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Leveraging Digital Loyalty Schemes for Local Business Growth

05/03/202403/27/2024 by scmarketing

With constant competition and evolving consumer expectations, it’s no secret that local businesses need an edge. A digital loyalty scheme, if created and deployed with finesse, can deliver just that.

If you’re a local business owner in the Croydon area navigating the digital revolution, a well-executed scheme can drive customer loyalty, attract new patrons, and position your brand at the forefront of your community.

The question isn’t if you should deploy one, but rather, how do you make your digital loyalty scheme not only work but excel for your business?

Benefits of Digital Loyalty Schemes

Increased Customer Retention

Loyalty schemes are a beacon of appreciation towards your customers. By implementing a digital format, you streamline the user experience, and by doing so, you inherently increase customer retention. With rewards on a mobile device, you’re front-of-mind every time a customer checks their phone.

Enhanced Brand Awareness

Digital loyalty schemes can turn your customers into brand advocates. Word-of-mouth referrals are amplified when shared online, and the visibility of your brand grows with each digital stamp or point earned.

Boost in Customer Acquisition

A well-crafted digital loyalty scheme has the power not only to engage your current customer base but also to act as a magnet, drawing in new customers. When locals discover the added value in your scheme, they’re more likely to choose your establishment over the next.

Implementing a Digital Loyalty Scheme

Choosing the Right Loyalty App for a Local Business

When selecting an app, prioritise those that offer customisation options, good reporting features, and a user-friendly interface for both your team and your customers. Tailoring the programme to your business’s unique requirements is key to its success.

Some customer Loyalty Apps we’ve seen include Reward Stamp or Stamp Me.

It’s also worth researching any local specific apps you can register your business on. For instance in Purley, Croydon there is the InPurley App which lists local venues, shops, offers and more.

The hospitality sector is well versed in loyalty schemes and often with the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to enhance loyalty and manage customers to help drive engagement such as with SevenRooms.

Setting Up a User-Friendly Loyalty Program

Simplicity is key. Clarity in communication, easy-to-understand rewards, and a clear progression pathway are crucial.

Training Staff and Educating Customers

Your team must be well-versed in explaining the scheme to customers. Clear and consistent education materials for patrons, both online and in-store, are also non-negotiable. When your staff and customers are in the loop, the scheme is far more effective.

Digital Marketing Tactics for Promoting Loyalty Schemes

Social Media Campaigns

Leverage the power of your customer’s favourite social channels. Engage with your local community through social media by using your loyalty scheme as a talking point. Contests, customer spotlights, and sneak peeks into rewards can generate online buzz.

Email Marketing Strategies

Your customer’s inbox is a prime real-estate location. Create targeted and personalised emails to communicate the benefits of the loyalty scheme. Whether it’s a welcome email, a progress update, or a special offer, ensure that your emails add value and provide clear calls to action.

In-Store Promotions and Signage

Physical marketing materials within your store help bridge the gap between digital and in-person experiences. Well-placed and attractive signage can inform customers of the digital rewards waiting for them.

Collaborations with Local Influencers or Businesses

Teaming up with local influencers or businesses can extend the reach of your loyalty scheme. A recommendation from a trusted local source can have significant clout with your community, and joint promotions can also add allure to your scheme.

Digital Loyalty Schemes – The Possibilities

The digital loyalty scheme landscape is a rich tapestry of possibility for local businesses. It’s a fusion of technology and personal touch that can transform the way you interact with your customer base. The key to unlocking its potential lies in strategic implementation, clear communication, and consistent promotion.

By investing in a digital loyalty scheme, you’re not just investing in a rewards programme; you’re investing in the growth and sustainability of your business in the local community.

If you need support navigating this arena, just drop us a line and we can chat further about your digital marketing plans and how we can support.

Digital marketing must-haves for 2022

08/19/202211/23/2021 by scmarketing

Now is a great time to take a look at some of the digital marketing trends that you can tap into to help your business be seen online.

Create and manage your database to greatness

So, a database may not be a marketing trend as such, but it is a key asset for your marketing strategy. If you haven’t already got a database, consider this vital for ongoing personalised communication.

There’s a number of tools that can help with gathering data in an organised way that allows you to manage creating your email marketing database moving forward.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can help such as Hubspot. However, you need to capture people’s details in the first place so it’s important to have tools such as a pop-up box on your website so that you can ask for web visitors email address in return for receiving something such as a regular newsletter.

Think about what may entice people to part with their email address such as creating some interesting one-off campaigns for quality content such as an ebook with sector insight relevant to your target audience, or industry specific templates or discount codes.

Video

We’ve said it before, and we’ll most certainly say it again – make sure you incorporate video as part of your marketing plan. The pandemic made sure that video was vital for communication. But even more so for stand out when you are marketing to cut through the noise and be visible on social media.

Once you have web visitors, videos are known to increase engagement which keeps people on your website for longer.

Word of mouth

Let your customers become part of your marketing. Whilst the traditional view of the marketing funnel sees the customer at the end, if you change mindset and envisage a circle with the customer at the centre, then this becomes a very exciting proposition.

Keeping the customer central to all that you do will help them become brand advocates and help to promote your service through word of mouth sharing to their networks on social media.

Improving content

Fresh and regular quality content is so important for search engine optimisation (SEO), but you may sometimes feel overwhelmed at the thought of having to write blogs each week and constant social media or monthly e-newsletters. So, firstly think quality rather than quantity.

