YOUR CUSTOMER PROFILE

Creating a Customer Profile For Your Business

What makes up a customer profile? It depends on whether your customers are businesses or consumers. In either case, you typically start with your own customer data (such as location, purchases, spending volume), append additional consumer or business data, then group into segments that share similar characteristics. Customer profiling provides much needed structure to a marketing plan. It helps you (and us) understand what the ideal customer is looking for, what matters to them most and how best to speak to them.  


  In one of our previous articles, ‘Marketing strategy defined success’, we have slightly touched the meaning and role of customer persona for business: The important element of any market research is to understand who is that person you are targeting. Male or female? Teenager or retiree? Single or Married? What does he/she like? And many more questions that you need to answer before starting your planning. In the world of marketing, this is known as ‘creating customer persona’. Below we provide an example of the customer persona created by Brightspark Social Media, a digital marketing agency:  


  One of the most common mistakes small businesses make as they try to grow is attempting to be everything to everyone. “Tapping into” a new market seems lucrative and exciting, and very often, the leap is made even before proper research is done into whether that market is suitable or even brand-aligned. To truly understand a consumer group (especially the one you already have), more effort needs to be put into diving deeper than the surface. At the end of the day, truly understanding and meeting your consumers’ needs is the key to a thriving business. So how do you go about getting to know your consumers in a deeper, more relatable way? And how do you put that information into a ‘consumer profile’ to benefit your business? By outlining all the details including age, job position, preferred communication methods and the main needs and wants with regards to digital services, Brightspark Social Media is a successful business, as they know everything about their clients! Sounds great, right? There is no fixed set of points that you have to include in your company’s customer persona. Are you opening a beauty saloon? Find out what beauty products your clients use; how often they go for haircut or manicure; what beauty pages they follow on Facebook. Are you starting a fast-food chain? Explore what the eating habits of your customers are: how often they eat; meat-lovers or vegetarians; prefer eat outside or order delivery? We can provide thousands example, but only you know your business better than anyone else! Take a piece of paper, describe your business in 5-6 points and start building your customer persona based on it. Surveys, interviews, and social media websites are also your best friends in this journey!

Start with the data you have

Look first to the data that is most readily available – usually, this will be the data that you obtain from Facebook, Google Analytics, and other platforms like Adwords. This will give you the basic demographic data of your consumer base, such as age, gender, and location. From here, you can identify your ‘typical’ customer by looking at the age range, gender, and location that comes up the most. You can then extend your hypothesis a little to include factors like spending power, disposable income, marital status, etc. After identifying your main consumer, you can also make note of smaller categories that you may be able to target in the future.

Look beyond demographics

Next, take your consumer profile a step further by filling out the details a little more. Consider the lifestyle that your typical consumer leads. Do they travel? Go to the gym? Shop online? Consider also their knowledge and skills – are they tech savvy? Are they mobile? Are they familiar with the product you are selling? Finally, consider the issues your consumers face, and how your product gives them a solution. Once you have this consumer profile set up, target your communications to match this profile to make yourself relatable and “pull” your consumers in (as opposed to “pushing” your product on people). According to ConsumerPsychologist. the study of consumers helps firms and organizations improve their marketing strategies by understanding issues such as how:

• The psychology of how consumers think, feel, reason, and select between different alternatives (e.g., brands, products, and retailers);
• The psychology of how the consumer is influenced by his or her environment (e.g., culture, family, signs, media);
• The behavior of consumers while shopping or making other marketing decisions;
• Limitations in consumer knowledge or information processing abilities influence decisions and marketing outcome;
• How consumer motivation and decision strategies differ between products that differ in their level of importance or interest that they entail for the consumer; and
• How marketers can adapt and improve their marketing campaigns and marketing strategies to more effectively reach the consumer.

