eCommerce has seen its biggest boom in history over the last year. Online retailers globally have reported unprecedented growth in their online conversions, leads, and sales. Some have even gone so far as to compare hard lockdown periods to Black Friday sales.
Whether you are in eCommerce or looking to kick off your own company, your main objective will naturally be looking for and reaching new customers. Digital marketing provides companies with tools and methods to reach audiences that they would never have been able to in the past. So, we took a look at some of the ways that you can reach out to new audiences and gain a loyal customer base with a few smart techniques.
Map Out A Pre-Planned Social Media Strategy
When it comes to social media, everything that you post needs to be well-thought-out and purposeful. The content will need to capture your audience’s attention, and the CTAs need to be convincing to click on.
Remember, social media is one of your biggest tools to reach audiences way beyond your current customer base. It is an incredibly powerful tool in which you can engage with customers immediately.
Creating a social media plan well ahead of time will mean that you can create various posts to send out regularly across all platforms. Keep the messaging and images uniform, simply altering it for the varying platforms.
Choose your posts carefully and map out which type of post will be more impactful for each type of content. Carousel type posts work well for product displays on Facebook, while informative and educational content can be displayed in a regular post.
One of the most important things to watch is how they are performing. Measuring and monitoring the metrics of success of posts is simple and highly informative. There are numerous social media analytics tools that you can use to keep an eye on your posts.
This data and insight will allow you to see what is working for your audience and what isn’t. You can see what kind of content encourages engagement and what actually converts traffic to your site. Using this data will help you plan your future content more accurately.
Heighten Your SEO Using Affiliates
SEO is certainly one of the most spoken about topics in digital marketing. It is expansive, can be complicated and always evolving. In fact, Google updates their
What you can do from your side, which isn’t highly resource and time-consuming is to seek out and share links with various affiliates. Google scrapes every site on the internet regularly to ascertain where to categorize it, and where to rank it in the search results.
So, not only are your keywords absolutely vital, but link-building between key authoritative sites means that Google will know to place you in the same category as that site. But, be aware, don’t just link to any old site. Spend your time actually looking for sites that have authority and a good reputation in your field. Google will pick that up and know that, if there are links between your site and theirs, you are also an authority in the field. So, you will get ranked higher.
Aside from this, it is vital to do regular
Create Content Your Customer Needs
We touched on the fact that your social posts need to be engaging and educational, and the same can be said for all content that you put out. If you don’t already have a blog, you should start one immediately. Not only can these be shared over your social media and via your regular emails to your customer base, but they can also be sent to your affiliates.
Content, however, needs to be useful to your customer. You will need to educate, inform and empower your customer at all times. So, just like you have created a social media strategy and plan, do the same for content.
Plan content for the full year. Note specific holidays, seasons and any kind of industry-related dates that you need to take note of. The next step is then to move onto creating topics that your customers and potential audiences will want to read and will be searching for.
Take an organic food eCommerce store for example. Writing articles around ‘5 Reasons Why I am Not Losing Weight’ or ‘Best Food for Gluten Intolerance’ will not only be interesting for your current audience, but it will be playing on the keywords that people are actually searching for. If you use the relevant keywords in the article, and it starts getting enough traffic organically, it will be shifted higher and higher up the search engine.
In the article, you can include a CTA to a link on your site to the relevant product or products that just happen to be on special or have been newly released.
Remember, customers buy from brands that they can trust, and by giving them useful information, you will be gaining their trust.
Find A Micro-Influencer
We know, we are also starting to shudder at the influencer term now. However, finding the right one for your brand can actually do wonders. If you are a small business and start-up, look for someone who is an authoritative figure in your industry.
If you are in insurance, or financial products, for example, a well-known financial guru might work. The organic food brand would pair well with a semi-famous chef.
Their followers are already following them organically as they are interested in the topic, so pairing with them will mean that you are reaching a very targeted audience who will actually be looking for your solutions.
Not only are micro-influencers more engaging with their audiences, but they spend more time on their posts and provide more information. If you work together, your two brands can create highly educational content that will benefit your audiences and grow both brands. And naturally, the natural link building will also come in to heighten your
It is really a win-win situation.
Last Thoughts
In wrapping up, there are hundreds of strategies that you can implement in your business. The ideas are endless and there are constantly new platforms and tools popping up. The most important thing to keep in mind is your customer journey and optimizing it to continuously surprise and delight your customer. Whether they are coming into the site organically, or from a social platform, keep your content, imaging and branding uniform, and make sure that your customer can engage with you from all points.
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