A/B testing

A great way to ensure you’re optimising your website is by running A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) across variants. Before implementing significant updates, you might want to consider running an A/B test to justify your decision making. Netflix leads by example in this area. Unique to every user, they pool together data to produce a final homepage outcome based on behaviour and preferences. Todd Yellin, Vice President of Product at Netflix, confirms that the brand runs 250 A/B tests each year to test the different versions of the design. These tests also consider the ways in which users search for films and programs on the app (Wired, 2018). With a highly detailed level of tracking and various testing in place, Netflix’s success is entirely reliant upon data. Regularly implementing the variations from the results optimises the user experience.

Refresh your content regularly

It’s not uncommon for users to arrive at a website only to be deterred by complex language, over-stimulating features, or a lack of useful information. These websites tend to garner large drop off rates, with marketers left trying to figure out where they slipped up. This nearly always occurs when a website is built without a defined content strategy in place. Markets are ever-changing, and branded websites should reflect this. To stay top of mind, content needs to be relevant, useful, and findable. Marketers need to audit and refresh existing content on an ongoing basis, factoring in current trends and wider business objectives.

 

Prioritise SEO activity

SEO is often an afterthought when it comes to website builds. This is usually down to the fact that organic search rankings can take time to bear fruit in contrast to paid activity. But with 53.3% of all website traffic acquired through organic search, SEO should be a core consideration during, and after, a website build.Regular SEO activity can elevate your brand and take you to the top of search engines, surpassing your competition. The key to successful performance and conversion of your website is a content strategy that considers a user-friendly experience, with digestible information for both the user as well as search engines. (Search Engine Journal, 2022).

Whilst they are undoubtedly two separate entities, marketers should make sure their SEO and PPC strategies are aligned, and both have high prominence on their marketing agenda and budgets. On average, 5-10% of your revenue should be spent on SEO activity. (Search Engine Land, 2022).

Read more about our top tips to optimise your organic search in our blog here.

 

Monitor technical performance

Top performing websites don’t just need to look good, they need to be functional too. Ongoing website maintenance is required to keep your website running. This can be achieved by making sure your website is safe and secure, and that links and tools aren’t broken. It may seem simple but often brands focus on the launch of a new website and forget to check in on performance once it’s live. Some CMS updates can be relatively straight forward, but you’ll benefit from an experienced digital team to manage, monitor and prevent or react to any technical issues your website may encounter.

 


 

As a fully integrated agency, we build sites that talk the talk and walk the walk – from design to optimisation. If you’re looking to take your website to the next level, drop us a line today – we’d love to have a chat.

Discover more industry insights and opinions at saintnicks.uk.com/insights

Originally posted to: www.carnsight.com

Luckily, the “d” word isn’t something we hear a lot. But if it’s something you’re feeling after a PR push, whether it’s one you’ve done in house or worked on with a PR consultancy, it’s really important to look at why it missed the mark. If you’re disappointed in your PR results, and campaigns are leaving you underwhelmed, here’s why that might be, and how it can be avoided in future.

What were your expectations?

You shouldn’t ever be eagerly anticipating coverage in The Economist if your story was only ever destined for a local news portal. That’s not to be disparaging – both publications have their place and both are important in reaching certain audiences. The point is, you should be given an indication of where coverage is possible (and where it isn’t) before the pitch. This conversation can even start when you first start discussing the PR campaign.

No one has a crystal ball, and you could get very lucky or less so. But a good PR agency should have targets in mind when they’re crafting content, and they should be able to share and agree those with you.

Art not science

Building on the point above, PR is an art, not a science. We’ve had BBC filming lined up only for the news to throw us completely off track and for a crew to abandon a shoot to cover a breaking story. Likewise, we’ve had small stories being picked up nationally because they happened to hit the spot and be just what an editor was looking for at that moment.

