Look around you, and it is all digital. Be it searching for information or making purchases; digital is the way of life. If you are not yet working with a digital marketing agency, it is high time you join up. Also, you need not be a professional to understand the nitty-gritty of digital marketing.
A digital agency in London is well-equipped to curate a successful digital strategy with various aspects such as SEO, link building, PPC. More so, agencies work with psychographics for creating customer-oriented ads.
So, when contemplating a digital marketing strategy, one needs to consider this. The concept of psychographics will be touched upon later in this write-up.
Reasons for hiring a digital marketing agency
Focus on operations and running of the business
Not all business executives have the capability to create captivating campaigns using digital marketing tools. More so, they might lack an understanding of some concepts and might have to devote time and effort to training. Another piece that people tend to overlook is the effort taken in building up a team.
This is the opportunity cost that the business needs to contemplate – learning a new skill or delegating it to experts. Another opportunity cost would be between spending time and money in training the staff or hiring a digital marketing agency. Hiring digital marketing experts to handle the SEO, PPC, and other aspects saves considerable time and allows businesses and brands to focus on their core competencies.
Industry Insights and Relevance
Creating a successful digital marketing campaign is not as easy as it seems. One needs to be aware of knowledge and trends in this space. It might be overwhelming and perplexing for first-timers. Also, depending on the urgency of your campaign, the pros and cons need weighing. Since agencies work along with and as per the industry trends, they are the best for the job. Agencies know what is happening and what works and what does not.
The agency is equipped to study your market and the competition. Also, study the demographics of your target audience, including qualitative aspects such as behavior, preferences, and hobbies. Doing so ensures that the marketing strategy garners maximum results.
Getting new and profound ideas
There is no one-size-fits-all. An idea that works wonders for your competitors may deem disastrous to your company. This is where the expertise of agencies comes into play. Also, with the bulk of the target audience scattered across social media sites, a digital marketing agency helps you know how, when, and where to reach your target audiences.
Moreover, the agency helps identify what content is most appealing and how it is shared and consumed. This advent of social media marketing requires an understanding of the nuances and elements that make up the unique ecosystems of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
That is, the function, purpose and communication, and information differ across platforms. For instance, Twitter is for short-form and crisp content, whereas Facebook can accommodate lengthy content.
A Plethora of Tools
Digital marketing is the meat that comprises identifying and targeting your audiences, whereas the matter is the various tools that help assist in the said endeavor. Marketing agencies have the know-how regarding these tools. Streamlining and polishing any campaign requires combining tools. The tools deal with keyword search [for SEO], analytics, paid search management [for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign], and automation tools.
Scalability
Scalability is paramount and strengthens the advocacy for hiring a digital marketing agency to fulfill your goals. When resorting to a DIY digital marketing strategy, companies, more often than not, need to seek additional resources such as more team members.
But, this problem is non-existent with agencies. The reason is they usually provide plans and packages that vary according to the business size and budget. The scalability is crucial when contemplating entering and targeting a new market – geographical or product and service.
Develop short-term and long-term strategies
There is no end as such to digital marketing campaigns. Every day on social media brings something different to the cohort. With that said, ad firms are to keep abreast of the continuous information flow and interactivity that happens on social media.
However, there is another way to work around this. Advertising agencies do this with a strategic plan that divides the entire campaign into phases. Doing so helps with real-time tracking of progress and evaluation. These phases include both short- and long-term tactics. The former are temporary and typically entail referral incentives, whereas the latter requires formulating a well-laid plan with specific actions.
Using psychographics to curate targeted content
Psychographics is a recent phenomenon and is the most compelling development out there today. If nailed and leveraged fully, it is goodwill galore for your business and brand. Psychographics involves studying people’s attitudes and interests. These are often studied concurrently with the typical demographic data such as age, location, income, and others. Although used in varied settings and scenarios, it is most profound in market research.
The data is gathered through multiple sources, including market research firms, surveys and questionnaires, focus groups, and online analytics. Working with psychographics requires considerable time, effort, and expertise. Since ad firms already possess the necessary tools and skills, it is best to leave them with psychographics. Psychographics helps create fastidious audiences, write compelling campaigns, enhance A/B Tests, identify new topic areas or trends for content and improve conversion.
Last Thoughts
Everything today is digital. The marketing strategies revolve around the phenomena of SEO, PPC, psychographics, and others. More so, expertise in analytical and other digital marketing tools. This is where the advent of a digital marketing agency comes into play. There are several benefits of hiring a digital marketing agency. They help you focus on the business.
Secondly, they have all the industry insights. They help with new ideas that help with short-term and long-term strategies. Additionally, ad firms have a plethora of tools at their disposal. They offer plans and packages, as per the business size and the budget.
Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it. Are you a consumer interested in receiving great customer service performance? If so check out these Hyken customer service performance suggestions.
Or an online retailer wants to present consumers the same?
Either way, Hyken says you will be interested in STELLAService. Have you ever heard of them? With STELLAService, metrics, and customer care, you will be well on your way.
STELLAService twitter profile does a great job of describing who they are and what they do:
STELLAService is dedicated to a world with better customer service – helping consumers find it, and helping retailers achieve it.
Background
STELLAService was founded in 2009 with the dual goal of helping online shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions, while also helping online retailers grow their businesses through customer service data and marketing services.
