Getting Digital in a Virtual World
8th July 2020
Author EditorPosted on Categories Sales & Marketing
This has been the topic for a series of talks that I have done recently and is pretty relevant right now.
Why?
Web usage increased by 19.7% between January and March*. Research by GlobalWebIndex found a 27% increase in social media use among Gen Z, 30% among Millennials, 29% among Gen X and 15% among Boomers. Facebook reported a 70% increase in usage across its family of apps since the crisis has started.
This all leads marketers to believe that digital is where its at! To be honest, I think that most businesses have been focusing on digital for the last few years anyway (rightly or wrongly). The challenge comes when thinking about what to say digitally! The same rules apply as pre-Covid in the sense that, if you are posting to Facebook, you need to think about whether your messaging sits right with pictures of babies, animals and funny memes/gifs.
My agency works in the professional service sector which has a harder time than many industries in getting relevant and ‘fun’ content that will engage on some of the social media platforms. For many of our clients the most relevant platform for that reason will be LinkedIn.
Having a comprehensive digital strategy is key to making sure that you don’t end up wasting your time. Social media can become a rabbit hole and hours can be lost once you get stuck in. You need to have profiled your ideal client which will then enable you to see which platforms are worth your time.
The key thing to remember, whatever the platform, is that engagement is king – anyone can broadcast (post) or connect (grow your followers/connections). By creating engagement with an audience you are getting closer to achieving ‘know, trust and like’ which is where our prospects need to be to buy from us. This is achieved by creating content that will resonate with your audience so they will want to engage.
Platform demographics
Facebook – users by age 2020. Individuals aged 25 to 34 years made up the largest group of Facebook users by age in the United Kingdom (UK), as of April 2020. Those aged 13 to 17 made up the smallest group, with 4.5 percent of users falling under that classification
Twitter – The total number of Twitter users in the UK is 13.7 million. 38% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29, 26% users are 30-49 years old. 34% of Twitter users are females and 66% are males.
LinkedIn – 23% of all workers in the UK are on LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s largest UK age demographic is the 35 to 54 age bracket, closely followed by the 25-34, with less than 750,000 users either under 24 or over 55.
What can I do?
There is so much that you can do yourself, if you have an in house marketing person or an agency, great. Let them do what they do, but do pay attention to the stats you are provided with on what posts work, where your website traffic is driven from etc.
If you are on your own (no agency or in house support) I think it’s key to operate on the basis of less is more. Do little – well. Think about investing in some training, and tools that make your life easier. Like Hootsuite which can schedule your posts for you. Most marketing experts are happy to share a bit of free advice so ask away…
Digital isn’t just social media
Think about your digital activity across numerous channels, do you have a blog calendar, an email campaign, do you do any SEO or paid advertising?
Again, it is vital to consider your audience and your budget. As an example, I was speaking with a business this week whose target audience is law firms. They wanted a digital strategy and had included SEO and PPC. These both absolutely have a place in a strategy but they are not right for all businesses. Due to this business’s target audience not being big search users my recommendation would be to focus on virtual events and email communications along with third party collaborations who are targeting the same audience.
Data and communication are king
Most businesses have data on their existing and past customers – use it! You are 80% more likely to get repeat business vs 20% likely to generate new business from marketing activity. Are you communicating with your customer base regularly. Do you use an email platform (such as Mailchimp)? If you do, it is important to review the statistics on open rates and click throughs, as well as managing unsubscribes – super important to comply with GDPR.
Networking
It’s happening virtually, so join in. There are some great groups to get involved with. A few of my favourites are:
Network My Club
– they use an excellent piece of software called Remo which is the most like physical networking I have come across. They are also offering a 14 day free trial right now.
Ladies Lunch Clubs
– now I am of course biased as I run these. They have been going for 15 years though so must be getting something right. The events are all virtual now and as a not for profit group, very affordable.
Brighton Chamber of Commerce
– such a wide range of events, from Q&As with industry experts to well attended networking meetings on Zoom.
Make sure you have a polished 60 seconds and you still do your prep and follow up! Read our guide on virtual networking here for more tips.
Business Development
It is still possible…utilise LinkedIn to find new connections and prospective customers. Manage your customer database to sell new services or products to existing and past customers. Make it easy for people to buy from you. I love this new tool I have found called Calendly, it manages my diary so people can book straight in without all the toing and froing!
Review, adjust and repeat
Just because you have a plan, it doesn’t mean you can file it away to review next year. Now more than ever we need to be agile and responsive to change. No one knows what the next days, weeks or months hold so review, adjust if needed and repeat.
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