Digital Marketing in the 2020 Pandemic. Smart Thinking on What to Do Now.
Digital Marketing in the 2020 Pandemic
The web changes fast. Here is a comprehensive look at what small and medium-sized businesses should consider before committing to build 2020 websites. “Comprehensiveness” is important because it differs from the old way-to-web that isolated Internet tools away from other activities. Business owners who integrate (or weld) their products and services to brand websites holistically, will win.
Strategy in a Pandemic
Speaking of the current environment, I think a lot of us are going to have to engage new business models to survive a pandemic world that may be shut down, at least intermittently, for the near term. Those business models are still emerging, but Bruce Lee comes to mind:
Be Like Water
“Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot.”— Bruce Lee
Traditional ways of garnering customers and sales are changing. Advertising your way to customer acquisition can be unsustainably expensive and advertising doesn’t work as well as it used to anyway. Inbound links from high-authority websites really matter. But, if advertising doesn’t work well enough to support the magazines and newspapers you know and trust (the collapse of ad revenue), what happens when publications go away or lose that editorial trust? If you can’t advertise with ROI and the competition for inbound links gets even tougher, what’s left?
The Near Future
If media outlets change beyond recognition or go away, the price of Google and FB ads goes up even more....favoring entrenched competitors. An experienced television producer wrote to me recently, “If I were a brand I'd be focusing on reaching consumers directly.” If nothing else works reliably in a pandemic world, what should SMEs do? Strategically, I can only conclude that most small businesses should pivot to search marketing/organic search to deliver short, medium and long-term results. Move back to other parts of the marketing mix when the future is clearer.
Top-Level Website Trends: From Complex and Expensive Toward Easy Value-For-Money
Flat Websites Into Business Process Capable Websites
Websites used to be “flat” brochures or maybe enabled for e-commerce. These days websites offer lots of value-for-money functionality/services that used to be available only at the Enterprise level at big prices. For example, new services can reduce low-value repetitive tasks like contract management, or provide robust customer promotional information via AI-driven chatbots that lead customers into your sales funnel. You can track who comes to your website or use triggers that tell you when customers need a “may I help you” email or call.
Integrated services do things like auto-update customer records and build out your customer knowledge to customize messaging. These services build customer confidence, lower marketing costs, smooth operations, provide customer data and flatten information silos so that biz owners can manage everything better.
The Rise of Marketing Automations
Marketing automations are just that. They automate low, medium and high-level marketing tasks. AI-driven automations are already here. They do things like auto-send customer messaging or replace previously expensive marketing engineering services like A/B testing of ads. Look for these services to get cheaper and more pervasive. It is bad for guys like me, because AI automations replace things I used to get paid for but they’re great for SMEs because they do more for less.
Chatbots are a big thing. Customer service via telephone is a one-to-one communication. The ratio is one-to-five for regular web chat. AI changes that to one Customer Service Rep (CSR) to 60 customers. The CSR steps in at the last minute to close the transaction.
Chatbots sound cold and some are horrible customer experiences. However, when the biz owner gets it right customers, including me, feel like we have had the smartest, coolest, most knowledgeable CSR ever. Reason is, the universe of questions customers can ask is vast but knowable. If it is knowable, you can program to it and answer that question in an elegant, truly helpful way. Currently, financial institutions and other big Customer Service utilizers are jumping into Chatbots as fast as possible. There are existing and emerging Chatbots built for SMEs that do a great job of customer screening and qualifying. The roadblock is usually getting the biz owner to slow down and write (or even just review) helpful FAQs.
Customer Data Collection, ROI and Daisy-Chained Websites vs. Integrated Platforms
I still build WordPress websites if the customer insists but I don’t believe in them anymore. Too slow. Horrible security. High-priced upkeep. Too many monthly expenses. And, importantly….no data. WP is daisy-chained vs. integrated.
Daisy-Chained Services: “Connected in series, one after the other. Transmitted signals go to the first device or service, then to the second and so on.” If you have a WP site you are daisy-chained. If you have non-integrated service that require double or triple data entry…you are daisy-chained. You’ll almost never get actionable customer data.
Websites with managed back-ends like SquareSpace, Shopify, Webflow, Wix and others are Software as a Service (SaaS) with managed back-ends. If you use one of these you don’t have to deal with keeping your individual services up-to-date because all that is managed by the pros as part of your low monthly fee.
More, managed back-ends offer Integrated Services (vs. Daisy-Chains). The term “Integrated Services” refers to services driven by an app (API) that transmits and coordinates data. Usually, integrations deliver much better customer experiences too. Logic tells us that we should prefer any one of the integrated services on managed back end platforms to daisy-chained WP. SMEs need data. Integrations are the only way to get it.
Get Found
The problem of the web used to be not enough good, high-trust, original information. Now the problem is too much good content. In 2016 there were one billion websites. In late 2019 there are two billion websites. How can search engines adjust to delivering high quality search results to their customers? Search engines solve for that by evaluating your website via 500 or quality measures in a weighted mean/algorithm, called a Quality Score.
