4 Huge Reasons Why Consistency Matters to Online Business Owners
It may not seem sexy, but consistency is the secret ingredient to turning clients into raving fans and increasing your average revenue.
“Sustaining an audience is hard,” Bruce Springsteen once said. “It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.”
He was talking about music stardom, yet his words are just as applicable to the world of online business.
Consistency may be one of the least inspirational topics for most entrepreneurs, but it’s exceptionally powerful, especially at a time when clients need people they can rely on to keep showing up for them.
Here are four huge ways consistency can make a difference in your online business:
1. Consistency doesn’t just create awareness, it creates LOVE
You’ve probably heard that it takes, on average, 5 to 7 impressions before someone remembers your brand. That might be a combination of email marketing, social media posts on varying platforms and/or a podcast before your ideal clients even notices you!
We can safely say that consistent efforts to show up online means an increased awareness of you and your business.
But awareness isn’t enough to be successful in today’s crowded online world. Consider research by Harvard Business Review, that found it’s not the number of interactions a person has with your brand, but the quality and relatability of interactions that really matters.
People have come to expect super high quality, and a survey by LucidPress shows that 45 percent of customers expect great design across all marketing and sales materials.
Having inconsistent visuals or messaging makes the process of nurturing trust and becoming remembered more difficult. Without consistency across your business you’ll be introducing yourself to them for the first time every single time. Don’t make life harder for yourself!
Very simply, consistency helps your customers and clients reliably identify you and know what to expect from you.
Consistency tweak:
Existing and potential clients look to you for information, inspiration and as a thought leader in your area of expertise, so don’t ghost or confuse them on your platforms. Make sure all your messaging and branding is aligned everywhere you show up online.
Then use a simple marketing and sales strategy to consistently remind your people why your products and services either kill their pain or create their dreams and schedule chunks of time in your diary to implement.
Keep showing up for your people and you’ll build more than brand awareness, you’ll build true brand love.
2. Consistency allows for measurement (which means better ROI)
I see too many online biz owners fall into the trap of constantly jumping from marketing tactic to marketing tactic without any solid strategy behind it.
One week it’s all about the podcast, then it’s SEO, then Facebook ads, then Pinterest — it’s exhausting, unsustainable and ineffective.
Inconsistent business processes, sales, and marketing efforts equal inconsistent results.
It takes time to see results from your efforts, but too many entrepreneurs get distracted by the latest marketing trend and give up just before it starts to work!
Running an ad for a day or two won’t give you much insight into how successful it is, but using it for a set period can offer real insight and allow you to continually learn. If you end a campaign before it has a chance to gain traction, you may be sabotaging your efforts.
Consistency is especially important for SEO strategies, which require you to focus on building the authority of your website bit by bit for months, if not years.
Consistency Tweak:
Pick ONE thing: I advise clients to work in three month / quarterly chunks when it comes to trying a new marketing tactic or process before judging them a success or failure. Then it’s often minor tweaking instead of major overhauls that make the difference.
Give new strategies time to work and gain traction. It can be easy to pull the plug if a campaign is not performing as quickly as you thought it should, but that’s a mistake. Stay the course, and your business will stay top of mind.
3. Consistency creates trust
When you study the actions of powerful brands all over the world, you can see that they are highly consistent in both strategy and implementation, and any changes are few and far between.
Everyone knows that a Big Mac in McDonalds in Amsterdam is exactly the same as one in London. Nike doesn’t mess around with their iconic tick logo or tagline to “Just Do It” and we would all think Coca Cola had lost the plot if they suddenly changed their branding from red to blue.
Yet as online business owners we get bored using the same brand elements every day and become tempted to constantly change direction. But the truth is consistency is critical when it comes to your visual brand. Constantly changing your colours, images and fonts can make your brand appear unprofessional and even untrustworthy.
My brand is all about the bright yellow, and while I may constantly innovate how I show up, you can bet my signature yellow isn’t going anywhere.
Why is this SO important? Well, how about because 80% of people cite “authenticity of content” as the main factor as to whether or not they follow a brand and 64% of consumers say that shared values are the main reason that they have a trusted relationship with a brand.
Your brand message and image conveys not just your products or services, but your values too. My core value is integrity and I make it clear in every area of my business — from pricing and delivery to messaging and onboarding.
Consistency Tweak:
Get clear on your values, mission and vision and then do an audit of your business looking for areas on inconsistency. If you need help implementing this, my online business incubator, Consistency Club, can give you the accountability and support you need.
4. Consistency creates loyalty
But please don’t think consistency is just about sticking to a particular font because it’s SO much more; the truth is that if you don’t join the dots and deliver a consistent experience, customer loyalty is massively reduced and your costs increase.
A McKinsey customer-experience survey of 27,000 American consumers across 14 different industries found that effective customer journeys are more important than individual interactions.
In fact they discovered that consistent customer journeys have the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20 percent but also to lift revenue by up to 15 percent while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20 percent.
They are some huge results, simply by paying attention to the overall journey your clients and customers go through. Consistently delivering across the customer journey increases revenue and reduces costs = more profit.
It’s far more cost-effective to retain a client than attract a new one, so get strategic and make sure every marketing activity in your business is connected to the next thing, turning everything you’re doing into one big funnel.
And this doesn’t just stop with your marketing. Your products and services can do the same if you design an ascension model that starts with one, then naturally leads to the next level of support to increase lifetime customer value and retention.
For me, some of my clients ready to invest in a half day strategy session, some are more suited to the support structure of my mastermind, some want to invest in one to one and for some, each of those options are two big of an investment plus they’re too advanced for what they need right now and my online business incubator, consistency club, is a better option.
Consistency Tweak:
Look at your customer journey and identify weak spots. By linking everything you do in your business and connecting the dots you leave less gaps and optimise revenue.
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DO YOU CRAVE CONSISTENT REVENUE IN YOUR BUSINESS?
Join Consistency Club, the only online business incubator that’s designed purely to create the right consistent action that helps you create consistent marketing, consistent leads and consistent revenue in your business.
Inside we focus on creating consistent recurring revenue FIRST, taking the pressure off and allowing you to elevate your business in other ways because you have the space to do so.
Originally published at https://gemmawent.co.uk on October 6, 2020.
