Say Goodbye to Digital Presence Myopia: A Must & Quick-Read for Every CMO

Customer acquisition. We are sure this is what occupies most of your mind.

As a CMO, you do everything it takes to keep the inflow of new customers going. Most of the time, you think about the following:

• What kind of offers and discounts can I give to get people to buy my products and services?
• How do I refine my messaging in acquisition campaigns to make it more persuasive?
• How do I mix and match the media vehicles to get an optimal media mix?
• How much should I spend on retargeting to convert the fence-sitters?
• What new avenues should I try to widen my brand’s reach?
• How do I keep my cost of acquisition in check?

It is only fair for you to focus on all of these to keep driving your acquisition efforts. However, this "myopia" is what most marketers suffer from.

Why do we say so? Continue reading the article. We promise it's worth your time.

It is a no-brainer that ads generate attention. You spend a bomb on providing attractive offers and discounts, expecting those to floor your prospects and convert them into customers.

Unless you are selling candy or products that fall under the "impulsive purchase" category, people are not going to buy your products after seeing your mind-blowing offer on your campaigns.

These offers on your campaigns can take you only as far as your campaign landing page. Your prospects spend a considerable amount of time on those landing pages, too.

Yet, why does your conversion rate hover around 1–2%?

Do you think your landing pages are doing a bad job of converting? Unlikely.

By this stage, your prospects have become hooked on your messaging and offers. However, they have not yet been convinced about your product.

There is one big step that they take before cutting a check for your product on which marketers rarely focus as part of their acquisition efforts.

Yes. The immediate action that your customers take after consuming your information on the landing page is to go to Reddit, Google, Amazon, Yelp, G2, TripAdvisor, etc. and start doing their research.

Only if they are convinced about your products and services at the end of the research will they come back to your portal or store to complete the product purchase.

On the face of it, this may sound logical. But how much of your efforts are focused on fixing the broken stuff in the middle of the funnel? Likely very little.

Lack of focus in this area is what we call "Digital Presence Myopia."

Unless you fix broken pieces in the middle of your prospects’ purchase journey, continuously driving the acquisition numbers while keeping the customer acquisition cost in check becomes as hard as a rock.

To give some perspective, "77% of Yelp users recommend brands and companies online when they like the product." The reason can be anything: they like your brand, they like your good customer service, they like your discounts and getaways, and they are able to personally relate to your brand.

The mere fact that 77% of Yelp users recommend brands is a great opportunity for you. Imagine the influence when there are so many customers of your brand raving about your product and the amount of positive influence it creates on a prospect researching your products and services on Yelp.

On the contrary, imagine the negative influence it has on the same prospects if Yelp is full of negative comments about your brand and you have not taken any effort to respond to them.

We come with three disclaimers here:

1. We know Yelp isn’t the platform that is universal to review every single product from every single industry. We are just quoting this as an example. But the underlying thought holds good for any industry. For a banking product, the platform can be Reddit; for a hospitality company, it can be TripAdvisor; and so on and so forth.
2. We don’t dismiss the fact that you must already be making some efforts on these platforms. But the point here is how comprehensive your efforts are and how integrated and aligned they are with your acquisition campaigns. Got the drift?
3. Finally, this is not the panacea for all your customer acquisition challenges. But this is something that we think is currently being overlooked and needs immediate attention. What about the rest? We will keep writing articles on those. (Stay tuned on this page.)

When you start viewing the implications of these platforms on your prospects’ purchase journey and your own marketing and sales funnel, you obviously start looking at your customer acquisition efforts differently.

The result? Continuously successful customer acquisition programs.

So, what are you waiting for? Kick your digital presence myopia out. Streamline your digital presence. And flip those conversion graphs.