Three ways to grow your business (in 48 hours or fewer)
Digital strategy in its full glory is complex. It requires different types of expertise, and the patience to work within algorithms that change all the time. Many brands have a hard time creating good digital strategies, and even more brands struggle to align on what the thing actually is/should be.
I’m not saying building a digital strategy isn’t worth your time. To the contrary, it’s one of the most worthwhile sales and marketing investments you can make. What I am saying is the whole thing can be a bit of a mammoth. And if you’re a certain type of person, staring down a big, complex and ever-changing project can be a deterrent to getting started at all.
So just for today, let’s not hunt the whole mammoth. Let’s just shave it.
(In retrospect, the metaphor was not meant to be drawn out.)
The Most Overlooked Element: The Quick Win
Though having a solid (and documented) long-term digital plan is invaluable, we marketers can focus too much on yearly strategic planning and bypass the low-hanging fruit.
Quick wins are marketing initiatives that kick-start business growth without the crazy effort. These are bite-sized tactics that you can execute quickly and easily, but they’re significant enough to generate some serious leads for your company.
Although there are any number of quick activities you can do, it’s still important to be strategic about what you invest your time and effort into trialing. (This is me plugging a larger digital strategy.)
A strong, quick win should add value, create change and offer usable data. To help you get started, we’ve put together some examples of quick wins that can easily drive early success in digital marketing.
Leverage your email list beyond email marketing
Targeting existing customers is a great place to start because they hold the biggest opportunity for repeat and long-term business.
It’s why a quality email list is one of the strongest digital assets you can have: A) the people on that list already know and love your products, B) you don’t (necessarily) have to pay to access them, and C) you can use the list for more than just email.
In most email platforms, including Bronto and Mailchimp, you can easily export your email list and input it into different systems to generate leads. (If you’re unsure how to export your list, reference these instructions from Mailchimp.)
For example, you can export your list into Google Ads. From there, Google will search for how many of your customers exist within their platform, so they can target them with ads. You can also export your email list to Snapchat and use a “Snap Audience Match” to find out if anyone in your customer base is active on Snapchat. By using these system tools, you can validate where your audience is and where to focus your marketing efforts.
For more information on strengthening your email marketing strategy, check out this Forbes article, 7 Email Marketing Tips For Marketers.
Optimize your website
Your brand’s website is your most important digital asset because it can help fuel the rest of your marketing efforts. The question is: are you getting the most of your asset? If not, spend a couple of hours ensuring that your main headlines have the right keywords and that your metadata is up to date.
If your website is well maintained, we suggest giving it an extra boost with user-behaviour tools, such as Hotjar, which provide valuable insights from your customers. Using heatmaps, surveys and (anonymous) user recordings, Hotjar gives you information about why users are doing what they’re doing, and where they might be having issues. It also gathers user feedback to find out if certain pages are useful and relevant.
Google My Business
A Google My Business profile is essential for any business in today’s digital age. If you have retail locations, this tool allows you to appear in “near me” searches, which are becoming increasingly popular among users.
If you look at your Google profiles, make sure that each of them is claimed by your business. Once these pages are claimed, you can pull analytics on how many people are actually clicking for directions, calling your business or clicking through to your website.
Be sure to fill in all core fields within your Google My Business listing (e.g. phone number, address, operating hours), as well as photos and videos that can give users a better idea of what they can expect when they arrive. This is something that can be done in just one afternoon, making this an ultimate quick-win task.
Ready. Set. Goals.
Before starting any of these quick wins, it can be helpful to place some constraints on your goals to keep your team focused. For example, challenge your team to execute a quick win within 48 hours that can generate measurable results. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to see what you can accomplish in such a short time, and the results you’ll gain from it.
For more insight to help drive your digital marketing efforts, be sure to follow our new JAM Session.
Jan Kelley is an award-winning creative digital agency. We help businesses grow by using our proprietary growth framework to develop, implement and optimize strong digital-first marketing strategies and programs. Our philosophy brings together the power of technology and the brilliance of humanity to spark ideas, generate momentum and drive lasting results. It’s what we call Humanology.
