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Saving Resources With Web Strategy

AtN Team — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:57:16 +0000

If resource optimization is a key concern for your company as you enter 2010, there is one asset which you may be under utilizing in your efforts. Most studies out there now show that a clear majority of your sales leads (inbound or outbound) will end up at your website at some point during the sales process. Ideally, all of your prospects should spend time on your website.

Why not take that powerful resource to improve your resource efficiency?
There are things that your website can do more effectively than your sales team:

Educate – it’s more patient, more detailed and has more time

Present Options – options should all be recalled after they are presented and the visual presentation on your website is an ideal way

Target Specific Segments – visitors will self select content for them if you give them the option

Availability 24/7 – your website never closes

Why are sales cycles inefficient?

High education requirement
Higher detail requirement
Multiple people involved in review process

How companies underutilize their website

Low expectations in terms of business impact
Limitation of audiences that are targeted by website
Portion of the sales cycle handled by the website

Our experience has shown a very wide level of impact of a website is possible.
What should you expect from your website?
How much of your sales cycle can be carried by your website?
The answer is a lot. The trick is to build a website which keeps delivering focused and efficient information that helps prospects make a decision.

What you need to do

Develop a more detailed plan around who your website visitors are (segments) and how you will meet more of their needs online
Create a site flow which builds the case for your company and products more effectively
Build your branding efforts to more precisely position your company against competitors

Result You Can Expect

Better use of your salespeople / operations teams time
More educated prospects
Warmer prospects — ready to buy or closer to it

Is that how you’d like your company to be running in 2010?

Should you take on your (bigger) competition more directly in 2010?

AtN Team — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:45:10 +0000

The answer is: it depends.

What does this decision depend on?

The nature of your product, the visibility of your competitors and their ability to retaliate and do material damage to your current business.

What are we talking about here?

If your company is in a highly competitive industry, there will be clear entrenched players and a large number of newer entrants seeking to take share away from the leaders. Often newer players benefit from a better and more flexible business or technology platforms and boast superior features and higher value for clients.

The question becomes: do you attack your competitors head to head on your website?

The answer is the case of competitive industries is yes. The easiest pickings for you to grow your customer base is to take them from your bigger competitors. You’ll save huge amounts of sales cost because you don’t have to educate them on the benefits of your product category. Your only hurdle is to demonstrate that your product has superior ability to address their core pain / need areas.

There are critical tactics that you have to incorporate into that competitive displacement strategy. These include:

1) a clear head-to-head comparison from the perspective of the client’s need areas

2) an easy way for them to test (prove) that your product is superior (ie. easy transition and a well setup free trial).

When you have big competitors, every sale is a competitive one — so you have to meet the challenge head on with a precise, well executed competitive displacent strategy.

Shift To Web: Better Prepaid Card Marketing At Lower Cost

AtN Team — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:35:44 +0000

If you look at what an ideal marketing campaign looks like, there a few common threads:

Highly targeted with a clearly defined audience
Message testing to identify and expand only the most effective messages
Separate followup messaging and sales pitch based on which campaign prospect responds to.
Undertaking detailed tracking of audience behaviour including response to messaging and offers

The problem lies with the cost of running a campaign of this type in your offline business. Calling or mail campaigns will generate significant manpower and printing costs and the tracking is a far more difficult (manual) process. Its not always easy to get data about prospects in the offline world.

That’s Where Your Website Steps In
Many prepaid card companies look at the web as a secondary offshot of their marketing strategy. We’re here to suggest that your organization should consider putting your website at the centre of your marketing efforts to new cardholders. Your website has a far greater alignment to an ideal marketing campaign. Achieving a high degree of targeting, tracking and message testing can be done within a more limited budget. The ability to tailor marketing programs for concurrent testing of messaging is a critical advantage giving you more rapid message effectiveness feedback and allowing faster tailoring to specific prospect audiences.

The Basics Of An Ideal Card Marketing Program

Targeted programs for specific potential cardholders groups
Emphasis on marketing specific card products to specific target audiences
Several versions of each campaign to test messaging and offers
Strong data and analytics to understand target segments demographics, feature interest and response to messaging

While this can be achieved offline as well, the cost factor is in the magnitude of 3 to 5 times to achieve similar reach as compared to doing it online.

This website (webstrategycompany.com) is brought to you by AftertheNet (www.afterthenet.com), a different kind of website services company. We take an industry specific and research oriented approach to building expertise in web strategy. To learn the four levels (ideas, planning, execution and fine-tuning) at which we can help you to achieve your business goals using your online presence, please visit www.afterthenet.com.

Main Agenda for the Management meeting – Increase Sales – No Extra Costs: Answers?

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:54:20 +0000

How often are your meetings about “Increase Sales – but No Extra Costs?” Maybe this is the topic everyone seems to be obsessed with – this is just the need of the hour. Everyone’s focus is to keep the purse strings tight but there is still the expectations to generate more sales. Addressing this issue has been a natural extension of what I and my colleagues always believed – that a website is a medium that could supplement your sales effort with less cost impact than other options. Our recent successful client efforts have generated value which is high compared to investment. This efficiency makes clients feel better prepared for the business environment they are currently facing.
So what answers have you come up with? – one matrix after the other, only satisfying you with a “something is being done” feeling. More often than not our tendency is to believe that complex problems are only solved by complex solutions. Somehow we tend to underestimate what we already have. Just look again at your website and you will know what I mean. You need to develop a new approach to your existing assets – including reaching of the potential of your website.

Change your mindset:

don’t think of your website as just a set of pages
it’s a potent sales star that is waiting to deliver for you.

List the efforts that you make on your offline sales:

think of segments of your customers
think of how your product/services address their pains and needs
think of offers/promotions that you roll out periodically
everything that is on your offline sales dossier.

Compare this list to what you have on your website:

more often than not you will be amazed at the treatment that you have inadvertently given to your website;
Your underutilization of it might even have you in disbelief.

Now take on the role of the visitor (do the same with some friends and colleagues):

Chances are that you will find everyone struggles to easily reach the conversion (to customer) stage
Piles of content suffocating the website
Components placed without a specific purpose
A kind of general misalignment that will be an eye-opener
So unknowingly you are saying “NO” to someone who is interested in your product/services
You leave them no option but to look for other providers who can cater better to him
Potential sales are left on the table

We use our expertise at AftertheNet to provide strategic inputs to our clients so that they are able to harness the full power of their website. Central to our approach, we strongly recommend the same level of attention to both online and offline efforts. The results will be both visible and tangible. And the value you get far outweighs the investment of time and cost.