Leverage your online presence to grow your customer base

Medium effort

High impact

Once you’ve built an online presence, the next step is to leverage it to grow your customer base. Having a good understanding of your target customers is essential to maximising the benefits of an online presence, but it’s also important to make sure you’re ready for growth internally. Greater visibility online can have a big impact on the number of sales or enquiries you receive so be prepared for an escalation in demand.

We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline

What's involved? Ways to use this action plan Measuring impact

Create customer personas to define your target customer and where they’re likely to spend time online

Impact: medium

Why will this help?

Increased reach is only effective if you’re reaching the right people. Make sure your personas are robust enough to inform your online marketing strategy.

Creating a new customer persona

Customer personas give you a better understanding of the needs and challenges of people who might buy from you. Use this template from HubSpot to create a persona for a new target customer.

Use analytics tools to measure the impact of your digital presence and forecast where growth might occur

Impact: high

Why will this help?

It’s important to be prepared for the extra growth and sales an online presence could bring. Analytics tools will give you a real-time overview of fast-growing areas.

Testing where to spend on your online marketing

Running tests will help you decide which marketing channels your business should focus on. Our checklist outlines the basics.

Data provides a foundation for better decision making

When collected well, data can provide valuable insights into your business. These insights can then inform strategic decisions to improve it and help you grow.

Prepare your workforce for a rise in demand by speaking to employees in key departments and seeing where they need more resources or support

Impact: high

Why will this help?

A business that can’t fulfil its obligations risks losing its good reputation. Plan how you will manage an increase in demand, considering stock levels, supply chain and the capacity of your customer service team.

An introduction to making sure your team and processes are ready for growth

Your team and processes need to adapt as your business grows. Taking proactive steps to get ready for growth can help you avoid common growing pains and put you on the right track.

Identify which online channels have been most effective at attracting customers so far

Impact: medium

Why will this help?

Learning which channels are having the greatest impact will verify that you’re focusing your efforts in the right places.

An introduction to collecting data to improve your business

Data is a core part of business strategies. It’s used to determine areas of growth, forecast effectively and make informed decisions about marketing.

Using customer research to determine which digital sales channel to use

Even the best sales strategy won’t be effective if you haven’t spent time on customer research. Use this checklist to get started.

Create a marketing plan for how you will continue to leverage your online presence and grow your customer base

Impact: high

Why will this help?

Setting out how your online activity will shape your future strategy will help you to build on what you’ve already achieved.

How to create a marketing plan

Use our marketing plan template to outline what you want to achieve with your marketing and how you will measure its success.

What can I do with this Action Plan?

Start this Action Plan

Add some extra information to this plan and we’ll help you get it done.

We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline

Download and print

Get a printable template for this Action Plan, fill it in with some target dates, and share it with your team. Pin it on the wall where everyone can see it.

Get the printable Action Plan

Learning Groups

We also run Learning Groups on these topics where you can join other leaders tackling the same challenges.

Find a Learning Group

How will I know if my action plan is working?

Source of sales

Knowing how customers discovered your business shows what marketing is effective

Why this metric?

Marketing needs to contribute to your revenue goals.

How do I start tracking?

Record how new customers found out about your company. The information can be collected automatically when customers are inputting their details or by salespeople.