While there is no way to game search engines any longer, there is also no way to do everything Google measures. The trick is to do things that give you the most love in organic search and press on those levers consistently.
From Machine-Readable SEO Toward a Quality Score
High search rank is the holy grail goal, because otherwise you have to advertise your way to sales and customer acquisition cost are higher than you might expect. SEO used to be a set number of machine readable characters (characters…not words), that websites use to tell search customers what is on that web page. Or, in the bad old days black-hat SEOs could game search engines. Those days are over. Google and other search engines moved from machine readable text into a quality score and most recently toward searchable code SEO (called Structured Data).
Become an Active Publisher of High-Value Content
Google and other search engines want you to be a frequent publisher of high-quality original content in order to rise. Google isn’t super transparent, but as of right now “frequency of publishing”, (which is another way of saying “blogging”), is 25% of the quality score.
Inbound links from high-authority websites (blogs, magazines, influencers) still really matter. Search engines also want you to have a fast, mobile-first website that lets customers do what they came for….fast.
Performance, Load Speed, Hosting, Etc.
Ask your developer where your current website is hosted. If the developer is old school your website might be hosted in granny’s basement. You want to change to a cloud service. Or, if you’re on a managed back-end, you’ll want to confirm that your service is hosted on a real data center. Website performance (speed of loading, keeping your site at current (fast changing) web standards) really matters. In short…everything matters but you can’t do it all. So…do what you can that has impact.
The New SEO
Structured Data is on less than 5% of all websites. Implementing Structured Data is a place biz owners might be able to leapfrog over competitors. Check out all the fields you can structure for products https://schema.org/Product or services https://schema.org/Service and you’ll get an idea of how powerful this can be. By implementing Structured Data, you’re driving out the risk of search engines sending you a customer. Doing this work also buys you gains in advertising and channel sales on platforms like Instagram and Google Shopping.
Misconceptions: Email Marketing Still Moves the Needle
Often it is news to customers when I call out social as being a cost center for a long time before it is a revenue center. Email marketing is still what moves the needle on influencing customers toward action.
Get a Free Analysis to Know What Search Engines Know
If you want to know what Google thinks of your website, run their free Lighthouse report and select “expanded/detailed” views. This tells you everything you want your developer to do to bring your site up to snuff. It may also tell you that your website isn’t worth saving: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse
The Right Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Developer or DIY
Take-In Current Information (SWOT Analysis)
· Get smart on what your current website is good at (and not good at). For example, could you use more customer data? (Hint: The answer to this question is always, “yes”.)
· Recognize that websites have likely changed since the last time you built one. You’ll want to let go of and move on from what you heard five years ago at a cousin’s wedding. Current offerings are likely better, faster, cheaper and more capable than you think.
· Get smart about what is possible. Envision the ideal and ask your developer to help you think through how to operationalize trends, automations and sales channels. For example, convenience has become a big part of customer experiences and is vital for luxury and high-end products. How will your site meet that expectation?
· Lean-in to Mobile First. Mobile First thinking recognizes that mobile search is 60% of all search; 70% in some categories. It recognizes the reality that we have to make it easy for customers to do what they came to you for or they simply move on. What changes would a Mobile First approach mean for your products and services website?
· What are success factors for your new website? What would constitute failure?
· Who are competitors and what do they do that you want to emulate?
· What are the pain-points in your business process and marketing. If you or your staff are doing low-level, double or triple data entry you likely won’t be able to create the time to move to higher level tasks.
· Think through operational issues that cost a lot but don’t deliver value. Where could you spend more on what customers value and save on costs customers don’t care about? Ask friends and your developer to propose solutions.
· The whole world is going deeper and more direct. Ask yourself what are the things you could do right now without much money, new expertise or new skills that would drive new revenue, raise margins or raise switching costs for current customers. If you can define it your developer can recommend value-driven ways to get there.
· What is the business case for what your website needs to do? For example, do you just need a flat brochure that establishes brand and serves as a simple web reference to drive customers into your place of business? Do you need to drive inbound leads? Set appointments? Take reservations? Are you a professional services company that needs reputation and relevance in local search? Are you a medical practice that wants to move from advertising to organic search to save money? Is collecting emails for email marketing the best outcome of a new site? Do you have a product or service that only needs reminder promotions to drive sales? Do you sell e-commerce products and want to move toward Omnichannel reach? These decisions all really matter.
· Get familiar with at least some top-level strategy like Blue Ocean Strategy, The Long Tail, anything by Michael Porter or Clive Christensen. Smart SMEs will create a strategy map that compares where they are vs. where their competitors are to give direction to where they want to go.
· Consider your overall business strategy, because these days your technology strategy likely IS your business strategy. Failure to think this way may mean a failure to thrive.
· Define your website’s goals. Take a “crawl, walk run” approach. This means you want everything you do to be additive. Especially, you’ll want to confirm that the long-term goal does not require tearing down and rebuilding. Start with “crawl” but know what “walk” and “run” mean operationally.
· Verify that your revenue model is valid in the new environment.
