If someone gives you a old bucket and it’s leaking, how do you fix it?
Simple: you turn it round and around, upside down, up to the light and try to identify all the holes in it. You might run a few tests to locate exactly where the holes are, such as putting water in it and seeing exactly where the water is escaping.
You realise that when it comes to an old bucket, you might not be looking for just one hole, but a number of holes. Some might be obvious holes, but you might be looking for a hairline cracks and breaks in the seam of the bucket too.
Your digital strategy for your business or personal brand is not that different to a leaky bucket.
Except in the case of your digital strategy, what is leaking is not water from a bucket, but potential clients or purchasers who might be interested in what you are offering but who can’t find you, or who are interested enough to be having a good look at your online presence but then they’re able to get away without doing what you would like them to do, whether that is book an appointment, buy a product or sign up to your mailing list.
Like the bucket, your digital strategy may not have just one hole, but many.
And some might only be able to seen if you turn your computer upside down. Ok, so that’s a joke, but some might only be able to been seen if you know what you are looking for and know where such holes exist.
I’m going to give you an example of a client of mine (without naming them) and some of the holes we have found in their leaky bucket, aka digital strategy. Now, this client is an extremely well known service provider in a particular industry, who is steadily becoming a household name in the UK for what they offer and over the past 12 years has built a high profile for their brand.
Since July, a number of holes in their bucket have been plugged and improvements are being seen!
- Their old non responsive website has been replaced with a new, high impact, fully responsive site. The immediate result is they have gone from page 3 of the search results for their main extremely competitive keyword to page 1.
- A fully managed on-site content strategy means that the site is constantly being updated according to real time keywords and keyword trends. In 6 months, I fully expect this site to be ranking on page 1 for all main search times.
- Social media is now fully managed meaning updates take place consistently and completely on message, making the business more visible to huge social audiences.
- Two free highly targeted email opt in forms on the site has already collected over 3000 highly email addresses.
It all sounds good – and it is good! The website has just had its highest ever traffic month, and the business, since September, has collected in 3000 email addresses of people who are DEFINITELY looking for what they are offering.
But this bucket is still leaking and we’re still plugging holes.
And as we discover from our growing audience what they like, and monitor how people behave on the website, more holes appear. These are the current holes that are being fixed.
- These 3000 people on the marketing list are only getting a very basic follow up sequence that is not bringing them into the business (disclaimer: I did not write the existing follow up sequence or set it up or it would not be as it is!!). This must be rewritten immediately and turned into a compelling and helpful email sequence that draws attention to everything the business offers and brings people from this list to the businesses real world doors. These 3000 people are hot leads and need to be nurtured.
- It is clear that our social media audiences really likes hopefully uplifting messages from this business. We are watching and learning from them. Now we know what they like, we must post more messages along the same theme.
- The primary audience of this particular business are aged 30 – 40 and having been around for over a decade already, this business takes a long term view. People who are 25 now will soon be 30 – 40 and needing their services. These 25 year olds are the YouTube generation who don’t watch TV and curate their own media via YouTube. Five years will fly by but it time enough for this business to really put effort into YouTube to catch this group as they reach the age where they need their services. Meanwhile, none of their competition seem to be considering video marketing so this is a huge opportunity.
And this will carry on. You see digital strategy is not a one-stop fix or done overnight. It is about looking, watching and seeing and making constant adjustments accordingly. It is about spotting new opportunities and creating content for new audiences. It is like an old leaky bucket. Even when you think its fixed, it suddenly starts leaking again.
