As an entrepreneur or any part of a startup, it seems like you always have something going on, and there is never enough time to get everything done. Your website can seem like another task in a list of a multitude of tasks, and keeping up with everything that needs to be done with it can seem overwhelming at times.
However, once you have set up your site and s the basic content framework, you can actually use it to save time and help you achieve a better work-life balance. You should not be working for your website, it should be working for you.
So how do you put your website to work helping you achieve balance? By following a few simple steps.
Content Marketing
Content marketing seems to many entrepreneurs to be a time-consuming effort that takes a while to bring real returns. That can be true, but it does not have to be. Creating the right content at the right time can actually save you time and effort, and help you spend less time on a few key things:
Education: You can use your content marketing and blog to educate customers about your company and your product or service, so that you do not have to repeat some of these explanations over and over.
Also, if these are well written, they will move readers to stay on your site and explore more of what you have to offer, creating converts out of browsers.
FAQ’s: Much like education, answering frequently asked questions on your site can save you valuable time in the long run. If customers have a clear place to get answers to common questions, you may field fewer phone calls, emails, and online chat sessions.
Entertainment: There is certainly something to be said about your content being entertaining. This form of engagement makes your customer know that you care and you are human. This human element helps you build a relationship with them.
Your Why: People usually do not buy from a company because of what they do, or even that their products are cheaper or contain the latest technology. The most successful companies understand that customers are motivated by why you do what you do rather than what you do.
Use your content to share these things and more, and it can work for you instead of against you. It will take time to develop, but once things are up and running you can continue to reap the benefits and create more as time goes along.
Personalization
Personalizing the buyer’s web journey is one of the most common initiatives adopted by companies today. Because of the Internet of Things and Big Data, marketing and customer service groups have access to a great deal of data about customers and potential customers.
This data includes everything from the data you gather about your customers, known as enterprise data, to data from your industry, census data, and customer information gathered from social media listening.
Using this data, personalization becomes more than just about greeting the customer by name when they return, but also about the items they see on your home page, the content they are presented, and information directly related to where they live, work, and play. You can even personalize the checkout process.
Because of the speed with which technology operates and is expected to operate, the buyer’s journey is typically much shorter today than it used to be, and you can shorten it even further through good website personalization.
Automation
The process of personalization and other key components of your website can be automated to make them smoother, but also to make it so that you do not have to be involved in the process at all.
Thanks to machine learning and AI, which can be easily incorporated into almost any company website, everything from email responses to chat can be automated, at least to a point. The checkout process, requesting customer reviews, and many other tasks can be handled by automation apps and software.
This is the real benefit of combining the internet of things, big data, and personalization. All of them rolled into one means that a large part of your buyer’s journey, and therefore your website tasks can take place without any need for human interaction.
There is one caution here: don’t become so automation conscious that you forget about building a relationship with your customer. While automation and personalization can both help with that, there is nothing that is a substitute for that genuine human touch.
Chat Programs
Speaking of automation and personalization, one place these can help a lot is in chat programs. Before your representative actually starts a conversation with a customer if that even becomes necessary, can gather a great deal of information about them.
The big caution here is this: many companies use these programs for their sales team, but forget that this can also translate to customer service. Passing along the information of a marketing client if they need to transfer departments is invaluable. No one wants to repeat what they have just told one person to another.
Also make sure this information can also transfer if the customer initiates a phone call. The more seamless both your customer service and your marketing process can be, the more likely your customer will stick with you even if they have problems.
Having this step in place can mean you spend less time solving problems that could have been handled another way, and more time building your company and your brand.
