In this article we are going to discuss about reasons as to why companies have problem with increasing sales through digital marketing processes and what strategies will work for your business.
Today half of the world’s population use Internet. 50% of websites are accessible via mobile. While the total percentage of mobile traffic is more than desktop, users’ engagement is higher on desktop than mobile. In fact 60% of time spent on websites is by desktop users and 40% by mobile users. Do you know why? Because they prefer using desktop when they want to buy something. Based on the latest statistics only 30% of mobile commerce transactions comes from mobile devices.
Did you know 66% of buyers don’t buy items because of the shipping cost? So if you have an ecommerce business, why don’t you add shipping cost to the item you’re selling? If your item costs $20 and $10 for shipping ( international shipping is included) and 25% tax you may want to sell that product for $35 including tax. This way you will be able to attract more customers and increase sales. You can run an A/B testing on the same product you’re selling.
If you have an item add images because based on my research, 79% of buyers want to see more images of a product from different angles just like buying offline. So give them the best purchase experience so that they don’t go and buy from your competitors. Spoon-feed users. This is how online sales works. This helps them easier to make a purchase decision.
When it comes to social media there are 3 billion social media users. In the U.S 90% of businesses use social media for marketing purposes. How many of them do you think are generating sales?
According to Statista:” The social media advertising revenue per Internet user in the U.S. is expected to grow 213.37 billion dollars in 2023. “
Organizations still have problem with processing data accurately and their tools are not fully optimized for digital marketing purposes. A.I marketing automation tools don’t have a proper machine learning algorithm programming.
So with all these online users who are ready to buy your products or services, why companies can’t sell enough to make profit? Here are some problems:
- Lack of proper ready to buy users in database: Sales departments are still using outdated CRM systems containing the old database of bored users who were spammed to death by telephone sellers. Having these type of users in database is not useful for sales department. Should they search online and find users? Fetching leads via Internet by using web scrapers isn’t a solution. Buying leads is waste of money.80% of these leads are fake or scraped from websites via automated email scrapers.
- Lack of knowledgeable marketing directors. Our agency worked with many companies and the majority of their marketing departments lack marketing skills although they know the product very well. Take car dealership as an example: I provided services for one of the biggest car dealership companies in the UK and their marketing director didn’t know how digital marketing processes work. He came up with unrealistic demands. So why not hiring a marketing specialist who understands turnaround of a keyword ranking or brand reputation? A keyword can’t be ranked in a few days in Google and the other search engines. It requires at least 4 months time depending on the competitiveness of a keyword or phrase. Your company saves money and will increase profit if you hire a professional marketing director who is expert in digital marketing processes. Even with employing digital marketing directors, your companies still need people like me to help grow your businesses. The best part is when we work with marketers who understand the mechanics of marketing, we understand each other better and save time in explaining how each multi-channel and omni channel marketing work.
- Lack of proper social media marketing tools: Many social media marketing apps are not fully compatible with social networks’ API which causes search engine visibility problem for companies ‘websites who use these apps.
- 98% of websites including those who claim to be “seo expert” , “digital marketing expert” practice unethical methods which cause the websites to lose online visibility. One of these methods is using pop-up in the middle of page.
- Applying spammy social marketing tools: The majority of social media engagement tools are selling fake and spammy engagement services. These providers are spending between $3000 – $10000 a month (multiply it by 12) on buying databases which are filled with fake user accounts. These accounts will be suspended by social networks’ algorithms such as Twitter, Facebook etc. Many agencies and companies don’t invest on these tools. They test drive them, then stop using them. However some companies still buy from them such as: celebrities’ publicity teams, politicians, film, music and entertainment companies. This is why they can afford $10k/month paying for the crappy database filled with fake and low quality accounts with identical usernames. In music industry guess who is running the blackhat method for promoting and data manipulation? Lady Gaga. She is not intelligent to understand data science and the mechanics of data manipulation, but her publicity team does. 99% of her social media accounts are handled by these services. They post and glorify her plagiarized songs which are taken from earlier singers between 50s and 60s and glorify her and naïve people believe in those posts. When you look closer at these fake Twitter accounts, with usernames having her nickname in them, you will see all tweets are retweeted, liked and commented by fake twitter accounts. The same goes with her fake YouTube, Instagram and Facebook accounts. Her publicity team right from the beginning of her carrier found a way to manipulate data via using blackhat social media methods to get her win awards including Oscars. She and her team “so called fans” used fake accounts to give one star fake reviews to outrank “Venom” the movie and rank “A Star Is Born” which is a rehashed of a movie under the same name back in ( 1976) starring Barbra Streisand. Lady Gaga used her fake accounts and sabotaged “Venom” by giving fake on star reviews on IMDB. In politics the same company who has been providing Donald Trump’s fake social media accounts’ engagement since 2015. In fact if you pay attention to the pattern of their campaigns on social media, they look alike. This means the same company is handling their organic social media campaigns. I talked about it back in 2015 too. Trump hired the same people who worked on Lady Gaga’s campaigns in many years. They have tools to manipulate statistics which trigger awards in film and music industry. The jury members look at these statistics and decide who should get the awards. This social media company got Lady Gaga in one year win Golden Globes and the other awards for ” A star is born” to become qualified for Oscars. This fake social media engagement tool which can generate more than one million tweets from various fake bot generated accounts, sharing and comment posting on Instagram, Facebook etc. are very effective to increase numbers in statistics. These tools are A.I bots which are designed to get triggered if someone says negative words about the singer on Twitter or Facebook and Instagram. You should not engage with these bots as they get more and more aggressive during conversation. Their profile images are made of robotic images. These people do not exist in real life. All politicians are using the same methods but hired different companies, so not all are winning. It is easier to win in music and film industry because the jury members in film business use statistics tools to measure these candidates’ social media engagement to see who is more popular. This is how they predict sales projection of a movie or a music if they use certain actor in a film or rank a singer in certain music genre. I am sure these blackhat social media methods will be useless when web 3.0 and web 4.0 , web 5.0 replace with web 2.0. When it happens then real singers, song writers, actors, artists and politicians will rank in their categories just like back in 50s until early 2000 when social media and fake social media engagement did not exist.
