While most businesses, may be facing a host of operational, logistical challenges; there is a key area that marketers is either consciously ignoring or not giving a serious thought to is about conversions.
The facts and trends today seem to be going in the wrong directions.
- Conversion rates of digitally enabled marketing processes is less than 5 %
- Over 90% of visitors on a website are anonymous visitors
- Focus on social and mobile is not necessarily yielding conversions as expected
- Customer acquisition costs are mostly on an increasing trend
- Customer loyalty through digital mediums is not even worth mentioning
- ROI’s on digital spends are not necessarily as positive as previous quarters
The above facts may point to a direction that the digital trends are bound to get broken or effect stagnation. Needless to say that most ecommerce and online marketing businesses are facing the profitability challenges.
While most of the digital marketing efforts today are focused at driving visitors to the site or carefully orchestrating inbound marketing efforts, which increases the traffic on the site, but every website today suffers from a congenial paralysis of what to do or how to engage a visitor or customer when they are to their site.
Radical thinking or technologies of engaging visitors – (Yes even though many might be anonymous) is an idea that not many are experimenting or involving themselves with, currently.
One way to look at the problem is to flip the problem upside down, which would mean broadening the bottom end of the conversion funnel rather the top end
When you know that over 95% of the visitors on your site don’t buy anything on your site and prefer to remain anonymous, or a marketer doesn’t know anything about them. So would it make sense to invest in marketing to generate additional anonymous visitors?
If you are facing similar challenges, then try to flip your conversion funnel upside down; Which would mean focusing on your existing traffic of anonymous visitors and trying to maximize out of the 95%+ volume of your traffic. These, of course, are the key to building retention & loyalty. Chances are that, with better engagement & personalization to onsite / in session visitors, one may not require to invest a lot in inbound traffic.
An approach like this would mean
- Reaching out to your anonymous (and known) visitors to know more about their behaviour, preferences and interests
- Engaging with them to know their purpose or intention of their visit
- Enticing the visitors with conversion intent
Of course it would also mean
- Remembering them ( and their behaviour) when they are on the site next time
- Building a camaraderie with relevant messages, suggestions and temptations
- Building their confidence and relationships over a period of time
Easier said than done, But the key requirements for an approach like this would require the following:
- Individual level behavioral data of every visitor in real time
- Delivery medium and method to enable one to one conversation
With technologies & products like Plumb5 it is not only possible to engage visitors & customers, but entice action in real time.
So how do you know more about every individual customer in real time?
Today, very less analytical tools provide 1:1 or individual level analytics. Even these data are not necessarily structured or fast enough to pull all meaningful data about visitors & customer data. Even if it is fast enough, there are no mechanisms to interact, communicate or intervene with visitors on site – So chances are that one might know why the visitors are bouncing, or dropping out of cart but pretty much can’t do much about it.
Products like Plumb5 connect the missing elements of the acquisition cycle, wherein one can track every individual and their behaviour in real time. The system also has the unique capability to provide an omni channel profiling of the visitors, which not only enriches the data associated the visitor but also provides deeper insights to their preferences, interests and their challenges.
Knowing visitors and collating data is fine – What do i do with that?
When one has data and knowledge about the customer’s behavioral aspects, it is but important to use this information/ data in the most effective manner. The best use of the information will be to use it fast to enhance the visitors experience who are currently online.
Some of the ways where real time individual data can be used are:
- Hand holding users to guide / navigate them across the site
- Proactively asking for their preferences, choices and likings
- Provide the right recommendations or suggestions based on their past & current behaviour
- Offering advice on product / services
- Enticing them towards transaction or conversion
- Providing personalised message or content to returning visitors/ customers
- Making the experience of the visitors and customers better by remembering their preferences & choices
- Providing the warmth, care and delight experiences to every individual
This is where plumb5 makes the cut, by providing powerful and meaningful way to reach out to the visitor/ customer in real time.
Visit www.plumb5.com to learn more or write to pavank@plumb5.com
MARKETING TECHNOLOGY 