Then look back at all the content you have produced over the years. You’ll find that on your website you can look back at historic blogs and repurpose them with up-to-date statistics, new keywords or links to articles.

Not only that but taking existing content and repurposing it for a new podcast, webinar, or blog post can be an efficient way to keep your website relevant in search engines.

Digital marketing Croydon

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re well placed to offer local businesses digital marketing services and online marketing advice relating to local SEO services and content marketing to help increase presence in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Get in touch to chat about your business goals for the year ahead.

What can LinkedIn Sales Navigator offer my business?

08/19/202202/16/2021 by scmarketing

LinkedIn is the social media platform for business networking. It’s not about posting filtered images of lovely cups of coffee (unless that’s your business of course), it’s about networking with people to support and grow business. But how can you find the right prospects in a more efficient manner and in a way that’s not intrusive?

This is where using the Sales Navigator tool by LinkedIn can help.

What is LinkedIn?

Firstly, here’s a quick recap about what LinkedIn is. Think of LinkedIn like attending a local monthly business breakfast group, you go there to network find business opportunities and help connect suppliers. The difference is that LinkedIn is a social media platform. But the principle is the same, you engage, network, support, share updates and insight.

Whilst you would have your own individual profile, you can also set up a company page for your company. You can post updates and add links back to your blog post on your website. These provide quality links which in turn helps your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy and being found in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Over time you will build your network with followers through ongoing engagement with topical social media posts and the type of content relevant to your audience.

Lead generation campaign

There’s so many social media analytics to draw on from your LinkedIn company page including, seeing who has just followed you, the companies to track as well as engagement rates on posts so you can get a feel for what your audience likes to hear about most.

However, you can also ramp up your lead generation strategy with the adoption of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The professional features mean that you can get more targeted and reach a wider audience from LinkedIn’s network.

Key benefits include being able to see who has viewed your profile allowing you to engage with them as a warm lead.

You can add tags to your prospects enabling you to filter and then synch back to your CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

You can view job changes in real time, alerting you to new business opportunities.

The benefit of networking is connections and once you are aware of a mutual link then this makes it easier to engage with a prospect. The TeamLink connection filter allows you to reach prospects that match your search criteria and have a mutual connection. It taps into the networks of people in your company.

There are three levels of Sales Navigator package to explore from Professional for individuals, through to Team and Enterprise. Find out about LinkedIn Sales Navigator here.

Your social media marketing strategy should form part of your overall inbound marketing. Don’t look at social media in silo. Make sure your approach to reach your target audience is holistic and also right for your business. If you’re not already on LinkedIn but feel you should be, then get in touch. As one of Croydon’s top social media marketing companies we can discuss your social media marketing plan, the social media channels for your business and a tailored approach.

There’s no one size fits all which is why we provide a mix and match digital marketing solution for our clients so we can offer a proactive approach utilising different elements of digital marketing to suit requirements.

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CRM data: The good, the bad and the ugly

10/13/2020 by scmarketing

The quality of the data that you hold plays a vital role in the success of your marketing strategy.

It’s worth noting that lists used for email marketing decay between 20-30% each year so if it’s entered incorrectly into your CRM system in the first place then you’re not going to be off to a great start. You’ll experience a reduction in email delivery which will impact the success of any email marketing campaign going forward and your overall lead generation goals.

Quality data for your marketing campaigns

It’s key that your email addresses are validated. So, that would include people signing up to receive your email newsletters from an online form, as it’s something they have requested. This is a qualified lead.

What’s important is to review data on a regular basis and cleanse it.

The fact that we are required to include an unsubscribe link on email marketing communication is actually a good thing as this helps cleanse your list too. It’s not a bad thing that people unsubscribe when you send them an email. Let’s face it, if people aren’t interested in your products or services then it’s best, they aren’t on your list. It’s much better to have fewer, quality leads eager to hear from you than a mammoth list of contacts that are never going to engage with you or provide bounce backs as they are no longer valid email addresses.

A consistent CRM process

Go for consistency in your CRM process so ensuring email addresses, names, company detail, contact number are always added and they are added correctly.

Ultimately you want your firm to adopt the CRM system you deploy. But if the detail is incorrect when team members go to access data then very soon colleagues will become despondent and revert back to, what they think, is a trusted excel spreadsheet. This then creates the ongoing cycle of silos within a company. This way marketing will never sync with sales or business development teams and vital new business opportunities will be lost in the ether.

So, take time to get the process of inputting data instilled in your team in the first instance, that way you will reap rewards in the long-term as again and again the team will find success from the contacts entered into your system.

CRM data

The basics to include in your CRM for the benefit of your marketing strategy include the contacts first and last name. An email and physical address as well as phone number and web address. As well as any social handles whether their personal LinkedIn or company related.

It’s also useful to gather data about them about their life. Following your initial networking with your contact, these are great reminders to add to the CRM about what you discussed as this will help with ongoing client relationships, future meetings and give your colleagues insight.

Using a system like Hubspot CRM can help you access website activity so you can soon get an understanding of how often people visit the website, services viewed or eBooks downloaded.

CRM for accountants

As a Hubspot partner, we can help you with CRM for your business to help make a really effective lead generation campaign.

What’s important about any lead generation campaign is to continue to be insightful with your communication, providing answers to challenges that you know your clients face. With the insight you have as a result of your CRM, this can really help you tailor an ongoing content marketing plan tailored to your target audience.

We’re a digital marketing agency based in Croydon with a specialism in marketing for professional services firms including digital marketing for accountants.

Read our blog on lead generation strategies for your business.