This is the world of PR! Ensure any PR team you’re working with keeps you abreast of what’s happening at each stage. They can’t control some of it, but they can and should give you as much information as they know at each stage.

Did you understand the journey?

We work with a range of clients who have never done PR before, or have had limited experience. That’s fine, and we can take most of it off their hands. But we do explain what we’re doing at each stage, what’s needed and how long things are likely to take.

If you were expecting something to land that didn’t – did you get given the full picture? Did you understand what was happening, and when? You don’t need to be a PR expert but some knowledge of the process helps to put things in context, in our experience.

Coverage is never guaranteed

We’ve talked about why we never guaranteed coverage in a dedicated piece, but in essence, no one can truly guarantee coverage in a publication, unless that’s a paid-for spot, such as an advertorial.

If you’ve been guaranteed coverage that doesn’t appear, it’s definitely worth asking more about it, and how (and why) it was guaranteed in the first place.

This mindset shift is a helpful step away from feeling disappointed in your PR results, and big a step towards getting it right next time.

Are you targeting the right audience?

If coverage appeared but didn’t hit the right audience – are you sure it was designed to target them in the first place? Some publications are great to appear in from a profile point of view. But some are more likely to hit your objectives than others. Ensure you’re always clear who’s being targeted and why that’s the right target audience for your objectives. Start with the end – what do you want those people reading the coverage to do? And then work back from that.

For us, it’s paramount that everyone understands what’s achievable, what could make the news (and where) and that no one is underwhelmed. We do put a lot of groundwork into explaining what we’re doing, we are responsive, honest and transparent and we partner with clients. That’s what gets the best results for everyone.

Almost all UK agency owners worry about their business, with 14% feeling anxious every day.

That’s the finding of The Wow Company’s 2023 BenchPress reports, the largest survey of independent agency owners in the UK.

It found that 99% of all agency owners worry about their business, with 60% of those running agencies with £1m+ turnover and 70% under £1m feeling worried or anxious at least once a month. For both groups, 14% get anxious every day.

Agency owners shoulder a lot of responsibility & can sometimes feel anxious about their businesses. For all the highs, there are inevitably going to be some lows to navigate. Where do you sit among these figures taken from our new BenchPress report? More: https://t.co/qog2wRcsbi pic.twitter.com/306jMIrPWr

— The Wow Company (@thewowcompany) April 13, 2023

The top concerns that keep founders awake at night were team, new business and clients for £1m+ businesses and new business, cash flow and clients for firms turning over under £1m.

When it comes to work/life balance, 7% of owners of agencies under £1m and 5% of those £1m+ said they do not have one at all.

The report said you’re 50% less likely to worry about your business if you have a healthy work/life balance, so it urged founders to work on getting one.

How agency owners maintain a healthy work/life balance:

how agency owners maintain healthy work life balance

Read advice on mental health and wellbeing:

Confidence levels fall

In another finding from the reports, confidence among UK agency owners at the start of this year dropped close to levels seen during the height of the COVID-19 restrictions.

Since 2012, the study has tracked how confident agency owners feel about the year ahead by giving a rating out of 100. Above 50, owners feel confident and below 50, they expect this year to be worse than last year.

The new report shows confidence in January 2023 was at 66, compared to 74 in 2022 which was the highest level since 2017.

In January 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the score was 71 and in July 2020 it was 60.

As well as the issues around wellbeing described above, BenchPress said the fall in confidence is also driven by:

Growth: 71% of agencies under £1m and 79% of £1m+ grew in 2022, but growth wasn’t as strong as in previous years. Those that grew fee income by 26%+ dropped from 39% (under £1m) and 43% (£1m+) in 2021 to 26% (under £1m) and 27% (£1m+) in 2022.

Remuneration: Those earning over £50,000 per year dropped from 58% to 52%, while those earning more than £100,000 fell from 53% to 46%.

Profit: For agencies with under £1m turnover, average gross profit reduced to 36%, an 8% fall from the previous year. For agencies with £1m+ revenue, average gross profit has reduced to 40%, a 4% fall from 2021.