- Lack of proper online Advertising strategies: 80% of digital marketing agencies in the world are in-house. Marketers like to increase the scale of contextual targeting in order to find new customers. So they need better tools to drive in sales.
Digital Marketing Strategies
Measuring your digital marketing activities is crucial. You should be focusing on conversion. It is important to understand where your customers spend time. Hoping for the best is a naïve approach. By segmenting your audience, you will be able to help your prospects make a purchase decision. It’s all about creating a long-term value. This is how you get a long term customer. I have customers who have bee using my service since 2010. Do you know why they are still with me? I care about their businesses and treat their companies as of my own business. They know it otherwise they wouldn’t be using my service. When you capture a lead and turn it to a customer, your job is not done. Getting customers is one thing and keeping them is a whole different ball game. Treat them like royal family with respect and courtesy. I love British and Irish customer service in comparison with the other countries I provided more data about it in my book ” The Surprising Truth About Sales“.
You should understand where your brand best stands in order to benefit from current trends in your niche. Provide the best customer service so that your brand stands out.
Bigger companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft still have trouble with providing a better customer service. Since Sundar Pichai became Google’s CEO, all Google’s products are handled by customer service in India. In fact, Google has the worse customer service and customer care in comparison with Hewlett Packard and PayPal. If you face a problem with your own Google My Business or your clients, you will be directed to India and your issue won’t be fixed. Nobody cares about your problem.
Facebook doesn’t even have a proper customer service, it is either bot or auto responder. They only use their customer service at paid advertisement department and 99% of the time their agents copy and paste their FAQ and respond to customers. I have been handling clients’ Facebook in different countries and noticed this is a global problem.
There are a lot of outdated data online about Facebook being one of the most powerful social media sites where people spend their time on it. After Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, I hardly believe companies invest on Facebook ads alot the same as they used to do advertising before. All these statistics online are rehashed from earlier statistics.
You as a small business owner should learn from these companies ‘ bad customer service and improve your own customer service. This is how you can keep up with big brands. Let me tell you Bill Harding’s story.
Bill started building Bonanza in 2007 after becoming frustrated during a rainy garage sale in Seattle. Possessing of virtually zero skills in web development, Bill recognized that he needed to quit his day job, learn how to program websites, and defeat Craigslist. Only then would he never stand in the rain regretting another miserable garage sale. His target proved more formidable than he had anticipated. But after launching to crickets in mid-2008, Bill caught a break when Bonanza was declared “The Best eBay Alternative” by Ecommerce Guide. Within months, Bonanza grew from “Bill’s mom and her friend” to a few thousand sellers. From there, it grew to a marketplace that now offers more than 10 million items for sale to most every country in the world. Bill is inspired by listening, simplicity, and getting things done. His marketplace offers a great customer service. It is a very friendly environment.
Although customer service may feel like a more fundamental concern for ecommerce owners, many brands have shown the importance of stellar service in e-commerce experiences.
If you run a digital marketing agency, establishing a customer-centric reputation is important for your brand. More than 60% of users buy from a company who recognizes them by name. Therefore, personalization is very important.
Consumers expect personalization because they expect superior customer service and business-oriented interactions.
In online business If a process just isn’t working, re-evaluate where things went wrong. How about running an A/B testing in your campaigns? Marketing is a constantly changing landscape, and digital marketing is one of its most dynamic features. You need to keep your eyes on the metrics and data to stay informed about your business processes that are working and refine those that are not bringing you desired results.