· Remember that every choice matters to the customer experience, cost of website operation and search rank. Think holistically.
Scope of Work
· What is the scope of the project? How can you document what you need so creatives can design for it and engineers can build to it. A Scope of Work is a document that developers use to specify the exact steps and deliverables they’ll undertake on your behalf to build-out the website vision. It is typical for small business owners to assume that a website build fee includes everything from SEO, new pages or a logo redesign that the business owner thought of after the scope was set. Developers usually won’t let a project exceed the scope document without additional payment.
· E-Commerce websites take 40 to 60 hours to build. Longer, if there are over 10 products or there are business process customizations. Brochure websites usually take between 15 and 30 hours to build, depending on how much content transfers over from your old website to the new site. Fast following, you’ll want to scope on-page SEO and anything else it takes for you and your developer to make your site fully operational.
How to Make the New Environment Operational
· Describe your business and revenue model in one sentence. Describe where you want to be in one year and five years in another sentence or two.
· Define the key customers and describe what will they want from you in one year? In two years? The idea of “use cases” is super helpful to this. Create one-paragraph personas and describe what that persona wants from your website and brand experience. Build to that. You can always add more personas later. If you cannot build to that then set the direction and continuously improve your website’s features until you can service customers as well as or better than competitors.
· Define what matters in the near future. What metrics do you need to track?
· Does this review change anything about your company differentiation or Unique Selling Proposition? How can you re-define and monetize that?
· Consider all the selling channels available to you. For example, if you sell products you’ll want to think about finally monetizing your social channels with Instagram an Facebook product sales. Is Google Shopping right for you? Amazon?
· Think through whether you’re going to take an advertising model of growth or focus on less-expensive-takes-longer-and-is-harder-to-do organic growth. This will drive some of your website features.
· Define the hierarchy of what is important and limit the top half of your home page to the three or so most important topics. The hierarchy can be anything from product-driven promotions to how you’ll solve customer service in new ways to a focus on emotional impact. Decide now to create clarity.
· Do a creative review of the assets you have and decide where you need to invest in new artwork and copy. Gather, source or create those new creative assets.
· Decide on your storytelling point-of-view. It used to be that perfect parallel structure really mattered to website credibility, but the world has changed. Prioritize storytelling over perfection.
Defining Other Tools
· Do you need Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software?
· Do you need email blast software? (The answer to this question is always, “yes”.)
· Confirm how all these software services will work together to deliver a great customer experience and also actionable data.
· How much customer support and training do you need? Good platforms have tons of customer support, explanatory videos, customer boards and Facebook Groups.
How to Lead Competitors
· Do you need advanced features like personalization yet? Personalization means most customers will get an individualized experience based on what the site knows about that customer. Currently it is not widely used but it is coming and you’ll want to have it on your radar.
· Do you need geofencing or other forms of mobile marketing? Geofencing gives companies the ability to advertise or deliver offers to potential customers within a certain geographic radius. It is diabolical and diabolically effective. Even seniors read text alerts and they are very hard to reach with other forms of technology.
You have likely already noticed that companies that have your phone number feel free to market or otherwise inform you via text. By most measures this is considered “with permission”. The other way is if you’re within a geo-fenced area and have Bluetooth enabled, SMEs can send you offers via text.
This is done without permission and I personally hate it but it is very effective for events or dynamic situations where a discount coupon makes the difference between a sale and no sale. These are medium complicated and low to medium-cost services these days and expect to see many, many more examples of them in your life.
· Do you want to improve customer service and engagement with Chatbots? Chatbots are AI-driven computer programs that simulate human conversations. The list of product knowledge and customer questions is large but knowable. If something is knowable we can program to that knowledge. Chatbots get smarter with every interaction and never sleep or go on vacation. They take significant time to organize (because of the questions/answers) but after that they can help qualify customers before they contact your sales team.
· You should invest in Structured Data SEO because it replaces machine-readable text with robust, flexible searchable JSON-LD code. It is also a bump to your quality score.
Considerations as You Move From Development to Maintenance
· How much ongoing support and interaction do you want with your developer on the sliding scale from “I want to be married to a developer who is totally responsible for my website forever” to “I’m agnostic about who does the work in the future”. This matters a lot to your final platform and vendor choices.
On the Horizon
· There are new cottage industries that aim to extract money from largely unaware business owners via lawsuits. The two big areas are in using someone else’s photography without permission (even in a simple social post) and companies with over 50 employees (or in some states over 50 contractors) will need to make their websites ADA compliant. You’ll know you’re in someone’s sites when you get a claim letter for $500 to $50,000 from a law firm. If you get the artwork letter, take down the artwork immediately. To prevent getting the ADA letter, SEO your website. Specifically, add alt-tags to your photography. It is an accessibility step that allows text-to-speech readers to describe what is in your artwork/photography. It also bumps your SEO rank.
· Get smarter about Blockchain for supply chains and other business process. Blockchain isn’t operational for small businesses but likely will be soon. Increasingly, transparency matters to premium customers who are less price sensitive. You’ll want to figure out where you’ll be when platforms roll out.