Build a Community
Building a community around your brand can promote customer loyalty and connection beyond what brand awareness can do alone. By building genuine connections with consumers your business can be more than simply recognized, it can poise your business as a staple of your industry. One of the easiest ways to build a community is by creating a virtual space where anyone can communicate. Forums are an underutilized method of building a community, especially for how easy it is. An example of this kind of platform is the Microsoft question and answers forum where anyone can explain the issue they’re facing and any other user, whether they be a Microsoft employee or not, can help them solve the problem. Remember to always be an active member of this community rather than just an onlooker. This will not only help your business build relationships with customers but can also push your website further into the spotlight.
Start Speeding Up Your SEO Traffic
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is crucial for digital businesses because of the many benefits it brings. The first of these benefits is increased traffic. By optimizing your website it will rank higher in Google’s massive index of web pages, meaning it will show up earlier on search engine result pages. Links that rank higher in Google’s index get much more traffic, especially if you manage to rank within the top five web pages for a search query. The second major benefit of search engine optimization is an overall better user experience. The quicker your website loads and the easier it is to navigate, the more likely customers are to revisit your online store. A great example of this is Amazon. They have streamlined their user experience to the point that many products can be purchased with a single click. Having such a great user experience is one of the many reasons they have become a behemoth in the eCommerce industry. Here are a few quick tips to begin optimizing your website’s content to rank higher in Google.
- Organize your header tags properly
- Effectively research and implement keywords
- Build your website to be mobile-friendly
- Add internal links to other web pages on your website
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
Think Like a Brand Marketer
Thinking like a brand marketer can help your online store set itself apart from the competition by giving it a distinct voice. This can help your online business find its niche and cater to your target demographics more effectively. Your brand can be sleek and high-class, or it can be colorful and casual. What matters most when marketing your brand is that the tone appeals to your target audience and is used consistently. Everything from your brand’s website to your product’s packaging should fit the voice you have made for your brand.
A company that serves as an excellent example of brand marketing is JBL. When marketing their wireless earbuds JBL decided to focus on athletes and people who are regularly outdoors. This focus is reflected in every aspect of the earbuds and the marketing campaign around them. The headphones themselves are designed to stay put even while exercising or engaging in outdoor activities. The packaging they come in is small and simple to give the impression they can be taken anywhere. And the advertisements they are featured in regularly include people using them while exercising.
Organize Your Affiliate, Influencer, and Ambassador Campaigns in One Place
Influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, and brand ambassadors are undergoing rapid growth. These methods of advertising are expected to be worth more than $13.8 billion in the coming year, making them a critical portion of any marketing campaign. If your online business doesn’t leverage influencers or affiliates in its marketing efforts, then it is missing out on a significant method of finding potential customers. Forbes recommends maintaining a list of all influencers, affiliates, and brand ambassadors in one centralized place to avoid confusion and errors. This will make it easier to keep track of your marketing partners, the work they are doing to promote your business, and ensure that all payments are made on time. It is possible to make all of the payments to these influencers yourself, but there are also services that allow you to manage all of this information on one page.
Explore New Sales Channels
Consumers have dozens of options when they decide to purchase a product or service over the internet. This means that it can be difficult to reach potential customers if your product is only available through one channel. To reach a wider audience of customers you should consider making your products available on other online storefronts. Here is a short list of some prominent online storefronts that could help you reach a wider audience.
- Amazon
Amazon is by far the largest digital retailer on the internet. In fact, over 70 percent of U.S. consumers begin their search for a product on Amazon. If your business doesn’t have a strategy to sell its products on Amazon, then it is missing out on a huge number of consumers.
- eBay
eBay has 187 million global users and over 100,000 hours of shopping done every month. This makes eBay the largest fully digital competitor of Amazon.
- Google Shopping
The Google search engine has a built-in shopping function that can display products and prices without having to enter a website. This is a fantastic method of displaying your products to potential customers who haven’t visited your website but are actively searching for the product you offer.
- Bing Shopping
Though Google has the highest volume of internet searchers, there are alternatives that still have millions of active monthly users. Bing is Google’s largest competitor and it also offers a built-in shopping function similar to Google.
- Etsy
Etsy is a bit more of a niche option compared to the previous online shopping platforms, but it still has great potential. If your business sells jewelry, shoes, or any other kind of craft, then Etsy may be the ideal online retailer for your company. This is especially true if your business is small. Etsy shoppers enjoy buying from small businesses, meaning you may have an advantage on this storefront.
