What Makes Us Different!

Sterling Steps is different!

At Sterling Steps, what makes us different is the way we combine social, with web, along with customer experience to drive customer loyalty. We were established in 2019 and evolved into a Digital Marketing Consultancy. The original concept focused on driving business growth and quickly evolved into optimizing the digital realm, including customer experience.

We specialize in:

Website Design & Build
Analytics & Reporting
Conversion Optimization
Content Marketing
Business Management
Paid Advertising
Social Media Marketing
Email Marketing

Talk to a Person

Sterling Steps is based in Canada, we don’t outsource. You get to talk to a person, and we believe strongly in one-on-one service. We either provide in-person consultations or via video conference.

Covid & Technology

Covid-19 changed the world forever! It is, without doubt, the most influential event impacting buying behaviour since World War Two. Businesses regardless of size need to reach a certain scope in order to be viable and sustainable. One of the most challenging areas of any new technology is user adoption rates. Digital payment as an example was first offered by Coca-Cola in 1997. The subsequent traction was like moving through molasses. People didn’t trust providers with their credit card information. In addition, players were usually small, this changed with Google Wallet and Apple Pay. Adoption still lacked, with many individuals preferring to pay using debit and credit cards. Then the pandemic hit digital transactions didn’t gather pace due to convenience and features, they gained traction because nobody wanted to touch money. Digital transactions were accelerated five-plus years overnight, and the reason was a virus!

Environmental Factors

This is an example of how environmental factors can have significant impacts on business. It also, highlights how digital adoption by business is pretty much essential for a business to be successful post-2020. The days when you could put off developing a social media strategy or optimizing your website are long gone. We’re in a new world now, and only the most digitally advanced will survive.

It is now a digital game!

Surveying & Assessment

What makes us different, at Sterling Steps, is the way we leverage comprehensive tools to survey and access your business. We set up discovery sessions to find out about your business, your current business assets, either owned, earned, or paid. We leverage Safaris to assess your current customer experience. Furthermore, we conduct a comprehensive review of all your customer touchpoints from digital assets to transit scores to physical aesthetics, whatever is applicable we will evaluate it. These tools allow us to understand where you are now so that we can determine what are your best steps forward in transforming your business.

Competitor Assessment

What are your competitors doing? What Social Media platforms are they using? Do you have gaps in your strategy or opportunities which you are not currently aware of? We evaluate the customer experience through your direct competitors, which allows us to determine if we can make changes to improve either your social media scope or customer proposition. This will in turn allow you to gain new customers or followers.

Website Review

We leverage Google Analytics to evaluate. What is the purpose of your site and is it currently meeting your goals and objectives? How does your site function? How do customers flow through the funnel? Do you have a clear call to action and are they being completed?

Core & Path

This model describes how your customers navigate their inward path to your website or hub. Is it optimized? What are your users’ goals and are they in line with your business goals? Is your site effective in achieving a call to action? Where do your visitors head after they have finished with your site? If it is to a competitor’s site, and they don’t return to your site, it is likely a lost sale.

Important Questions

What makes us different from our competitors is our focus on understanding and optimizing customer acquisition costs. How much does your customer acquisition cost? What is your customers’ lifetime value? It is critical to understand these metrics so that you can build efficiencies. At Sterling Steps, we work with you to determine and define your business fundamentals. Next, we develop the strategies!

Understanding your Audience & Developing Personas

At Sterling Steps, we start by really understanding who your audience is, as well as who you want them to be. What are their characteristics, likes, drivers, motivators, what social-economic similarities do they share? After, completing in-depth research, we combine this information into unique ‘audience personas’. Once we have established who we want to target, we design how we will start targeting them with comprehensive channel strategies and campaigns.

Creating a Brand Story

To grow strategically, you must go beyond advertising. Creating loyalty, connecting with people who have purchased your brand. Successful businesses have a brand story. What makes you unique? What are the roots of your business? Along, with what does your brand represent?

We develop these brand stories along with the brand image and the aesthetics of your message. This step is critical in understating your core brand’s purpose and creating a consistent and concise brand message. A brand story is just storytelling, which has resonated with humans for millennia.

Advanced Analytics

What makes us different, analytics! Not only do we build the strategy, but we also measure and analyze what we develop. We leverage comprehensive tools to measure and monitor both social and web dynamics. Both elements need to be considered to understand the full purchasing funnel and the buying process.

Social Media Monitoring

We leverage social media analytics platforms along with tools like Hootsuite to measure multiple platforms at the same time. At Sterling Steps, we also, monitor sentiment, comments, and feedback to understand all the noise pertaining to the brand. This allows us to understand the complete sphere of the brand, and this can be a great identifier of issues or opportunities.

Google Analytics

We heavily rely on Google Analytics. Most of the web traffic comes through Google, and it is imperative to understand the dynamics around your website.

This method allows us to test and optimize, resulting in a greater call to action and improved return on investment. At Sterling Steps, we are constantly analyzing and improving the customer experience.

Businesses are either going to evolve digitally or fall by the wayside.

Summary

Businesses are dealing with more uncertainty and ambiguity than ever before in this post-pandemic world. Doing things, the old way just isn’t going to cut it, businesses are either going to evolve digitally or fall by the wayside.