Purpose remains important

Despite the UK’s economic challenges, the report showed that having a purpose continues to be important for agencies.

It found that 24% of owners of agencies under £1m and 28% of £1m+ firms said building a business that has a positive impact on the world was their top priority.

[Online event for Bristol Creative Industries members on 19 May: Six steps to supercharge sustainability in your business]

[Read advice on business as a force for good and how to become a B Corp here]

The top ways agencies make a difference include:

The full BenchPress reports are jam-packed with lots more data plus advice on overcoming the key challenges and how to boost your agency. Download the reports here

Armadillo Press Release published 28/03/23

CRM specialist Armadillo welcomes two data heavyweights into its team in the form of Lucy Darbon, Data Strategy Director, and Andrew Sargent, Head of Insight and Analytics. The new hires will help the DMA Award-winning agency drive its data and insight offering further for global clients including McDonald’s, Disney and Carnival UK. Armadillo has doubled in revenue and headcount in the last 3 years. 

New data strategy director, Darbon, joins from Zone, where she was data strategy lead, driving acquisition, analysis and leveraging of clients’ data to achieve business objectives. Before that she led a team at BT as senior digital marketing effectiveness manager, having worked at the multinational telco for six years.  

At Armadillo, Darbon will bring her skills and experience to bear, helping clients use data to drive businesses forward. Working as a bridge between strategy and data teams, she will use tools such as data visualization and analysis to democratize data, activating first-party data and driving ROI.    

Meanwhile, Sargent joins from 12 years at Wood For Trees, the charity and non-profit data insights agency, where he was director of analysis. Fresh from working with major charities such as British Red Cross, Marie Curie and British Heart Foundation, at Armadillo he will focus on getting strong insight through data from its global clients.  

Heading up a team of six, Sargent will provide in depth analysis across the agency and will work closely with the creative teams to enable data to inform creative strategy.  

CEO James Ray comments, “Intelligent use of data is at the heart of everything we do at Armadillo, and Lucy and Andrew joining will give us a fantastic opportunity to further upweight our capabilities. 

“As we continue to leverage first-party data for brands, the appointments will help move creative and data even closer together, allowing insights to inform creative strategy and output, and driving ROI across all our campaigns.” 

Darbon adds: “Since my very first role at BT I’ve been inspired to work with data, and this position feels like it fits my capabilities perfectly. I could see immediately that Armadillo had very impressive technical expertise and data science skillsets, as well as the appetite to push things further.” 

Sargent said: “I’m joining at such an exciting time for data and analysis – there’s never been more scope, with tech enabling even more access to insights. I also loved the culture of Armadillo from my first interview – it’s agile with a can-do, punchy mindset.” 

Nowadays, customers have a multitude of options for products and services. Therefore, if your marketing strategy fails to deliver, potential customers are likely to seek out alternatives. Although it’s disheartening, it’s the reality we face. But fear not! There’s one element that can establish a connection with customers, differentiate you from the competition, and foster loyalty. A brand story.

However, creating a brand story that effectively conveys your company’s values, mission, and purpose requires more than just recounting the history of your business. It demands careful consideration of your narrative as a whole. While it may seem daunting, we’re here to guide you through the challenges you may face while crafting your brand story and how to overcome them to build customer loyalty.

So, let’s get started on crafting that perfect brand story!

Challenge 1: Finding the Right Narrative

Your first and greatest challenge is finding the initial narrative for your brand story that resonates with customers. This is no easy task, and it’s not as simple as just creating a marketing message or sales pitch. Your brand story needs to strike a balance between being compelling and authentic, and it must speak to your target audience’s specific needs and wants.

A notebook to represent writing a narrative for your brand story

Solution: Research and Listen to Customers

To find the correct narrative for a brand story, it’s essential to research and listen to customers. For example, conducting surveys or focus groups to gather feedback and insights on what customers value about your brand, what they’re looking for in your product or service, and how they perceive the brand’s identity and mission.

