Marketing Success Secret: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Compound interestHave you ever heard the expression, “Slow and steady wins the race?”

Well, this is the core message of the book The Compound Effect, and a message I apply to all aspects of my life. Although this book deals primarily with personal development, this strategy can be applied towards everything, including B2B digital marketing. The core message is to focus on making small, smart choices steadily rather than trying to achieve major changes quickly for maximum performance. 

Simply put:

“Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference”

Even though we live in the age of real-time marketing where the faster your website loads the better, it does not mean that marketing processes have to be rushed in tandem. Do not lose sight of the good, old-fashioned value of hard and consistent work. Continuous improvement in digital marketing will help you achieve a better return on your marketing investment. In an online marketing strategy, you can use the compound effect technique to improve your website performance, search engine ranking, pay-per-click campaign performance, customer service, reputation and last but not least, revenue.

Website Performance

Reviewing performance frequently and making overall site updates is critical in order to continuously improve customer experience. At the end of the day, your website should create an enjoyable experience for your customers to ensure that it answers all of their needs. Make sure that all of the relevant information about your products and services is easily accessible and that customers have resources to answer their questions. Do some A/B split testing to see which landing page works better, or create multiple calls to action to see which one is more likely to convert. Testing and retesting over time will enable you to determine what your customers respond to and what performs best.

Search Engine Rankings

It is understandable that you want to rank high in search engine results immediately, but achieving those high rankings necessitates following best practices on and off site as well as patience. You must convince search engines that you deserve and earned your desired rankings. You must also convince your audience that you are a trustworthy site with valuable content and products. And, of course, that takes time. Be patient, do the “do” and your rankings will improve over time. 

B2B Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Performance

Although PPC returns immediate results compared to SEO, patience prevails in PPC as well. Keeping a close eye and constantly reviewing adgroups, keywords, and ad performance is the key to maintaining healthy PPC campaigns that convert and produce a positive ROI. As your campaigns run, more and more analytical data is being collected which allows you to continue to make changes and improve performance.

Customer Service

Achieving high levels of customer satisfaction is essential to your future revenue and profitability. Great customer service yields satisfied customers who will want to continue to buy from you and maybe even recommend your business. 

Continuous improvement helps your B2B company increase leadership and gain a competitive advantage. It is hard to stand out of the competition online today since there are so many options available, but an enjoyable customer experience can help your business stand out online. Having an online chat, a prominent phone number and calls to action on the website are all great ways to provide exceptional customer support on your website. 

Reputation

Your company reputation is paramount when prospects are reviewing companies as potential customers. Shoppers rank companies based on their reputation, status in the industry and the opinions of others. Testimonials are a great way to display client satisfaction and to express how past customers felt about the service and products they received.

Revenue

Everyone would love to increase revenue immediately, but nothing happens overnight! Many people believe that in order to gain success, they must spend X amount of money on marketing and in turn receive Y amount of business. Simply having a big Pay-Per-Click budget will not necessarily translate to more conversions. If anything, this just means you have less money in your bank account.  Effective marketing requires you to deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right time. If you are committed to improving the points made above, it is very likely that your revenue will improve as well.

A lot of people get tripped up by the simplicity of this strategy. For instance, they quit creating content, posting social media updates and making website updates after 2 months because they are not seeing changes in their search engine rankings. What needs to be recognized is that these small, seemingly insignificant steps completed consistently over time will make a major difference in the long run.

Moral of the story: Don’t quit. Commit to making constant, small improvements to all aspects of your B2B online marketing for long term bottom-line results.

About the author

Online marketing strategist on a mission to help B2B businesses effectively reach their target audiences and convert them.

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