The great thing about the internet is, whether you are a small shop in a small town or a big-named company in the city center, it is where you both get an equal opportunity to get people’s attention. This is why a lot of the businesses that have existed for many years are also gradually mixing in their time-tested traditional marketing with digital marketing.
Digital marketing is more than just buying a domain name for a website and publishing content. It involves executing various online efforts to make sure a website is able to target the right customers, get significant engagement, and turn those engagements into buyers or subscribers. For instance, if you have an arts and crafts shop, you want your website to be among the first results when someone does a quick Google search.
However, a lot of entrepreneurs who are taking the time to learn digital marketing may not realize that much of the basic principles and the discipline that the industry teaches can be applied in how we operate our business in real life.
Testing Is Key
One of the most important strategies you learn in digital marketing is A/B testing. This is when you compare two versions of web-pages and see which one performs better. For website this could be as simple as your call-to-action, your button color, the font style, or the welcome message. This method can also be applied in high street stores, too. For instance, a restaurant can test which chairs to use, which art they should hang on the wall, or the welcome greeting. The only difference is you are not measuring clicks, but the amount of foot traffic you are getting as well as the frequency of return guests.
Patience Offers Better Results
Of course, doing A/B testing both on websites and in real life takes time. A month of testing is not enough to get concrete results; sometimes it could last for a minimum of three months to get reliable data. If you think about it, the length of time makes sense, both online and in real life. People’s preferences are seasonal as well. Maybe for this month, the color blue is what appeals to them more than the color red. But after a week, they might prefer it the other way around.
All Actions Should Be Supported By Data
There is an important reason why digital marketing experts emphasize the need to study or go back to analytics before making decisions. It is because that data is basically telling you how your online customers or your audience behave on your website, and even when they are online in general. In real life, make use of reviews and comment cards to see whether you need to make some serious changes. However, always remember not to make changes if it obviously still works for you.
Customer Engagement
A lot of the digital marketing articles will tell you to engage with customers, talk to them. And this is very easy to do when you are in a physical store. It is important to strengthen, not just your online relationship with customers, but also your real-life relationship as well. Using this basic relationship science concept, come up to them and ask them how their experience is going. You can also encourage them to leave feedback on your website and social media channels so that they can share their thoughts with other people.
Indeed, digital marketing has changed the way we do business. Online efforts are just as important as getting that TV or radio airtime or that billboard slot along the highway. But the values that come with executing these online efforts can also teach us how we can improve our real life interactions with our customers and strengthen our relationship with them even further.