By getting down to the nitty-gritty and gathering detailed information from your audience, you can create a powerful and emotionally resonant brand narrative that fosters customer loyalty.

Challenge 2: Differentiating from Competitors

One of the biggest hurdles in creating a brand story is making it stand out from the sea of competitors out there. It’s important to find a unique angle that distinguishes you from similar products or services.

A singular pin in blue to represent why you need to stand out against competitors when creating your brand story.

Solution: Focus on a Unique Value Proposition

To stand out from competitors, you need to establish a unique value proposition. This is a statement that clearly communicates your products or services’ benefits and what sets you apart from competitors.

Is there something about your product or service that sets it apart in the market? Does your business have a particular company culture or value that will resonate with your customers? These are just some of the factors to keep in mind as you work to identify and highlight your business’s unique qualities.

Challenge 3: Maintaining Authenticity

Authenticity is a critical component of a successful brand story, and so is maintaining it. Customers are increasingly savvy and can easily spot a contrived or inauthentic brand story, which could damage your brand’s credibility and erode trust with customers. While it’s easy to become enthusiastic about your business and brand, you shouldn’t exaggerate or over-promise your brand story to stand out from competitors.

Solution: Stay True to Company Values

A way to avoid this is to start with a clear understanding of your business’s values, mission and purpose. Your brand story should be a natural extension of these.

In addition, using real, relatable examples in your brand story will help maintain authenticity. By telling real stories of how your business has helped customers or made a positive impact, you’ll build trust with your customers and demonstrate authenticity, ultimately building customer loyalty.

In conclusion…

Overall, successfully overcoming these challenges is crucial to creating a brand story that emotionally connects with customers. To read the full version, head over to our blog here.

If you’re still needing a hand, our team of experts is here to help. Get in touch to learn more about our customer-focused solutions and how we can help you achieve your business goals!

If you want your business to succeed, you must consider the relationships you have with your consumers.

Creating and nurturing customer relationships has changed in recent times along with client expectations.

Having a physical site was necessary for consumers to shop there. Now almost everything can be bought at the click of a button. So, how do you keep a customer coming back to your website?

Audience members can feel entirely cut off from a company, even in today’s hyperconnected environment. Because of this, more companies are investing in ‘community management’.

Community management definition

Creating a community among brands and customers through online interactions is community management. Brands can recapture the human element of consumer brand loyalty, that technology advancements have deprived them of.

It connects to other marketing and PR aspects, such as social media, content, and search engine optimisation (SEO). It must complement your overarching marketing, public relations, and communications strategy.

Why do businesses benefit from an online community?

For organisations, community management is not only useful but essential. Adopting a community management strategy can improve consumer satisfaction by boosting brand recognition and loyalty. A community management plan that is effective can:

One excellent option for brands to build authentic relationships and get customer feedback is through a community that facilitates actual discussions. Even effective word-of-mouth marketing campaigns may benefit from it. 83% of customers believe that word-of-mouth advertising directly affects their purchasing behaviour.

What distinguishes community management from social media management?

Although there are many similarities between social media marketing and community management, their agendas are significantly different. The focus of social media marketing is on sharing social posts on social media channels. This is done to expand the brand’s client base and increase traffic and interaction.

A community manager will interact with your community across all online channels. The activity incorporates aspects of social listening, customer service, and community rules for participating in online forums. Intimate connections are developed through careful management. They also create communities both inside and outside of social media.

Community management techniques

Customer service is only one aspect of community management. There are, in reality, six main categories of community management efforts. The acronym SPACE makes it simple to recall the methods of community management:

Internal engagement is another method of community building and management that is frequently utilised to create an online community. Your team members, partners, and vendors make up your internal audience. Your consumers, fans, supporters, brand advocates, ambassadors, and followers make up your external audience.

