Digital Marketing for Retail Industry
The marketing for retail industry (whether it is a brick-and-mortar storefront or online-based ) is fast-paced and growing astronomically as more and more customers switch to online shopping. Therefore, for your e-commerce site to be a thriving success, you will need to ensure that your digital marketing strategy drives a continuous flow of traffic to your website.
We can help you achieve this by formulating a digital marketing strategy that combines various digital marketing practices (such as social media, website design, PPC advertising, and Search Engine Optimisation) to ensure your online presence is solid.
Retail Industries We Serve:
Departmental Stores
For Departmental stores with different departments specializing in different categories, a digital marketing strategy is important to ensure that the sales of each revenue line are optimized fully.
Discount Stores
Discount stores are known for their cost-effective pricing strategies, this also makes the industry a highly competitive one with many discount stores competing for the same market share. A differentiated digital marketing strategy is needed to ensure that the correct marketing channels are used to gain a competitive advantage.
Furniture Stores
Furniture stores will need to utilize online marketing strategies that highlight brand awareness and brand significance within the retail industry. With the extensive range of products that furniture stores have on offer, there has to be a focus on the provision of value-added service offerings through for e.g. content marketing and other online strategy tactics.
Jewelers
Social media channels are proving to be important and effective platforms for jewelry stores to market their merchandise. An appropriate digital marketing strategy would therefore entail the use of the right social media platforms to market their products; the correct interpretation and an analysis of the results thereof using online analytics is also needed.
Luxury Brands
Luxury brands are also a unique sector in the retail sector that must market their goods to a niche sector within the market. Various digital marketing strategies will need to be employed so that the correct target audience is reached through effective online advertising strategies.
Some Challenges That The Retail Industry Is Facing:
There are a multitude of retail sectors that fall under the retail industry umbrella, and therefore different strategies and approaches should be employed for each industry. Most of the sectors that fall within the retail industry, however, face similar challenges when it comes to getting their brand noticed online.
Not having a proper digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing is constantly evolving and retailers should adapt technology to their advantage to sell and compete. Omnichannel helps the retailers to go online and start selling through various channels – in-store, e-commerce, via social media, and Amazon.
Get the business online with an e-commerce solution, then take advantage of paid marketing and social media to get brand awareness and promote the business by finding your niche and telling the world what makes your product and business special.
A solid digital marketing plan can help you reach the target segment who are searching for your products on the internet through phones and desktops.
Keeping up with ever-changing customer expectations
Customer preferences keep changing and retailers must be able to keep up with consumer demand. Apart from seasons and trends, other factors such as economic situations and competition in the retail industry have a huge impact on consumer demand as well.
Lack of retention marketing strategy
One of the biggest mistakes made by retailers is not having a good retention marketing strategy to retain their existing customers. Maintaining customer loyalty and rewarding loyal customers is extremely important to sustain your business growth. Good customer experience is a key factor in creating brand loyalty and rewarding them for loyalty is equally important.
While loyalty programs, promotions, and special offers are excellent initiatives to retain their customers, the real key to an amazing customer experience is personalization. To keep your loyal customers, you need to use a personal approach based on demographics, preferences, and needs. A CRM system can help to maintain your customers’ details and personalized emails will make it easier to keep in regular touch with your loyal customers.
Digital disruption
With the growth of e-commerce consumers have plenty of choices to choose from and can compare competitors to make a well-informed purchase decision.
They usually go to the internet to search for product information and compare the price, but would still buy it offline after walking into a store. Deloitte reported that 56% of in-store retailers have a good digital website and web-influenced physical store sales are about 5X that of online sales. Ecommerce is a great opportunity and retailers can merge online and offline businesses. A good digital marketing strategy and tactics will help retailers reach a wider audience for their brands as consumer behaviour changes very quickly.
Choosing the best technology solutions for the retail industry
Retailers have been looking for the best-automated solutions to simplify their business processes, yet their choices often fall on the wrong side of software solutions. Either the choices are pricey or difficult to use or they don’t really have the ability to perform their requirements or overcome retail challenges. The technology solutions should also provide ease of integration with other systems.
Digital marketing consultants like us could help the retailers to choose the right platforms and automation tools for the retail industry to help automate all your retail operations, from managing inventory and sales to managing prospects and customers. We understand the retailer’s requirements exceptionally well to help you with the right solutions within your budget to promote your products and services.
Digital Marketing for The Retail Industry – Are your Strategies Keeping Up?
