No, This is not about website Bounce Rates
As a marketing refresher, Google refers to a “bounce” as “a single-page session on your site.” Simply put, if I landed on your homepage and left without taking another action, that would produce a 100 percent bounce rate. Even Google acknowledges a high bounce rate is not always bad (more to come on this topic in the future).
A tiny change can impact everything!
Still, it is important to understand how a subtle change in your business model rolls through the definition of everything in marketing and sales.
With multiple clients, many of my efforts focus on building new channels and prospect marketing tactics. For some clients, I focus on better social media push, and for others, the B2B marketing efforts offer very few social media goals (this is where B2B Vertical Industry Associations and Events can be substantial); direct response is always a priority, a website modification/upgrade, a revamp or improvement of content, a thought-leader press event, or, most likely, a combination of different things helps to nuance your "Bounceback" efforts.
a step-by-step BOUNCEBACK approach
1. Brainstorming...
your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are a significant first step to outlining the lay of the land, no matter the change. And right at the heart of that should be your brand – how has this period changed its values and positioning? Is this an opportunity to take stock of your brand and develop it to reflect the new ways of working and the potential markets?
"Clarifying" means identifying your business/marketing model as it occurs and adapting. The redefinition of your business/marketing is constantly occurring, and some industries have been affected more than others. A good example is an attitude towards partner development or possible events. (ie, with the move from constant in-person events for decades to the virtual event of covid, and then back to in-person/hybrid, business marketers are challenged to anticipate the timing of reaching customers.
2. Define new, realistic objectives...
before you can plan to achieve them. Look at the various parts of your business model, product/s, services, sales, marketing, support, and finance in a short-term or long-term period. Perhaps it’s just a slightly different focus from where you were before, i.e., growing
your online sales processes or re-engaging and recognizing even if you have built an Omni-Channel of marketing/sales, for example, a virtual meeting to close a sale may be extending the sales cycle where clarity of the sale is more effective in person.
3. Find out what your prospects are thinking...
and how their relationships with Tech Vendors may have changed. When adapting your business model, you must consider what your customers want. You need to understand how their needs have changed and what has not changed in a business. Some good techniques are using analytics or surveys to understand your customer/prospects.
4. Look at what your competitors are doing...
and think about how you can be one step ahead. Competitor analysis is crucial. Look at how they’ve adapted to the situation. Is there anything they’re doing that you’re not? Or do you see a new gap in the market that you can fill? This is your chance to make yourself stand out by knowing exactly what your customers want and being able to fulfill their demands.
5. What are your new marketing goals?
By now, you should know where you want to take your brand and your business – and what you need to focus on. From here, you can start building a marketing action plan to fulfill these objectives. If one of your new goals, for example, is growing your eCom sales, one of your marketing goals could be to drive 25% more traffic to your eCommerce site.
6. Work out your budget...
Now that you have your goals, decide how much you need to spend to achieve them. Often, the answer is budgeting for a promotional mix of low-cost, easy wins (social posts, press, digital adverts, or direct email) combined with one or two key investments that sit at the heart of your activity (core brand development and messaging, campaign or website).
7. You’ve done your planning and discovered:
-How do your products or services provide a more trusted and essential value,
-How do you reduce complexity and refocus resource allocations around what’s critical,
-Where does your business need to focus its efforts to profit, -What do your customers want, -What are your competitors doing, -What brand development would benefit your business, -What your budget is.
8. Monitor and iterate...
No matter how well-researched and thought-through your plan is, it won’t be watertight. That’s okay as long as you are learning and using that learning to constantly improve and tighten your new approach and increase your profits. Make sure you monitor all of your activities to see how they’re performing, and if they’re not, find out why not… and change them.
BOTTOM LINE
From here, you can create an actionable plan. It’s crucial to think this part of the plan through as you want to maximize your marketing budget by ensuring you only do the activities to help achieve your goals.