Creating An Online Experience For Your Customer Or Client

Welcome to our first blog post! Great to have you with us 

As you might be aware, being in business just two years, we’re somewhat of the “new kids on the block”.

There have been plenty of digital marketing agencies come and go over the past 5 – 10 years, and to many people we might seem like just another one of them.

However, trust us when we say that O2L Media hasn’t come onto the scene to be “just another digital marketing agency”. Through our years of experience, we have seen where the industry has been and where it’s going. And we have found the gap in the marketing strategy of small businesses – and we plan to fill that gap with a multitude of new leads and increased revenue.

The gap we have identified is something we like to refer to as the “online experience”. And that’s exactly where we thought we’d kick things off on our blog.

Today, we’re going to let you in on the closely guarded secret of some of Australia’s most successful companies and introduce you to online experience optimisation.

So – what is online experience?

Online experience is the digital evolution of what we all traditionally know as a great customer experience. Sometimes called digital experience, an online experience begins when a prospective customer or client encounters your business online.

When doing business online, your audience needs to be nurtured in a very unique way. They need to enjoy the look, feel and tone of voice of your website and marketing channels, such as your Facebook or LinkedIn pages, your Instagram and Twitter profiles or your blog.

Essentially, your customers require an experience that makes it easy to do three things:

Become aware and educated about their need or problem.
Consider their potential solutions to their problem – namely, your product or service!
Make their decision to purchase.
These three stages are the core of what becomes your sales and marketing funnel (something we will dive deeper into on another day).

But a great online experience doesn’t just end there!

A great online business also follows up to thank their customers and offers support. By doing this, you have earned enough trust and shown enough value to the customer to allow you the opportunity to prompt your customer to return or refer a friend. By doing this, you will fill up your pipeline with leads and generate new and repeat customers like never before.

Physical businesses, such as your retail outlets in shopping centres, have had customer experience dialed in for years. Let’s contrast traditional versus online customer experience by using a couple of examples.

Let’s say you’re a retail store owner.

First, you set up a display at the front of your store. This informs the passing customer of your offering, any sales or promotions you are currently running and, most importantly, invites the customer in.

Your customer service person then welcomes the customer, taking the time to build some rapport before asking a series of questions to give context to what the customer might need or desire.

While in store, your employee offers their expert insights, guiding the customer through their purchasing decision.

If successful, they then process the sale, before thanking the customer and encouraging them to return again.

Now let’s translate that into an online experience!

Let’s say you own the exact same retail store.

You optimise your Facebook and Instagram business pages to be inviting and full of fresh imagery and content. You set up a couple of ads on Facebook and Google, and you begin to reach people who are browsing for or interested in your products. On your website, you employ optimised landing pages with content that educates the buyer on your product and their benefits. You then use calls-to-action such as “buy now” (if you have the ability to buy online) or “visit our store”. You complete the sale, ensuring to grab your customers details such as their email or phone number, which you then enter into your email marketing system to send them an immediate thank you email with their receipt attached. You also set up an email to be sent in 3 months time to encourage the customer to return or with a special offer – starting the cycle all over again.

There are many benefits to applying the methodologies of online experience. First and foremost, you can massively scale your business. No longer are you relying on the finite foot traffic that goes by your store. Instead, your reach is almost infinite – whether you’re looking to reach all of your target marketing in a given suburb, city, country or even internationally – they’re all accessible through one of your many online channels. Further to that, you can set yourself up to be making sales 24 hours of the day. People can shop online or find your store outside of your trading hours, and you can automate follow up through methods such as retargeting (have your product or message reach your customer even after they’ve left your website) or send them automated yet personalised emails. This will bring back more customers than ever before – guaranteed!

Some of Australia’s biggest brands and organisations use this exact approach to gain and keep your business every day – and you may not even realise it!

Suncorp, NAB, Compare the Market, AAMI, Ray White – the list goes on. Think about all the times you’ve received an automated “thank you” email after submitting an enquiry or buying something online. Or when you hit a “Request a Callback” button on the NAB website or on iSelect and you hear back from a customer service representative within mere seconds. These are examples of a great online experience.

While these companies throw significant amounts of money and resources to provide customer service capabilities like instantaneous response times – that doesn’t mean that it’s out of reach for the small business owner. Not at all.

By working with a specialist agency like O2L Media, you can create synergy across a multi-channel online strategy and ensure your customer is attracted, helped, guided, thanked and incentivised to buy from and return to your business.

Here at O2L, we offer services such as custom websites with an in-built customer portal, digital marketing services and automated email marketing campaigns for nurturing your leads, customer fulfillment or asking for repeat or referral business. Even just these alone can make a remarkable difference in making your customers journey to purchasing easier and grow your revenue faster.

So how do I optimise my online experience for my customers?

It’s about the creating a balance and making sure all the pieces of your online puzzle fit together perfectly. While we can still perform singular marketing activities such as paid advertising or building a website (and achieve great results from them!), we firmly believe that a comprehensive online experience specially designed for YOUR business always generates the superior returns. When undertaking an online experience project for a client, we advise on and implement strategies that generate awareness of your product or service, drives engagement and captures highly qualified leads and sales, and even increases client satisfaction, positive customer reviews and referrals.

If your business needs digital marketing services or could benefit from an optimised online experience, be sure to give us a call on 1300 103 906 or contact us here.