Are your messages reaching your target audience?

Let’s face it, when you send out electronic communications, the impact on the target audience can be difficult to measure. Because of behavioral tools you can watch the time users spend on a page, see where they click, and encourage them to contact you, but with the average length of time spent on a web page being less than 6 seconds, are we really getting the message we want to our target audiences?

A well-organized website, with promotion via e-newsletters or email, is a great promotion plan; however, if you don’t start with a great CRM to help you track what is working and what is not, then what’s the point?

Here are five ways to increase engagement and drive the right audience members to your website:

1. Develop marketing programs by, as Steven Covey said, starting with the end in mind - focus not only on your e-newsletter or email, but surround your messages with online ads, email marketing campaigns, and active social media postings and the traffic to your site will increase, we promise!
2. Once your programs are moving along, measure your online initiatives against each other (some refer to this as A/B/N testing) to see which messages are being read more frequently and causing visitors to take action. This will help turn the initial cold leads into warm opportunities.
3. Don’t stop the communication – many times companies plan to do a marketing campaign and once they get results, they stop. To achieve the best results, a plan should be put in place to continually improve the campaign of the past to ensure future success.
4. Timely follow-up is key – if you are fully automating the process of follow-up, then it’s time to rethink your initiative. Follow up is the perfect time to build a stronger relationship that will foster better results. A phone call or a personal email is a perfect solution for engaging at a personal level.
5. Make promises and keep them – Have you ever been told that someone will “send something right over” only to wait 3-4 days before actually receiving it? I bet you were frustrated, right? Well don't let this be your company. Be the company that follows through with their promises – no matter the size of the outcome or opportunity.

Developing a process like the one above will not only help you build engagement and foster more opportunities for your company, but it will help remind you what the next step is, in turn making the process systematic and flawless! As with any process though, you may have to tweak the steps to ensure it works with your company’s strategy.