Digital marketing for the retail industry is indeed a complex one with so many variables that must be taken into account coupled with digital technology that is evolving at a rapid rate. It is therefore important to ensure that you have covered all your bases and utilized every strategy available (and there are many); these include email marketing, in-store strategies, integrating mobile user-friendliness into your overall strategy, and others.
Using Data to Enhance The Customer Experience in The Retail Industry
Data centricity & data intelligence is the foundation upon which we build our digital marketing strategies. Analyzing and interpreting data using the various analytics tools can give you invaluable insight into the purchasing behavior of consumers; you can then adapt your digital marketing strategy accordingly to further enhance the customer experience.
Retailers should understand the power of data and data intelligence which can help them to target the right target audience and buyer persona, optimize customer experience, and bridge the gap between online and brick and mortar stores.
Research has shown that customer experience is the number one priority for differentiation from other brands. The data helps the retailers to analyze and create an experience for individual customers. For example, by knowing when the customer is most likely to browse a website or visit a store to make a purchase, retailers can send offers or discount coupons to encourage them to make a purchase.
It’s simple data intelligence, but it demonstrates how a joined-up approach to data as part of omnichannel marketing can yield results. Making use of this data depends on having the right people in place to analyze it and enhance the customer experience.
Prioritizing Experience-Led Sales
Digital marketing can enhance the consumers’ shopping experience and influence how they shop with you and if they will continue to do so in the future. Therefore, concentrating on experience- led sales is a type of bankable marketing strategy that is sure to yield results.
Costly physical locations will never be as efficient as online-only retailers with warehouse networks & fulfillment centres. Brick & mortar stores price-focused ‘race to the bottom’ has thinned out the margin; it has presented retailers with a new opportunity to go online and create a personalized experience for customers.
Use DIgital to Pull Shoppers Into Stores
Let’s face it, there is nothing more frustrating than entering a store deadset on purchasing an item only to find out it is sold-out. Item availability should, therefore, be a key consideration in your strategy, and using digital marketing to alert customers to items that may or may not be in stock is a big drawcard to pull shoppers into your store as are trading hours, location, pricing, and store details.
Improve The In-Store Experience With Digital Strategies
Although online shopping now constitutes a substantial piece of shopping in its entirety, people still really enjoy in-store shopping as they get to experience the look and feel of a store first-hand.
Making use of digital strategies as part of the in-store experience should also be considered as this can also be used to improve the in-store shopping experience such as integrated automatic checkouts, digital pricing labels, interactive styling tools, and more.
Embrace Omnichannel Digital Marketing for Retail Industry
Omnichannel marketing is about creating a shopping experience that is as equally beneficial for consumers online as it is in-store. Our digital marketing strategy will help you achieve this as we approach each retail business with a blueprint strategy that has been proven to work.
As part of this customized strategy, we integrate omnichannel marketing into your personalized marketing strategy; this is one of the marketing channels that must be included in your digital marketing strategy to maximize your ROI.
Content Marketing - Does The Retail Industry Need It?
Statistics show that content is such a big deal these days that more than half of consumers will choose a competitor’s site over yours if they provided them with useful and relevant content.
With so many options to choose from as a retailer you have to decide what it is that will make you different from other retailers. That is where useful content comes into play- creating content that sets you apart, and is interesting enough that consumers keep coming back for more.
Consumers are wary of a retailer that advertises with a hard-sales approach; the more personable and authentic you make your content the greater the likelihood that they will start to engage and interact with your website on their terms without feeling forced to.
Digital Marketing for retails is in demand – no doubt about it. However, a do-all approach is not always the best approach. Each industry within the retail sector will therefore require a well-formulated digital marketing strategy approach aimed at optimizing these niche sectors and highlighting the focal points that will make them attractive to customers shopping online.
User-responsiveness is extremely important
Mobile devices and the ease of user-friendliness on these devices must be considered as part of your website development in an age where the slightest error in the display of a page can cause a potential customer to simply move on to the next link.
Making sure that you have a strong social media presence
The use of social media and the way it has taken the online world by storm through the introduction of a new way of socializing and interacting with each other is something that cannot be ignored.
Having an active social media presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is a great way to interact with prospective customers who may or may not know of your store; the growth potential of your reach through social media is unlimited.
Just as one of the core principles of the retail industry is customer service, so too should you be mindful of this fact when interacting and engaging with your followers – good customer service has always and continues to reign supreme.
