Small Goals

When looking at any business, knowing goals are important.  For many businesses, their primary goal is to make sales.  While this is the primary goal of most businesses, these goals are made up of smaller goals.  For the online world, these goals often flow around engagement.

The online world works in conjunction with most businesses.  Normally, a business falls within one of two categories, proactive and reactive.  The proactive online world has customers finding you online before any real contact is made while the reactive model has customers researching after making contact with the business.

Being able to identify the process and the goal of each step is important.  At Operation Crusader, we call these the three C’s.

Community to Contact:

Engaging the community who may be interested in your product or service is critical to building a business.  While there are multiple ways to engage the community, what works depends on the audience you are trying to attract.  The one overarching key though is engagement.  There has to be things that not only get your audience’s attention but also keep it.

You go through a lot to get attention.  However attention gained can quickly fade away if you don’t engage that person to keep their attention.  In other words, why should they stay connected to you?  What is the perceived value to your audience to do so?

Contact to Customer:

Why each sales cycle is different, after contact is made, keeping that person engaged with you until the sale is reached can be challenging.  While some businesses have a real short sales cycle, others are much longer.  

Either way, keeping that client engaged can be the difference between a sale or no sale.  It can also be the difference between a small sale and a larger one.  For instance, if a client looks at a new chair for their home, engagement may get them to consider new tables or a couch to go with it.

Customer to Cheerleader:

This is the area where most people lose engagement.  Many businesses tend to think that once the person buys, they are their customer.  This can not be further from the truth.  Just because they purchased once, doesn’t mean they will do so again or refer anyone else your direction.  Keeping you current client engaged, making them feel good about their purchase, and building perceived value are all critical into getting referrals.

The sale doesn’t end when the purchase is made.  The goal of every purchase is to build a relationship with the client so they will refer more business your direction.  After all, people know people just like themselves.  This is an area where the majority of engagement needs to be taking place.

By knowing your overall goals but also breaking them down into communication goals, you can  have the internet actually begin working for you.  At Operation Crusader, we can help you strategies your goals within each subset, helping you lay out some plans for you to hit your goals.