Developing a community management strategy

Building effective networks that foster sincere, lasting relationships requires a solid plan. A successful community manager will organise all of your happy consumers in one space and look after them by encouraging good interactions.

These are step-by-step instructions for creating an online community management strategy:

  1. Establish goals and objectives

When it comes to deciding how community managers measure success, there is no right or wrong way. The metrics depend on what’s important to you. Maybe you want to gain more followers on social media, or perhaps you’d like to enhance sales and conversions. Possibly you require greater brand recognition or more website visitors.

Clearly identify your aims and the tactics you need to measure your success by setting goals.

  1. Determine your audience

Before developing your plan, you must identify your primary audience. For instance, knowing the demographics of your target audience will enable you to focus your efforts on engaging that group.

Construct customer personas to understand your customers’ interests, preferences, etc. Find out where your audience is and then create content for them; they tend to be more active on one or two social media platforms, sites or forums.

  1. Post frequently and interact with your community members

Keep in mind that community management provides opportunities for small and close interactions. With a better understanding of your community’s members, ensure your content will interest them.

A great place to start creating your brand’s reputation and online community is on social media. Your community will know what to expect from you if you consistently release new content on social channels.

Social media platforms are fantastic resources for learning about your target audiences’ demographics and finding out what interests them. Encourage the sharing of user-generated content, a great way to share the love with your audiences and show that you value their interactions with your company.

It may even inspire creativity and generate suggestions for improving goods or services. In fact, 90% of online communities regularly share ideas about how to make changes to products.

  1. Analyse your outcomes

Keep track of your progress while you work; test and learn to understand what works and what doesn’t. It will constantly change as your brand grows and your community expands. Adapt your goals and the KPIs monitoring your success to ensure they reflect your community’s continued growth.

There are plenty of analytical tools available to help you monitor and encourage growth of your social media channels. choose the ones that will work for you.

What does a community manager do?

They are experts with the knowledge and qualifications to put effective community management strategies into practice. Four different strategies are used by community managers to manage interaction across numerous platforms, including social media:

As social media becomes more and more important to a company’s success, ensure that you have an active community manager who can help build and grow your audiences.

Video and animation will always be at the heart of Proctors Motion Department. And that’s why we’ve been hard at work continually refining our general expertise. But, over the past year we’ve also expanded our offering, to deliver interactive 3D experiences too.

Panasonic – Solutions Drawings

watch the interactive model video here.

Power at your fingertips with interactive 3D models

Overview

Panasonic challenged us to visualise how their extensive portfolio of hardware and software could be combined to create highly-specialised, complete, and integrated solutions.

So we proposed an interactive piece (making use of Babylon.js) that allowed users to explore sectors and areas for themselves – rather than a typical static image that acts as a clickable menu.

This all sat in an angular app, offering up relevant information in the form of whitepapers, product links, tech specs, video and imagery.

We developed a solid workflow that allowed us to: quickly design scenes for sign off; optimise geometry by hand and using AI tools (so the 3D rooms downloaded quickly without putting pressure on end users’ devices); create libraries of Babyblon.js code that could efficiently be repurposed for building out interactivity and the look; deliver a front end where content could be loaded in a simple JSON file, rather than buried away in complex code.

View gif in blog here.

Delivered

Three dioramas for two sectors – manufacturing and education

Explore Panasonic Connect’s solutions in the Manufacturing sector.

Explore Panasonic Connect’s solutions in the Education sector.

Results

With an average dwell time of 5 minutes for education and nearly 3.30 for manufacturing, our interactive models have proven to be a great way of grabbing (and keeping!) potential customers’ attention.

TOUGHBOOK 40 launch collateral

Watch the TOUGHBOOK 40 here.

Delivering a high-octane, high-end product shoot… without the high costs

Overview

Panasonic and Proctors go back a very long way, so when the time came to launch their latest flagship device, the Panasonic TOUGHBOOK 40, they knew who to call.

