Call to action: where online and offline come together

Most online trends are set by the large international corporations. Yet in recent years we see that SMEs in particular are investing huge amounts of money mainly in online presence and online findability. This shows that much of the traditional marketing budget is shifting from offline to online. No more advertising in magazines or newspapers but investing in SEO and SEA seems to be the new thinking. Thereby, it is ultimately about the call to action, the moment when the visitor proceeds to action.

According to Rabobank, this year we will see increasing activity in almost all SME sectors. The biggest growth is expected in business services, so the battle to benefit from this growth is now increasingly being fought online.

Online investments

SMEs no longer get away with an online brochure or a static website with contact information and press releases. Even in business services, you don't really exist if you don't blog, invest in online findability or appear on the first page of google. So that's where we are investing heavily as well.

From online to offline: call to action

Organizations are constantly generating relevant visitors. The moment you then have a relevant visitor on your site, the key is to entice that visitor with a "call to action." The definition of call to action from wikipedia: Call to action, or CtA, is a term used in marketing to persuade potential buyers to take a specific action after receiving an advertising message, such as ordering the product, calling a phone number or downloading a white paper. Thus, this is the moment when the hitherto online contact moves to offline in many cases. Indeed, often organizations want the customer to get in touch and thus call or email.

The value of online investments

Online investments are worthless the moment the offline follow-up to the online call to action is not optimal. In a nutshell: You have been found, a potentially interested party wants to contact you. If you don't then quickly pick up the phone, answer a chat or respond to an email, you still aren't selling anything. Online investments are therefore only really valuable if the offline follow-up of leads also matches your (potential) customer's expectations. So think carefully about this offline follow-up.

How do you set up offline follow-up?

Everything is about customer expectation. Make sure you know what your customer expects and exceed that expectation. Do you want your call to action to bring about a customer calling you? Then make sure you can be reached at the times that matter. The same goes for all channels. Make sure that you are available to answer a call to action -within a time frame that the customer desires. Questions you should ask yourself in this follow-up are:

• What deadlines are acceptable to my customers? Answer the phone within 20 seconds? Answering an email within 24 hours? If you have visibility into this, you can design your internal processes to preferably exceed these expectations.
• What is my competition doing? Does your competition answer calls to action until 5 p.m.? Then consider doing so until 9 p.m.
• What channels do you offer? Omninchannel is the magic word, but are your (potential) customers waiting for whatsapp? Is it customer-oriented to work with a reply form? Again, the same applies: make sure you know what your customers want and arrange that for them.

In short

Online continues to grow. Potential customers orient themselves more and more online and buy more and more online. Yet there is still a moment when online contact turns into offline contact, often the call to action is the transition moment. Make sure that you think carefully in advance about how you design that call to action, attune it to the needs of your (potential) customers and ultimately follow it up. If you do not do this, it is pointless to invest capital in online presence and findability.