 
 

Consider focus groups/surveys

Even after you set up your consumer profile and begin your marketing plan, it’s always a good idea to run regular focus groups and surveys to continuously check that you are on the right track. In your focus groups/surveys, try to resist focusing purely on ‘business’ – i.e., “What product should I launch?”, or “What price point should I set this at?” Instead, include questions that give you a clearer picture of who your consumer is, and how you can make their lives better. The better you understand your consumer, the more effective your marketing will be – above and beyond details like packaging and price point.

Impact of Digital Marketing on Consumer Behaviour

The digital era has and will continue to change consumer behavior. Consumers today are not following the traditional tunnel whilst social media has revolutionized the way people converse on a personal level. Brands need to adopt a radical new thinking when approaching digital to stay relevant and drive home their message with impact. According to Intelliassist, the biggest change in consumer behavior is that consumers expect a consistent and personalized experience. Consumers desire and expect personalized messaging from brands. Marketers should connect with them at the right places at right times, which involves increased real-time localization. Modern consumers are not loyal customers, they are more variety seekers. This has left previously logo-heavy companies struggling to assimilate their product to suit modern tastes.  


  The prime change in consumer behavior is that consumers increasingly turn away from anything they perceive as marketing. As consumers are becoming tech savvy they are becoming impatient towards intrusive or irrelevant content and messages. More than 25% smartphone users have installed ad blockers and this number is increasing rapidly. Instead, they look towards small groups of people who have a high level of credibility in their specific industry or category to influence their buying decisions. As consumers spend more time on these social media platforms, decisions about what to purchase often reflect interactions with friends and other influencers. In response, leading marketers are adapting their strategies to reach increasingly networked consumers and placing more stress on tactics such as word-of-mouth marketing and storytelling, which nowadays have a greater impact on marketing decisions of consumers.

Conclusion

Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!

YOUR EFFECTIVE WEBSITE

HOW TO CREATE A HIGHLY CONVERTING WEBSITE

Introduction

Living in the modern digital world makes a website a necessity for a business, both for big and small. If you have a business and don’t have a website, you are most likely losing a number of great opportunities for your business. A website is used by businesses to accomplish a variety of different marketing strategies to help your business grow. The web has a significantly wider reach than any other form of modern advertising. Your website will be the center of your company`s online presence; through your website, you advertise your business around the Web on social networking websites, forums, as well as through pay-per- click advertising programs. Even the smallest business can utilize the power of the internet to be more efficient and to build revenue. Once you start thinking about it, it's easy to get excited about the potential for your website.  
  Simbla states, a website development tool provides companies with a podium for this necessary web presence and allows them to get in touch with millions of web surfers all over the world, widening the range of their potential customers. This doesn't just make the companies accessible, but accessible to the global population. It also gives businesses the chance to portray themselves in the ways they want to be seen, with a platform that's built on their terms and can effectively market the services or products that they offer. In addition, a website will make businesses look more reliable if they're represented in a professional way. To develop a website in accordance with specific criteria, the business can either hire a web developer or do it themselves by choosing from the best web development software, which will assist in creating polished websites. Today we will explore the effective ways of converting your website into the highly converting marketing tool.

Create Engaging Content

Most website owners create contents with a sole purpose to rank and get website traffic from search engines. Although optimizing your contents for search engines is important, you need to remember that search engines aren’t the one who buys products or services from you—the searcher or person does. According to Openvine, compelling content attracts visitors and leads them through the sales funnel. Gone are the days that potential customers call to get all of their information from you or someone on your sales staff. Savvy consumers now look to your website and to social media to learn about your products/services, to see comments others have made regarding your business or product, and to judge your credibility and expertise. The more informative, helpful web content you provide on a consistent basis, the better your chance of turning these visitors into customers. Here are some tips for creating great content for different mediums. Besides, the content on your website needs to be dynamic. According to Forbes, dynamic content is when the content that's displayed on your site changes based on who the visitor is. Usually, it's based on geography. For example, if someone is visiting from the U.S. during a national holiday, then your homepage would display products/services that relate to that holiday or would display a simple holiday greeting. A perfect example would be TripAdvisor. They display the name of the city, region or state on their homepage. For instance, their Restaurants tab displays the city that you are currently in and offers you the best restaurants in that city. The result is that the visitor identifies with the content more, has a better user experience and is more likely to buy your product if you’re using dynamic content. Omniconvert states that there are countless examples of websites that use dynamic content in order to personalize their user experience. For example, Booking.com implements this solution when displaying the number of visitors that look at the same listing at the same time, in order to increase the urgency. Here are some other examples:  
 
