To successfully market their business and drive new leads, small businesses need to keep pace with the evolution in digital marketing. But, doing so can be a challenge for time-strapped business owners. How can you make sure your marketing is still effective? Here are three things small businesses need to stop doing in 2015 to make sure they’re getting the most out of their marketing.
1) Ignoring the Importance of the Mobile Web
One big mistake small businesses need to stop making in 2015 is ignoring the mobile web. In a recent reader poll at ReachLocal, we found that this was the top mistake most believe small businesses are making, with 30 percent stating this was the biggest mistake in our online poll.
Research shows that some 58 percent of American adults now use a smartphone on a daily basis, and mobile is outpacing desktop Internet use, with users averaging about three hours a day spent on their mobile devices. Add to that the fact that a Google report shows that four out of five consumers use search engines to look for local information and that 50 percent of users who sought out local information via smartphone visited a store within a day, and you can see why it’s absolutely critical for small businesses to stop ignoring the importance of the mobile web for local consumers.
But a shocking number of small businesses don’t have a mobile responsive website or mobile strategy in place to make sure they’re visible to mobile web users.
According to small business expert Melinda Emerson: “Mobile web marketing will become the most important thing for SMBs to focus on in 2015. Small business owners need to make sure their websites are mobile ready with mobile offers, hours of operation, and click-to-call features. They will also need to focus on mobile-optimized content on their websites.”
2) Losing Leads to Voicemail, Unchecked Emails & Bad Follow Up
The number two mistake our readers said small businesses make is sending phone calls to voicemail. Another huge mistake that many small businesses make is putting a large investment in marketing their business – but not putting systems in place to make sure they capture every lead, regardless of when they contact the business.
Think about it: How many interested prospects call your business when you’re closed or get sent to voicemail because you or your team are busy helping customers? How many people email your business to request information but don’t get a timely follow up? If you don’t know the answer, the first step is to find out. You can do this by using lead and call tracking technology that lets you measure the times and days that your business is getting calls and new leads.
Once you are armed with this information, you can stop losing these valuable leads by putting better business and marketing practices in place. Here are a few ideas to help you close this loop in your lead conversion process:
- Use a call answering service – This enables leads to speak with a real person when you’re closed or away from the office.
- Use live-chat technology on your website – Not only can live chat help you capture leads who visit your website when you’re open, it also captures leads 24/7 so that you don’t lose leads during off peak hours. Plus, it’s a great way to engage site visitors who might not want to pick up the phone by allowing them use online chat to contact your business.
- Use automatic follow-up emails – This way, when a new prospect emails your business, they’ll get an automatic thank you email letting them know you’ll be in touch soon.
- Follow up with every lead, quickly – Make it a priority for your team to be responsive to all voicemail and email leads by putting a process in place for every new lead to get a call within an hour. Often, the first business to call a prospect back will be the one to win the business, so put systems and incentives in place to make sure everyone on your team is on board with timely follow up.
- Nurture every lead – Today, every business can leverage the power of lead nurturing, not just the big guys. Make sure you’re staying in front of interested prospects with automated lead nurturing emails to persuade them to choose your business as they make their purchase decision.
3) Not Measuring Marketing ROI (for Every Source, Even Offline!)
There’s a popular saying in the business world – “I know half of my marketing is working, the problem is I just don’t know which half.” If this sounds like you, the good news is, you don’t have to keep making the mistake of not measuring the ROI of your marketing in 2015. In fact, what if you could know how 100 percent of your marketing was working?
Today, technology allows businesses from large to small to put measurement in place for their online marketing. But, did you know you can even track the effectiveness of offline advertising like radio, TV ads, and billboards by using call tracking technology, and integrating it into lead conversion software? This type of system enables you to see all the calls and leads you are getting from every marketing source, as well as the estimated lifetime value you drove from new customers, so you can evaluate all your marketing sources against each other and make better decisions about what to invest in to grow your business.
In fact, experts predict that 2015 will be the year when small businesses will really begin leveraging technology and systems to help them better manage their businesses and manage their marketing.
In a 2015 small business predictions report, Todd Ebert noted: “We’re at the start of a new trend — one where business owners adopt lead conversion software that enables businesses to automatically capture, follow-up with, and convert more leads into customers by staying top-of-mind until they are ready to buy. This will make it easy for the owner to track the customers and revenue from each different marketing source. That way, they can calculate true ROI by source and squeeze more leads, customers, and profit out of the same marketing budget. This will be a winning value proposition for small businesses in 2015.”
What’s Your 2015 Marketing Resolution?
Are you making any of these critical marketing mistakes? If so, the good news is, today, small businesses have access to more and better tools than ever before to help them better market their business, convert more leads into customers, and measure the ROI of their marketing.
What will you resolve to improve in your business and marketing for 2015? Share your thoughts in a comment!
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Tiffany Monhollon is an award-winning content, community, and social media marketing strategist who is passionate about helping businesses and professionals succeed online, currently serving as Director of Content Marketing at ReachLocal. She develops integrated strategies from the ground up, incorporating content, community, and social tactics to deliver online marketing, search optimization, social engagement, and reputation management results. She speaks and writes about online marketing and social media for sites like Entrepreneur, MarketingProfs, Small Business Trends, Media Post, Social Media Today, Business 2 Community, and the ReachLocal Online Marketing blog. You can follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Image: R. Manley from Public Domain illustration.