Eyewear is timeless. It doesn’t get out of style. Instead, more and more people are using them. It’s even a necessity for some parts of the world. However, the problem of an industry with a sustainable market is that too many players want to join the fun. And that poses a dilemma of how you can market your goods to stand out apart from everybody else in the market. Let’s solve that problem.
How To Effectively Market Eyewear Online?
Marketing any kind of product especially online needs to follow the SMART planning strategy. That means you have to define your SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based) goals to give you the right framework in developing your online marketing strategy. But after defining your goals what sort of steps you would have to take?
Sale
The four-letter word that people can never resist. There are a lot of advantages for doing a sale apart from the considerable movement of your eyewear stocks. Giving a discount on your eyewear would encourage new customers and if your product is of high quality worthy of a repeat buy, you’ll probably gain loyal customers.
However, be careful about the frequency of offering discounts to customers as it might make them perceive your product as inferior in quality and that’s why it’s cheaper than the others. To avoid this, you need to have a reason for the sale like New Year’s, Christmas, Valentines, etc. That makes people give you trust. Also, you can tote into your marketing “where you can find sunglasses at wholesale prices straight from the manufacturer”, which in other words, is a discounted price. It’s a double-edged strategy. You market your goods as a high-end piece of eyewear since it is from the producers themselves and your consumers will like the cheaper price.
Use Consistent Branding
The key to optical marketing is staying on top of the mind of your patients or potential consumers, like Ikea for furniture and home accessories. Use consistent branding across all your online and offline platforms. You want your consumers to be able to identify you from the other brands. They can do this if you have just one logo with the dimensions specified and identifiable color schemes, name, and slogan. Business cards, newsletters, brochures, social media accounts, and other communications or representations for your brand should only use that specific logo, slogan, and color scheme.
Participate In Eye Observance Days
Promote the significance of eye protection by participating in eye health observance days. This will be a great opportunity to increase awareness of your brand, engage with current and potential customers, and offer special discounts that could drive your sales a bit. Some of the eye health days observed in the country are:
- National Sunglasses Day
- Save Your Vision Month
- Women’s Eye Health & Safety Month
- National Eyewear Day
- Fireworks Eye Safety Month
- World Sight Day
Advertise a Fundraising Day
Organize fundraising where you pay, for instance, $1 for every purchased year But of course, you can only do this during eye health awareness days or the Holidays so come well-prepared for it. Advertise the event to your online platforms, newspapers, and other publications. You can even invite a celebrity to promote the fundraising, one who supports your cause.
Use Your Website Efficiently
Since you want to be big on the online platform, you have to utilize it and exhaust every benefit that you can get from it. How? Let’s get cracking.
Optimize Your Website Through SEO
The
Enhance The User Experience in Your Website
Improving the UX of your website isn’t just about good graphics and eye-catching phrases. It’s more focused on how well can the visitors of your website instinctively navigate around. Where to search, where to sign up, how to purchase, how to add to their cart. These things need to be perfectly smooth.
Apart from that, your website should not be so slow. If your website loads more than 2 seconds – the average time Google perceives as acceptable page loading time, then you’ve got a problem. This is because people just don’t like waiting. So you have to let your
Be Visible Through Writing Blogs, Guest Posts, Etc.
Blogs, guest posts, and other informative articles online are subtle but effective ways in leading your prospective consumers to your website. Because usually, people don’t really find specific things online, they search for information. How To’s, What’s, Why’s and Where’s are what people online are searching for. And blogs and all sorts of content provide them that.
You should also make sure that your blog writers also include links to sites with high authorities like WebMD, American Academy of Ophthalmology, Healthline, etc. They give Google or other browsers the hint that your content (article) is worth reading.
Social Media Marketing is A Must
Social media is where your buyers are. If you compare it to a physical store, people frequent the mall for anything and everything that’s why all sorts of businesses are there. You would need to be where the action is and that is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Tiktok, and many others. Social media marketing is your strategy to snatch some of those potential buyers who want to find eyewear.