  Some common parts of text that can be transformed into dynamic content are the user's location, weather & temperature, system details. These are all pieces of information that can immediately be used even during first-time visits on the website. However, if the user has already been on the website and maybe has already created an account, other more specific data can be used to personalize the content such as name, gender, products that they visited, actions they previously made.

Great SEO Strategy

Forbes  explains, SEO focuses on making a site accessible to search engines for the purpose of improved rankings. CRO is the art of improving the user experience to get higher conversions. One discipline is geared towards search engines while the other is focused on users. Very few sites can successfully combine both to create a stellar site that provides a great user experience and also ranks highly on search engines. The secret is using SEO tactics to improve your conversion rate and to make your site searchable.  
  Optimizing your content for search engines is different from optimizing your content for conversions, but the results you achieve with one complement the results you reach with the other. While SEO/SEM helps you bring more traffic to your site, CRO helps you convert these visitors into leads and customers. Just driving more traffic to your site doesn’t guarantee more conversions. A CRO program complements the increase in traffic generated by an SEO program.

Effective Use of Call-to-Action Buttons

As stated by Blue Fountain Media, call-to-action buttons come in various of shapes and sizes – but all of the best ones offer an emotional trigger while standing in the contrast to the rest of the web page they are featured on. While CTAs are important, sometimes the actual emotional trigger that a CTA uses to be effective isn’t in the button – it’s in the copy that surrounds it. A great example of this idea in action can be found on Flex Studios’ website. Featuring scrolling background images, the page changes the text that accompanies each image while giving a consistent green CTA button with the copy “Book a Class”. What’s particularly interesting about this site is that each set of copy provides different emotional triggers that could feasibly interest someone enough to book a class. The initial copy focuses on highlighting Flex’s location in New York City’s Union Square, as their target customer is in that area. For the second image and batch of copy they focus on the three different workouts they offer in an effort to get users to see what different classes they could book by clicking on the call-to-action. Finally, they highlight their discount pricing for a first class.  
  In order to maximize your efforts and your CTAs, you need to use the kind of language, approach, and wording that captivates and engages your audience. Your CTAs mean the difference between whether your customer converts or clicks on the exit. A persuasive, compelling call-to-action can convince even the most hesitant prospect to convert, but there’s more to it than just a tempting offer — you have to speak your customers’ language.

Conclusion

Developing a well-designed, professional looking website will get your foot in the door of the online market, and give you a base from which to build your clientele. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Web design and Website Development? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article! With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!

LANDING PAGE

 

LANDING PAGE | WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT

Landing page is any webpage that someone lands on after clicking an online marketing call-to-action. Quite often, digital marketing campaigns become focused on driving consumers to visit a website, with no real thought as to what happens when they get there. When a consumer clicks on an inbound link into your website, whether through an Google Adwords ad, social media, or a link on someone else’s website, they ‘land’ on a web page that gives them their first impression of your brand. Any of your website pages can be a ‘landing page’ in that sense – but they may not make a good landing page. Optimally, landing pages should be customized to achieve the following objectives:

Trigger a Conversion

This is the main (but not only) objective of a landing page – to get visitors to take a desired action. Depending on your ad campaign objectives, this could be lead generation (visitors provide their details for further communication with your brand) or a direct purchase. While this is obviously the most lucrative objective of a landing page, most businesses find that many consumers do not convert at their first contact with a website or landing page. Thus, a landing page designed solely to cater for conversions may cause you to miss out on the other benefits that a good landing page can bring.

