Many people believe that setting up a business online is the hardest part, what they don’t realize is how difficult it can be to keep their business competitive once they are up and running. Today we’ll look closely at follow up. I will cover three major areas where follow up and follow through will help you build business online: web traffic, sales and customer service.
1. Website traffic
Everyone who’s ever built a website understands the importance of increasing the website traffic. Way too often entrepreneurs invest their time and money into building a website that no one cares about to visit. There are several ways to increase web traffic to your site. The most important part is to figure out where your audience already is and focus your energy there. Website1 199×300 Build Business Online: Follow UpWhen working with small businesses, it always amazes me how they forget this simple rule. Don’t be on Facebook just because everyone else and their mother uses it. Don’t spend time on LinkedIn if your audience isn’t there.
Be thorough in your market research, create a marketing strategy that will focus you on platforms that work the best for your business, your target audience, your personality and rock your online space. There are many tips and strategies I share in my Social Media Simplified Program, which can help you build a simple, yet powerful online marketing strategy for your business. I highly recommend this program for you if you are tired of wasting your time on social media without seeing desired results or if you have been avoiding social media altogether. Click here to learn more about Social Media Simplified Program and claim your copy.
When it comes to follow up, you want to keep in mind that how you show up in front of your audience on social media platforms is how they see you. You either build or destroy their trust; either encourage or destroy their confidence in your business and/or product; either make them like you or turn around and look for someone else. Consistency in your approach, personality, message and timing is the key to your marketing success.
2. Online sales
MagicTrick 207×300 Build Business Online: Follow UpYes, we all want more eye balls on our website and sales pages, but that won’t help us feed our kids or pay our rent. Besides increasing web traffic it is also pertinent to focus on sales. When looking at sales, it is important to make the customer feel as comfortable and as confident with your product and your company as possible. You want your potential clients to get to know, like and trust you.
This is where following up becomes very important. Whatever method you choose – email, mail, phone, text message, video, audio, or anything else – it’s super important to show your potential clients that you can be trusted and you DO deliver on your promises.
This is where building your list of prospective clients and staying in touch with them becomes extremely important. They might not be ready yet to buy from you or work with you, but the day will come where they will either be ready or they will meet someone else who will need your product or service.
Here’s the important question: How are you showing up to these people on your list? Are you helpful? Are you resourceful? Are you building or ruining the trust? Is what you are currently doing helping your business or do you need to fix the leaks?
3. Customer service
Just like in brick and mortar businesses, great customer service is a key when building a loyal client base. When a company has great customer service, people notice; in fact, this is where a lot of word-of-mouth business comes from as well as return customers.
It’s important to understand what type of experience your customers go through when visiting or shopping at your site, or being part of your programs. Do you know what is the download time of your site? How your website shows up in different browsers, or mobile devices? Is your message consistent? Are the re-directions working well? Do you deliver on your promises? Are your emails, messages, programs valuable, unique, applicable? Do you improve the quality of life of your clients? What can you potentially improve? How can you make your clients’ experience even better? How about your refund policy and customer support – does it represent your business and your values well? Finally, here’s the most important question when it comes to customer service: Are you really following through on your promises?