Most retailers, from locally-owned specialty retailers to the national chains, understand the power and importance of having an omnichannel marketing strategy. Some two-thirds of shoppers research products online before setting foot inside a retail store, according to Retail Dive Consumer Survey.
In their online search for places to shop, customers look first to the retailers’ website. Some 30% of shoppers first learned about the product on a company’s website, reports KMPG’s 2017 study “The Truth about Online Consumers.” But the next most important way consumers learn about a brand is via online advertising, 15%. Social media (10%) and email marketing (10%) is less effective.
Yet, when Unity Marketing surveys specialty retailers about how they use digital marketing, they don’t have the right balance based upon how and where consumers look. Social media tops the list (93%), followed by email marketing (81%). Google ad words or other digitally-native advertising is barely used, only 18%.
Even more troubling, is that only about half of the retailers report social media marketing is very effective in promoting their store and even fewer, just over one-third, find email marketing very effective.
Retailers need to align their digital marketing mix with how customers look for them and have the right messages and content that leads them to your online store-front, i.e. your website.
Retail Rescue can help retailers super-charge their digital marketing with these four cutting-edge strategies:
- Retargeting to remind
- Location-based marketing to capture active shoppers
- Keyword Display marketing to top Google search lists
- Content to create curiosity
Retargeting reminds shoppers
Retargeting is sending ads to everyone who has visited your website. Websites are not stores in a mall where someone walks by and decides to step-in. Usually, there is a purpose. Sometimes those purposes are interrupted by family, phone calls or any number of things.
It would be foolish to suggest that their first visit to your website is enough to know they’ll soon be your customer. It would also be foolish to accept their departure without a response.
You need to remind them with retargeting. It’s where we place a pixel on your website that tags their device and sends them your ads. It’s the polite thing to do.
Location-based marketing captures shoppers when they visit competitors stores
The second tactic is to identify the best prospects by where they’re standing – with their phone. We use the same technology as Uber; satellites beam down and tag their phones. Voila! They begin to see your ads.
It’s fair to assume they are shopping for your product if they visit a competitor’s showroom. It’s fair to assume they have the capacity to buy your products if they belong to a country club, are staying at a local luxury hotel or are getting off a jet on the private airfield tarmac. And if you sell products or services for homes, it’s fair to assume they’re soon going to need you if they’re visiting homes listed for sale.
Targeting these locations and other locations with satellites gives you an unfair advantage over competitors.
Keyword advertising brings online guests
Keyword marketing can be either pay per click or pay per thousands of display ads – at a very low price. Pay per click gets you in line, usually on the first page of an increasingly long and ad plagued Google search results. You only pay if your ad gets clicked.
But the cost is high. We have clients who routinely paid over $5 per click and some as much as $70 per click. We have a better option.
Instead, we’ve found keyword display advertising is more effective, less costly and it has legs. We capture the same search and then send that prospect your ads for 30 days, not just a one-time impression.
Content is king
One of the most common complaints we hear is that visitors to your website won’t provide their name or email address. Our response is always–why would they? To the visitor, it appears rude and too aggressive because you haven’t earned the right to ask. It’s akin to selling before qualifying.
The answer is to offer content of interest in exchange for their name and email. Consider it an exchange: I’ll give you this if you’ll give me that. Then you email it to them.
Your website is a monologue, but it needs to be a dialogue. A prospect who provides their contact information in exchange for important and relevant content begins the dialogue.
The most powerful content is informational and demonstrates your expertise without an overtone of selling. It must be designed to seduce customers by relating it to their needs, wants and desires; not be about you and what you sell. The right content will attract the right people to contact or visit you.
Those powerfully activating messages should be crafted by an expert in marketing communication. We can enhance your ROI by ensuring your marketing is more engaging and more effective. Curiosity may kill the cat, but it captures the shopper.
Let’s get started with digital marketing that is hyper-focused and affordable
These four powerful digital marketing strategies should be an integral part of your marketing; perhaps no different than Yellow Pages or newspaper ads were critical 25 years ago. Most importantly, we can ensure it is effective and quantifiable.
With technology, we’ll find your best prospects. We can even tell you when, after seeing your ad, they walk into your store.
Creating awareness, staying in front of best prospects, taking them from competitors, and converting them into customers has never been easier if you supercharge your digital marketing.
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