Face-to-face networking, to us, is a little like marmite. You either love it or you hate it. Fortunately for us we’re a fan and, the more we do it, the more we enjoy it – because we begin to see the benefits of our efforts.
It’s been a busy few weeks at Aillum as a result of all our networking. Not only because of the time taken to attend a number of events, but also with the time involved in following up with contacts and of course fitting the day-to-day work around it. However, we still highly recommend it to any other business out there not currently participating.
So why do we do it? Well, as well as growing our connections and relationships, we also use it as a channel for education. We’re a consultancy with a slightly different approach to how we improve performance online for our clients. We don’t focus simply on driving traffic. Not initially anyway. Rather, we focus on making sure traffic converts, that visitors engage, that documents are downloaded, that newsletters are registered to, that links are clicked, that funnels are efficient and, overall, that users are doing what our clients expect them to do to align with their objectives.
Once all parties are confident that increased conversions are being achieved, we then move on to driving more traffic, again with a focus on data analysis to ensure any new traffic is as targeted and relevant as possible.
Throughout the process we focus on data collection and analysis. We collect, analyse, test and then start collecting again, all the while providing clients with recommendations on how to enhance performance a little bit more.
The explanation of an analytical, data driven approach to improved performance isn’t something that lends itself to cold calling, clearly, but we do feel more SMEs need to be aware of it. We admit it’s not as glitzy as other more common forms of Internet related services, but as one of our clients recently suggested, its benefit to business is far greater, particularly in a time when efficiency is so important.
We’ve spent the last few weeks attending a variety of events, from chamber hosted lunches and structured networking groups, to coffee shop get-togethers and of course the popular ‘TheMeet140’ twitter arranged event that tours the UK.
As a result, we’ve met a wide variety of lovely people, found similar companies with whom we are discussing collaborations, gained several new clients, found people to whom we can outsource business related tasks and, importantly, educated along the way.
If you’d like to find out more about our Web Analytics and Conversion Optimisation services, OR if you’re attending an event and want to know if we’ll be there, OR want to attend an event we’re going to, then get in touch.