Promote Your Optical Business With Paid Ads
PPC or Pay Per Click advertising is as effective as
With PPC advertising, you’re sure to be on the top page of Google, Bing, and other search engines. But be careful in using PPC as your gateway to get consumers. This is because paid advertisements, though are on top of the search engine’s page are not given much attention as those valid organic search results. For instance, a consumer is trying to find “the best way to fix the broken arm of your sunglasses”. That means he is not trying to find eyewear but a fix to his problem. So a balance of the two is needed to be successful in marketing your optical business.
Consistently Email Your Consumers
For most online retailers, email marketing is the fastest way to get that all-important visits to your site. You can build your email list by letting your consumers have an option to be sent with updates from your site when they check out. Or you can add an opt-in to your blogs, homepage, and other pages of your website. What makes email marketing a very good tool is that your email list is yours solely. Social media customers just pass by but your consumers from your email list are not just potential consumers but potential repeat ones. So you have to build on that to continue the growth of your business.
So how do you effectively use email marketing to boost your sales?
Build A Massive Email List
You can start building your email list by using apps that give visitors a discount when they play along with it. An example is the Spin-a-Sale where your consumers who visit your blogs or website get to spin and would have a chance for a coupon for your product. They would need to enter their details such as email and name so you have all the details you need for your email list.
Email Funnels
Email funnels are just like an email newsletter just made in a more subtle way. When email newsletters include an upfront sales pitch of your best-selling products, email funnels come in a series of articles that might help your customers in some way or another. Then on the second or successive emails, you could suggest some of your products that could solve the problem or dilemma presented in the previous communications. This is to not shock your potential shopper and repeat customer from the salesy pitch that usually scares them away.
Personalize Your Email List
As your email list grows, personalization and segmentation become more important. This is when you suggest products or services for your consumer based on his or her purchases and search history. This will likely be more effective in converting the effort to sales since the goods offered are more personally catered for the individual. Once more, it benefits you when you pay more attention to your patrons.
Chase Your Abandoned Cart Sales
Abandoned carts are those that your customer would have purchased but opt not to for some reason. What you can do is email them selections of your products that might internet him or her. This will be key in gaining back some customers that chose to buy from your competitors. Sneaky but effective.
Collaborations
Collaborations or partnerships can skyrocket your business but only choose the most trusted brands to offer your partnership to. Co-marketing creates a symbiotic relationship between two products that have distinct but related audiences. It gives the other a chance to tap into that audience and gain or convert some consumers in the process. Collaborations can be done through an influencer or a social fan page tag. Let’s explore these two in detail.
Collaborations
Done through an influencer means you will have to choose a temporary brand ambassador for your product. As one of your product endorsers, he or she should be able to market your product well and promote it in a positive way. This is not just about finding a pretty face that has a million followers. You should check how his or her followers respond when she’s doing something or promoting something. This person might have been viewed a million times but the views are only one time. No real subscribers are following everything that he or she is putting out online.
Getting Tagged
Getting tagged by a social fan page does have a high percentage of converts than influencers do. This is because the audience on the social fan page is already hooked on whatever it stands for. For instance, your product is related to pets, dogs, cats, and others. If you were positively tagged by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the fan page itself speaks volumes of passionate animal lovers and they are more than qualified to be interested in your niche.
Enhance Your Customer Service Support
Helping people find their way around your website is one way of keeping your current, potential, and future customers happy. You can engage in chat support service apps that could either be pre-recorded with all the questions and responses needed or live chat support or you can use both. This will encourage people to dig deeper into your site without making them leave the page.
The key is when they are on the website for more than a minute and they are just wandering about that’s the time your customer service supports could assist them. Most consumers that want to purchase your product would get your help to solve the issue. Take advantage of that. This will also be your way to market your system, not just the brand and the product. Retailers or E-commerce businesses that excel in customer service almost always have repeat customers.
So, there you have it. All the tricks are right out of the bag. What you must be clear about when planning your marketing strategy online is to be clear of what you want to get out of it and why. When you answer those, the how, when, and where can readily be answered by these marketing strategies above.
Surprised young woman wearing glasses -DepositPhotos