Capture Basic Background Data

Even if web visitors do not ‘sign up’ with your brand, a good landing page should still be able to track basic data for each visitor – for example, demographic data like age and gender, as well as the visitor’s referral source, or where they entered your landing page from. Using this background data, you are then able to retarget these visitors at a later date using the remarketing features of ad platforms like Google Display Ads and Facebook.

Explain Your Brand

Your landing page is the first point of entry into your website – and there is a possibility that your visitor will not navigate beyond that first page to explore the rest of your website. Thus, it is a good idea to make your landing page count by including key points of information about your brand, including unique selling points that make your brand different from others.  
  The overall design of the landing page should also match your branding aesthetic, so that even if not all the copy is read by the visitor, you are still able to make an impression that can help with brand recognition down the line.

Give Visitors Options for Next Steps

It is also important that your landing page not be a ‘dead end’. Some businesses do choose to design very minimalistic landing pages if their main goal is to drive conversions, as giving the website visitor fewer options can increase the chances that they will perform your desired action. However, you do tend to lose out on those visitors who are in ‘browse’ mode, looking for more information before committing to an action. Thus, giving the option of finding out more, exploring other aspects of your website, or providing contact information can be useful on a landing page in order to help these visitors along on their consumer journey.  
  With the right aspects in place, your landing page can serve multiple purposes for your business, whether to drive conversions, introduce your brand, or act as a gateway to other parts of your website. So the next time you’re tempted to just use your home page as a landing page, consider the potential benefits of customizing a separate page to serve the objectives of your campaign!

BEST PRACTICES FOR LANDING PAGES

1. Too many companies send their advertising, email, or social media traffic to their homepage. This is a huge missed opportunity. When you know a stream of targeted web traffic will be coming to your website, you can increase the likelihood of converting that traffic into leads by using a targeted landing page.

  Thus, the number-one rule for any landing page is to deliver value: First and foremost, if you have a valuable offer, your web visitors will give up their contact information in exchange for your offer. Ask yourself if your offer is compelling to your audience and make sure that your landing pages demonstrate that value.  

2. Another important suggestion by .com, is to ensure that sharing buttons are also provided on the landing page:

  Tap into a huge community of your best (and free!) marketers: your audience.  Add share links to your landing page to encourage your website visitors to share your content with their audiences.  

3. The last, but not the least: Testing!

  According to Business2Community.com, Don’t get lost testing endless variations of subtle elements that most people barely notice. The improvements won’t amount to much after a lot of work. Instead, focus on the big elements such as the headline, benefits, call-to-action, images, form fields, and the overall layout (such as a short page vs long page).   Tone is something you need to test for yourself. Many businesses will already have a recognized business persona on social media, but haven’t yet considered incorporating it into their sales funnel. Test it within different verticals, among different demographics, and for different objectives.

LANDING PAGE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

Average time on page.

If you’re not careful, you can look at average time on page metrics and get a completely wrong impression of how your landing page is doing. By default, most analytics tools (Google Analytics included) only record the time spent on a page when the web visitor navigates to another page on the same domain. If a visitor lands on your page, sticks around for 15 minutes, follows through with a goal, and bounces, their average time on site will be marked as 0.00. This distorts your data and leaves you with an inaccurate snapshot. The best solution is to use Google’s Event Tracking API tool (which starts tracking after a visitor has been on site for 10 seconds). (Semrush.com)  
 

Bounce Rate.

Bounce rate is important. High bounce rate tells you that the users who are coming to your site, leave the site immediately. Leading causes for high bounce rate: a) The lack of information or misinformation on the site b) Poor user experience design that is not appealing to your visitors c) The site is difficult to navigate, slow or anything that is connected to a bad development work Bounce rate calculates the percentage of people who leave your site after visiting only one page. If your goal is higher conversions, you want to ensure your bounce rate stays low. If your bounce rate is high, it means the material on your landing page is not what visitors expect and they were not interested in taking action, downloading your content or completing a form.

Conclusion

Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Digital Marketing and develop a great landing pages for your website? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!