www.sitestats.com), Google Adwords (and other Pay-Per-Click) conversion code (that automatically tracks PPC results for you), toll free number(s)/e.g. with operator numbers, etc. specific to your online offers; online and offline referral questions; etc.

The whole online marketing thing is about getting a positive Return-on-Investment (ROI) – have a pretty good idea what your online marketing costs over time and what sales (and profits) were generated. Worrying about this down to the penny is nuts, but measuring to the best of your ability the results of your online marketing – to the best of your ability – will optimize your investment now and in the future.

A Few Follow-up Hints (and we’ll keep adding to these)

You need to offer multiple opportunities on your website for people to respond via phone, contact forms, email links—or even immediate chat. Who cares how the responses come in—just so they do come in! In turn, you should use typically use both email and phone (unless one or the other is indicated as unwanted) to follow-up—and over time see what what mix works best for your business.
You need to ask visitors their preference for being contacted by email or phone or either when they are requesting some sorts of information (e.g. a custom quote, etc).
You should have (enough) well trained staff available enough hours of the business day to answer phone calls, and ideally your visitors should never get a message or a person from another country.
If you must have an answering service (e.g. very small firms) the message should be friendly and accurate – and checked frequently for necessary follow-up.
If you are responding by email always use a professional business email address (versus an obvious personal address).
Dump your contact data into a simple, date-stamped, easily accessible database – and well as forward email version responses to key individuals as well.
Use a separate 800 number(s) to track calls specifically from your site (or email offers, etc) if you receive a reasonable volume of phone interest daily.
Use an auto-responder at least for initial “form” email contacts and ideally a good blast email tool (like www.myemma.com) to follow-up with potentially interested audiences, ideally at least monthly if not more often – experiment with what works. The tool should be able to track email “opens,” “links hit,” etc.
Enable people to opt out of your email newsletters if they so choose.
Test your own systems, regularly.
More hints to come…and Sign up for Ranseen Marketing’s weekly Marketing Tip.

Ranseen Marketing specializes in writing web site content that will get the attention of the right visitors and get them to ACT – and intertwining that content with search engine optimization (SEO, AKA SEM or Search Engine Marketing) to drive visitors of the right types to your site. In addition, we help you follow-up with email marketing and tracking your results online (but the Sales part is really up to you!)

Is online marketing online a likely good avenue for you to grow your business? Take a quick survey and find out. Read more about our Services. If you have any questions, please contact us by email or phone – 615-661-6042.