The company boasts many known e-retailers in its customer portfolio, including e-commerce companies like Diapers.com, Zappos.com, and 1-800-Flowers.com.
There’s a big trend toward price transparency on the internet, with one company matching another one’s price more easily than in the past because of information availability. Eventually, there will be complete ubiquity in product assortment and price among competitors.
Why buy it from one over the other? Service, except you, don’t have any benchmark for determining what company has better service than another.
And that’s where StellaService comes in.
StellaService’s website offers a public database of e-tailers its guerilla force has tested, offering its summary of the service experience, service contact information, and basic shipping information. It also lists retailers with the top customer service in some categories.
Hyken customer service performance … operations
The company aims to test every angle of an online retailer’s customer service, using roughly 300 different metrics on things like shipping time periods, speediness at answering customer questions, product knowledge, and much more.
STELLAService pays for all products it purchases and relies on its staff of trained customer experience analysts to thoroughly test the (thousands of) companies it evaluates.
It operates through a legion of two dozen mystery shoppers, to test online storefronts using StellaService’s methodology. This process includes doing things like sending e-mails in Spanish, and calling morning, noon, and night, to ask questions on the products, delivery methods, return processes, and beyond.
It relies on this consistent, ground-up approach to rate businesses, beyond the polls and user-submitted reviews that sites like BizRate use to grade online stores.
These mystery shoppers test out the customer service practices of online retailers big and small on a daily basis. These employees/shoppers perform tasks such as buying products, returning them, emailing and calling with questions to put together a comprehensive rating of customer service. Stress testing the marketplace.
Our seal of approval.
Hyken customer service performance … seal of approval
StellaService has developed a testing method and sells the data that testing produced. And, to touch back on that transparency theme, online stores that passed the customer service test could display a seal from StellaService—named for the Italian word for “star”—signifying they had been vetted by a third party and were considered tops in customer service.
The startup, based in NYC’s Flatiron district, set out to get 10 to 15 of top 150 retailers it evaluated to display the StellaService seal last year. The company also tested the impact of the mark had on consumers who visited the sites displaying them and found that the seal influenced buyer behavior.
That experience suggests the seals help build credibility in the eyes of the uninitiated, but also with folks who have even more fundamental reservations. There is a significant percentage of the population that is still not 100% comfortable with shopping online. By letting them know the customer service is strong, it’s an additive measure to put the customer at ease.
Hyken customer service performance … monthly service ratings
Each month, STELLAService sheds light on the service performance of online retailers within their respective retail categories.
The companies are measured across four service areas: phone, email, shipping, and returns. STELLAService monthly benchmarks are designed to provide consumers with guidance for smarter shopping and retailers an independent, reliable benchmark for measuring and improving their customer service.
STELLA Monthly Benchmarks includes companies covered by STELLAService with at least $100 million in revenue, as well as the five largest retailers in each of the 11 most popular customer categories:
Current coverage (May 2013) includes 100 of the largest online retailers in the US, as well as the five largest online retailers in each of the 11 retail categories above, according to the 2012 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Retailers are measured and ranked in four specific service areas in the STELLA Monthly Benchmarks:
Phone support – includes 12 distinct metrics such as Speed of Answer, Product Knowledge, and Professionalism
Email support – includes 15 metrics such as Response Time, Grammar and Spelling and First Email Resolution
Shipping performance – includes seven metrics such as Delivery Time, Package Fit and Product Accuracy
Returns and refund performance – includes nine metrics such as Return Notification Time, Refund Processing Time and Email Communication
STELLA Monthly Benchmarks displays the top five performing online retailers in each service area for each of 11 retail categories. Rankings are calculated based on the objective performance measurements taken by STELLAService analysts.
Hyken customer service performance … business model
While there’s a host of ways StellaService could bring in cash—from affiliate marketing, selling the customer service data, and allowing highly rated businesses to use the seal in display advertising, the business model is still evolving. Selling the data to online retailers is the current mainstay. But the business model is expanding.
STELLAService updated its website last week, with added features for both shoppers and businesses. Consumers can submit great customer service experiences they’ve had online, and StellaService will display it on the company’s profile on its site.
Because the StellaService is focused on its consistent, objective, a methodology for testing sites, these reviews won’t influence StellaService ratings for a merchant, though.
Businesses that have scored high on the StellaService system can request code to update their websites with the seal. And those who haven’t been rated yet can nominate themselves to go through the rating process and attract the support of customers who want them to get tested. (There are roughly 70 companies on the wait list at this point.)
Hyken customer service performance … partnerships underway
Partnerships underway.
Hyken notes StellaService has also been inking partnerships with comparison-shopping sites, like TheFind.com.
The whole rationale for e-commerce today is that prices are converging. The only thing now that companies can use to differentiate is customer service.
And a recently announced deal with Google is sure to get more attention.
Under the agreement with Google, STELLAService ratings will appear in online shopping search results and ads alongside retailers that carry the product consumers are trying to track down.
This is the latest sign of increased focus on e-commerce and the importance of customer service. More shoppers are starting online shopping searches on Amazon.com, the world’s largest Internet retailer, putting pressure on Google to respond.
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
So, why not give it a try as a consumer or an online retailer. If you do, please share a comment on your experience.
Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?
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Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
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Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of a small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
