Entry – Engage – Exit
Background: One of the main goals of #DigitalMarketing is to drive quality and relevant traffic to your website. I would say ‘website’ is your ‘online showroom’ which is open 365 days and 24 hours a day. This sales engine has to be treated exactly the way organizations and marketers treat the ‘Physical showrooms’ where marketers ensure more and more footfalls (ENTRY) through various promotions and marketing techniques. The owner/smart salesmen/attractive displays/in shop promotions tries their best to ‘ENGAGE’ the customers. Finally depending on the’ quality of engagement’ inside the showroom, people ‘EXIT’ with or without making a purchase. This concept applies to your websites too. It is little complex as this happens in virtual medium. There are analytical tools available and I find #GoogleAnalytics is one of the best which captures entry, engagement and exit data for you to ascertain the user behavior and take strategic decisions.
Entry: This means
which are the #DigitalMedia channels your prospects and customers use to enter
your website. You must understand what your prospects and customers are doing
online, which channels of digital media they use, what are they looking for, their
key characteristics and behavior. After
identifying and analyzing, pick and choose best suited channels for your
business . It could be Search Engines, PPC ads, social media platforms (
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus and so on), e- mail, Digital Display,
mobile platform and even traditional mediums integrated with Digital. The various
activities that you need to need are #SearchEngineOptimzation, PPC Ads,
#SocialMedia engagements and or advertising, e-mail campaigns, Digital display
advertising etc. I will not get into the details as this is huge subject to
cover. The point I am trying to drive is the digital marketer should have a
goal oriented ‘entry strategy’ to ensure your prospects enter your ‘Online
showroom’. Bottom line is ensuring quality and relevant traffic to your
website.
Engagement: After
ensuring quality and relevant audience to your website if you fail to engage the
visitor meaningfully and effectively we have lost golden opportunity and entire
marketing effort and dollars spent on driving the right traffic to website goes
down the drain. Now let us briefly touch upon what are the most critical
factors that ensure engagement – Quality Content – Relevancy – Usability- Easy Navigation- Interactivity
elements- Design -Speed – Landing page quality etc. Also it is crucial that websites
should be lively, dynamic and up-to-date. Optimize the website through best
practices to drive on-site engagement. Ensure your visitors have great User
Experience. You must be in a position to think and analyze about how the site/pages
is being used. You need to continuous monitor and measure and should have a
plan for content creation and updation based on the needs of your prospect
customers.Through #GoogleAnalytics tool you will be able to get various reports to
find out audience engagement rate – Visit Duration, Page Depth which is how
many pages a visitor has viewed, Bounce Rates etc.
Exit: This is
another important parameter as this gives you how many visitors exited with or
without conversions. If you want convert more visitors into a purchases, you
need to know how they navigate your site. Exit percentage helps you pin
down areas on your website in which visitors leave, before converting. You must
analyse why visitors are exiting and on which are pages have high exit rates?
The bottom line is every qualified visitors comes to your site with certain
objective in mind and EXITS with or without conversions. As a #DigitalMarketer
we should understand why visitors are leaving and what we can do increase the
conversion rates. (Conversions need not necessarily be a purchase, it includes downloading product information, watching a
video, filling up the form, Ask for information, newsletter subscription etc)
Summary: I have seen many businesses have still not understood the intricacies of ‘website’ as lead generating tool and what it can do for their business. It is high time businesses consider this as their’ Online showroom’ which can generate enormous business in this digital era. The objective of this blog is to convey the concept and importance of 3 E’s. As a #DigitalMarketer we should have a well thought strategy for Entry- Engagement and Exit and play an important role in conveying the value proposition to the business owners and make it happen.
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Twitter: @shenoyhs
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