We crafted a concept based around a fast-paced edit of the conditions a truly rugged laptop needs to stand up to. The final film was a mix of 3D, shot footage and visual effects (VFX), recreating the demanding environments where TOUGHBOOK is most at home.

The project could easily have become a very costly multi-location shoot. But we made use of minimal locations, lots of 3D expertise and some heavy post-production work to deliver even more, for a fraction of the time, cost… and carbon.

We demonstrated the TOUGHBOOK 40’s unique features – what sets it apart from the competition – wrapped up in a tight action-packed film.

View the gif in the blog here.

Delivered

One launch film

Four teasers

All part of a suite of marketing materials.

Watch the TOUGHBOOK 40 video here.

Result

Having worked on the numerous Panasonic product launches, Proctors has become the go-to-agency for new TOUGHBOOK launch films and collateral.

TOUGHBOOK S1 – Launch film

TOUGHBOOK G2 – Launch film

P+S Unlocked

Watch the CSR journey video here.

Fun animation and stop-motion…for good

Overview

2022 saw the launch of the first series in ‘P+S Unlocked’ – a new major initiative, designed to help audiences to tap into their full marketing potential with our latest insights, strategies and thought leadership content.

Series 1 took on Corporate Social Responsibility, specifically, how to communicate your progress and demonstrate your accountability.

We riffed on a Terry Gilliam style of animation, using a stop-motion collage approach to demystify explainers, illustrate some easy to implement CSR tips and generally add some humour and fun.

The P+S Motion Department went on a whistle-stop tour of Bristol to see our friends at Calibro and Burges Salmon to find out what CSR meant to them and document their progress in becoming the best citizens they can be.

Read about how businesses can make sure their CSR claims are honest and authentic.

Delivered

Three videos

A host of ads, gifs and lotties (think responsive vector images that move)

An interactive online model of our offices, highlighting some of our own CSR initiatives.

Watch the sustainability marketing video here.

Result

Lots of shares, new business enquiries and email signups. Now, time to start preparing Series 2 – Branding marketing.

Thrio: A stunning rebrand, with the moves to match

Watch the Thrio brand video here.

Creating a toolkit that allows the client to produce their own slick videos

Overview

Meet Thrio. From voice to chat to email, bots and beyond, Thrio’s cloud-based, AI-powered tech helps take the customer experience to a whole new level.

This film was the brand’s first foray into the world of motion design, and we wanted to showcase it simply but powerfully – conveying how Thrio’s offering enables seamless interaction using a calm and collected visual style, communicating clarity in a noisy market.

We developed a graceful motion language to complement their new brand. We conveyed a sense of measured confidence, showing how Thrio’s all-under-one-roof solution simplifies the complex by avoiding the use of multiple vendors. This was elevated with delicate sound design, adding timbre to Thrio’s message in a confident but considered voice.

But this wasn’t their only step into the world of motion. Using the style of the brand film as a guide, we’ve since worked on multiple video projects with Thrio, including a video toolkit – a cost-effective tool that allows the client to produce their own slick branded and social media videos.

Delivered

Brand film

Video toolkit

LinkedIn adverts

Website

ABM campaigns

Watch the Thrio LinkedIn ads video here.

Result

The full campaign received:

5+ million impressions

300+ thousand clicks

85% website acquisition from paid media

196+ thousand new users on the website

231+ thousand website sessions

Trelleborg: Capital Markets Day

Watch the Trelleborg Capital Markets Day video here.

Illustrating highly technical processes… without overcomplicating them

Overview

Trelleborg is an engineering company specialising in polymer solutions that seal, damp and protect. From smart anti-slip mattress covers to trenchless pipe lining, it was our job to create several animations, displaying how various Trelleborg engineering solutions work – all in time for their annual Capital Markets Day.

Trelleborg’s products are often hidden within industrial equipment and machinery, so we needed to deconstruct them to showcase each in action.

