Optimizing your online campaigns such as SEO, Emails, marketing and on-site development really surmounts the all-out charge on retail. You will see the benefits of improved sales, even customer well-being. All this can be done, so give it some drive and passion. Make it a career!
Think of the improvements you would like to see. How about a week by week update from onsite and email promotions maybe? Working for the The Genuine Gemstone Company in online marketing, I know a bit about shopper needs and making the most of marketing opportunities. Our brands Gems TV and Rocks TV are strong in the UK and USA respectively, however our sole reliance is not about delivering sales through TV only.
“The company's No.1 appearance in the Fast Track 100, is testimony to their skill and determination to succeed” - says Sir Richard Branson in The Sunday Times.
Connection with our audience
Without being connected to our audience through brand websites, social media, emails and other forms of online marketing, we wouldn't have achieved our sales growth of 245.36% per annum. Being a Sunday Times Fast Track 100 winner is proof that there is success in online retail. Determination and proven ability to deliver sales and grow as a company only underlines expertise in creating a solid and sustainable business model.
Tips for online marketing
1. Onsite design
If you know your product, you should be able to figure out your market yourself. Creating an effective website campaign leads to a successful ROI for your company. Designs need to grab the immediate attention of your customers. For example, who will be most interested in your product? Men or women? What is their age group? What are your customer's interests? What is their likely financial situation?
- A good strapline and creative, elaborate and convincing worded communication is convicting more or an auroa about your company and digresses more of a story. Testimonials and large text telling your market your most unique selling points help confirm your strengths, making your website your own marketing bill board.
- Website banners give the user something that's so alive its jumping at them. Look super sophisticated using nice fonts, graphics and photography accompanied with good colours and some animation. Customers best react to an advert containing smiling models, regardless of whether or not you are selling, silver jewellery, gemstone earrings and diamond rings like my company are.
2. Mobile market
The use of mobile devices to access the Internet is becoming the medium of choice, with more than two-thirds (69%) of all Internet users surveyed doing so daily according to Mobile Web Watch 2012. The study of consumers in Europe, Latin America and South Africa conducted by Accenture (NYSE: ACN). Using multiple devices to connect to the web, consumers' digital devices are including smartphones (61 percent), netbooks (37%), and tablets (22%).
- Apps are specifically designed to reach out to the audience. Currently there are 4x more iPhone and Android users than PC or Laptop users. This is down to the sheer convenience and new capabilities of these mobile devices and the faster load times of the app that makes it a wining tool for marketing.
- Resposive design for your website will resize itself depending on which device it is being used on. Tablet, PC or smartphone, the website morphs into the layout that is right for the device. The most useful example of this is when the navigation stacks on top of each other on a mobile, or even disappears behind a little menu tab.
3. SEO
With the recent Penguin 2.0 update, now has been more important than ever to get your organic SEO white hat and working cleanly. Utilizing the right strategy and tools for the job is critical to success and health in your domain. It is no good being on the 4th or 5th page of Google for products you want your customers to link to your site from search engine. They simply won't find you and you'll lose business as a result.
- Digital Marketing Agency assistance for creating white hat solutions, eradicating poor directory links and submitting good quality articles is an ideal solution towards succeeding in your organic SEO.
- Google Accounts for successful SEO mark up in page meta for all pages, site maps, analytics, keyword data are all helpful. The start-up of Google Shopper, Google Author, Ratings and Maps all add to your SEO to build presence and assist in taking up vital real-estate for your page listing.
- Pay Per Click (PPC) is all about finding the right balance between the high priced popular keywords and selecting a wide berth of long tail keywords to sponsor, often the more unpopular words outweigh the popular key terms, so balance things out proportionately to get the best results. You don't even need a good organic SEO strategy to do this.
4. Email marketing
Weekly emails to your customer increases website traffic by up to 20%. It can be more popular then mobile traffic in terms of onsite visits from various traffic sources and what's best is it guarantees sales. Being creative with your email only improves your catch, and using themes such as mother's day, sporting events or something else that would appeal to your audience is worth creating into a marketing campaign.
- Use Email Software such as Mailchimp to build a week on week strategy for your email. Track clicks, visits and transactions for success of a campaign and compare data weekly to judge what promotions provided the most amounts of clicks.
- Change the offer and think of new products to promote each week, change items depending on what sells well during times of the year, or if there have been a big spike in sales of some of your products, make a promotion and email, send through the sales funnel and convert some more. Tie in on your website the promotions to harness the offer and catch search engine customers in the same bite.
5. Social Media
With a thorough profile of your customer, determining how to reach them is easier. You can see where they like to communicate socially on the internet as well. Social media can be a great addition to your marketing promotions, with
Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc. all offering their own unique advantages. Your marketing should also reflect their needs as much as it requires you to establish your name and trust.
- Create a following on Facebook, Twitter etc. assists in building SEO. Plus it stretches the marketing ability, adding the latest promotions and perhaps create some useful promotions to increase ‘Follows' and ‘Likes' from the fans.
- Social partnerships can be another useful way of collaborating with other brands who share the same network of loyal fans. Promote your brand and be active, the more you tweet, and respond to their comments online, including the complaints, the more the fans will appreciate your company.
Conclusion
There is no need to hire a top marketing firm to know your customer, you as a business have been doing brilliantly, because you know your product and you've been able to communicate your specialism.