Because these animations were to be presented at an event, it was vital to ensure the design and animation was effective and easy to follow. It was a great opportunity to explain and illustrate highly technical processes without overcomplicating them, with clear supporting copy.

Delivered

Five technical animations

Result

The project began with two animations to cover a couple of products, Trelleborg were so happy with the results that the final project was extended to five.

…And that’s just the beginning.

Our team of videographers, animators, motion designers and scriptwriters have been making award-winning, show-stopping video for decades.

We believe each of our clients has something really important to say – from tech behemoths and multi-national market leaders, right down to local, grassroots charities. Whatever story you want to tell, we’ll help you share it with the world. Talk to Proctors today.

We all know that the shorter working week has had proven success in other countries. 86% of Iceland’s workforce, for example, have either moved to a shorter working week or have the right to request shorter hours. So as Bristol tentatively dips its toe into the sea of change with a pilot scheme rolling out across businesses in the city, here we are five years into our four-day working week with some (hopefully) helpful reflections. 

Why did we do it?

Life is short and we want it to be excellent. Every bit of it. We’ve found that since allowing more space for our brains to process, stray, absorb and even rest (what a thought, we know) this has enabled better ideas to flow, calmer attitudes to influence the team and ultimately a higher level of productivity during the time spent at our desks. Don’t get us wrong, we believe in working hard to deliver excellent, refined work – the only difference is that we think it can be achieved successfully within four days. No extra hours, just four normal days.

How does it work for our clients? 

From a client’s perspective, you wouldn’t know any different. At the start of every project we create a timeline that our clients are happy with and that’s the timeline that we work to. Emails are answered from Monday to Thursday and we’re here to chat over the phone on any of those days too!

How does it work for the team? 

Every team member works the same four days which allows for collaboration and efficiency. What each team member does on Fridays is completely up to them. And then after a year of working for Studio Floc, all staff get paid the equivalent of a five-day working week for just four days. It’s our way of saying thank you for the hard work that everyone puts in.

A win-win

Excellence can be achieved in so many ways. For us, a four-day working week helps us accomplish this – and we don’t just mean in the workplace – but in every aspect of our lives. we would consider that a win-win. 

‬Driven by purpose‭, ‬we use creativity to enable the makers‭, ‬equip the innovators and empower the world-changers‭. ‬We specialise in branding‭, ‬print and digital design‭.‬

Have questions about our four-day working week? Looking for help with branding, print or digital design work? Let’s chat! Get in touch at [email protected]

As more and more businesses shift towards digital platforms, data analytics is becoming increasingly vital for ensuring customer retention through a smooth and effective onboarding process.

A well-designed onboarding process, optimised through careful planning, testing, and data analysis, helps customers quickly understand your product or service, leading to long-term success with your business.

How do I begin?

It all starts with Data Analytics…

Data analytics can seem scary at first. But it’s one of the most powerful tools in marketing and will help you generate a strategy that works and keeps on working.

So, here are five brief tips (see our website for them in full) for using data analytics to improve your onboarding process while enhancing your customer retention:

1. Identify key onboarding metrics

It’s all well and good saying analyse your data… But if you haven’t got any to start with, that’s going to be hard.

To begin with, identify which metrics are most important to track, these will be your KPIs (key performance indicators).

2. Use A/B Testing to refine your onboarding process

A/B testing is vital to help you refine your process by allowing you to test different approaches and identify which ones lead to higher conversion rates and engagement.

3. Analyse user behaviour data

Using Google Analytics, you will gain insights into which areas may be causing confusion or frustration, which may lead customers to drop off.

With this knowledge, you’ll find ways to improve the process and make it more user-friendly.

4. Leverage customer feedback

While looking at your numbers is beneficial, so is hearing directly from your customers about their experience. Gathering qualitative feedback, such as customer comments or surveys, gives you insights into specific pain points or areas for improvement.

5. Continuously iterate and improve

It’s important to continuously iterate and improve to keep your customers engaged and satisfied. Keep analysing data and gathering feedback to identify areas that need refining.

If you’d like to see our tips in more detail with examples, head over to our website.

Conclusion

Using data analytics to refine your onboarding process is essential to keep your customers happy and coming back. So be sure to keep improving to ensure a smooth onboarding experience that sets you and your customers up for success.

At Bopgun, customer retention is our bread and butter! If you’re feeling stuck and need some expert guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

You know everything there is to know about your area of expertise. Fantastic! Congratulations! But how useful is that if no-one knows that you’re a fountain of knowledge? Part of being an expert in any given field is making that knowledge available and accessible to those who need it. Writing business blogs is a great way to do this, but there’s more to it than that.

 

Be consistent

You could argue that if you download all the information in your head into one lengthy article, or one comprehensive website, you have demonstrated your knowledge and proven your expertise. I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple. Firstly, how many people will read one long piece of text in one go? Most of us are time poor and when searching for information we need, we want quick answers to specific questions. And even if we did stop and read all of that information in one go, we’re unlikely to remember it, or where it came from, for very long. By publishing content regularly, it keeps you top of mind. The more often people see your name pop up, the more often they will be reminded you know your onions!

 

Be seen

To position yourself as an expert you need to be seen. This means the more places you can publish content demonstrating your expertise the better. This may sound daunting, but for example if you write a business blog just once a month, you can likely the use the content of that to create several social media posts to dot post periodically each week. If you can secure positions in relevant trade magazines or local publications relevant to your audience, with feature articles about your areas of expertise (not a sales pitch for your business) people are more likely to perceive you as an expert.

 

Stay relevant

When you know everything there is to know about a particular topic, you might take this knowledge for granted. Don’t! Things change quickly, so make sure you keep up to date with changing technology, systems, suppliers, and trends. If the rest of the market has moved on and you’re still talking about an out of date process or service, your audience will quickly tune out and find another more reliable source of information.

 

Answer questions people want answered!

Sounds obvious, right? But when you have all the answers, you might assume prior knowledge in your audience that simply isn’t there. It’s often useful to go back to basics, as well as covering more advanced topics and ideas within your field of expertise. To make sure you’re hitting the right note with your audience, ask them what they’d like to find out more about. Or think about what questions you get asked on a regular basis – if a few people have asked you about a certain topic, there are probably many more people looking for the same answers online. If they can find the answers from you when they need them, it helps to build your reputation as an expert.

 

Ditch the technical jargon

There’s nothing worse than needing to find out more about a subject, landing on a website or finding an article in a magazine on that very topic, and not being able to understand a word it says because it is full of technical jargon. There is always a temptation to prove how much you know by using industry specific terms, technical abbreviations, and acronyms. But trust me, not only is it not necessary, but it will put far more people off than it will ever impress. Perhaps you want to talk in depth about legislation in your field, or the technical aspects of a new product launch. That’s fine to do, as long as you’re explaining it in a way your readers will understand, not just a way that you understand.

 

Don’t be too pushy

To position yourself as an expert, it’s best to separate the sales pitch from the informative resource as much as possible. if you are constantly trying to push your product or service on people, while answering their questions, they’ll start to wonder about your credibility. For example, if you’re a home improvement company writing a blog about different types of front doors and you only cover the benefits of the products you sell, visitors may not feel you’re offering them an honest, balanced view. If, however you talk about the pros and cons of every available door, whether you sell it or not, they’re far more likely to trust you and eventually buy from you for your expertise.

 

In conclusion: Generate the right content – generate trust

It’s not an easy balance to strike, to generate content that demonstrates your expertise, without appearing too pushy and without assuming too much prior knowledge from your audience. But when done well, positioning yourself as an expert in your field can generate a level of trust among your existing and potential customers that is truly valuable.