How We Can Help The Retail Industry
Ecommerce marketing is where online marketing comes to the forefront. In an online world, your online store needs a comprehensive digital marketing strategy & tactical approach that will promote your business and increase brand awareness of your e-commerce store.
Generate Qualified Traffic
Retailers have to rely on multiple channels to generate qualified traffic. They must effectively leverage CRM, Marketing, and email automation paid advertising like Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc, display ads, retargeting, mobile, influencer marketing, and affiliates to help drive qualified traffic to their online store.
Lead Generation
Online retailers are spending a significant amount of marketing budget to drive traffic and to get qualified leads. With conversion rates ranging between 1% to 3%, they must put a lot of effort into generating leads to get the most out of their marketing activities. Building a good customer base is key for long term success. Retailers must invest in digital marketing activities to reach the targeted audience by crafting the right message to convert them into leads with hopes of turning them into customers.
Converting The Website Visitors Into Paying Customers
Retailers must constantly optimize their websites to convert the leads to customers. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is key to convert website visitors into customers. Conversion optimization is an ongoing process. Driving quality traffic and nurturing leads is key if you want to make them convert for a sale to happen.
Retention Marketing Strategy
Attracting new customers is more expensive than retaining existing customers. Retailers must implement tactics to help them get the most out of their customers in the database to increase customer lifetime value and make them your brand’s ravishing fans. Email marketing is an important online marketing tool that is used to market to customers who have previously bought from you or customers who have shown an interest in your business by choosing to subscribe to your newsletter.
Finding The Right Products to Sell
Online shopping cart platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and Duda have made it very easy for retailers to go online. Anyone can launch an online store within days and start selling their products. Amazon has a massive online product catalogue along with their marketplace and fulfillment services have enabled retailers to sell their product all over the world
Content is The Lifeline of E-Commerce Business
Interesting, informative, and helpful content in the form of blogs, videos, and infographics for example is one way of gaining extra awareness for your brand. Interesting articles on trends, innovation, helpful tips, and so on will help your store stand out from the rest.
Creating a blog for your e-commerce store is important as you can use this form of content to tell a story about the products on your e-commerce site by offering useful information about or relating to your e-commerce store. Always remember to make use of keywords so that your content gets noticed.
Make Every Page on Your Website Part of Your SEO Strategy
Keyword research is essential to determine who your competitors are and where you stand in comparison to them. In this case, the more research you do the better to gain a better understanding of what keywords will give you the upper edge in an industry that is highly competitive.
Every page on your e-commerce site holds importance and should be treated as such just as every page should have a different SEO approach based on the different products or categories that you offer. Make sure that each page consists of a short header and URL, as well as a short keyword-rich page title.
Increase the likelihood of backlinks by creating outstanding content; relationship building with other sites will ensure the page ranking & page authority of the site to increase qualified traffic.
Instagram & Pinterest are both wonderful platforms to make use of in your digital marketing strategy and with the right product visuals, you could be gaining followers in no time. Since e-commerce products rely on good quality images using Instagram and Pinterest as platforms to boost your e-commerce store further is a worthwhile idea.
Suggestions of related products to consumers who are searching for a specific something is also another way of essentially ‘upselling’ your products to customers who are more likely to consider buying the additional extra item on your website.
Choosing The Right Technology & Digital Marketing Partners
Many times the online retailers face growth challenges because their current technology is limiting them or they’ve hired the wrong partners/agencies to help them manage their e-commerce projects.
Retailers should be given the right advice on the technology, taking their future business goals into account and must choose the right shopping cart platform, shipping, payment gateway, inventory management software, email and marketing automation along with CRM systems, analytics, and marketing activities.
Above all hiring, the right consultant or agencies is key to help implement the right marketing campaigns to increase leads, customers, and growth. Online retailers must choose carefully whom to work with as their partners as it can make or break the business. These are just some of the ways we can help you grow your e-commerce store.
What Makes Us Different
We focus on three key areas that support our strategy through the use of our Digital Marketing Strategy Blueprint. We have a tried and tested marketing blueprint that we can build to achieve your business goal through the right marketing tactics and technology and will help you to develop a lead generation engine.
- Our strategy is focused on lead generation, brand awareness maximization, retaining and nurturing client relationships, and creating a comprehensive market penetration strategy that will place your e-commerce store in a formidable competitive position.
- We provide digital marketing training for C-level executives, business owners, and large corporates to help you understand and be able to work with the advancing tools that are now making up digital technology and to have better management and control of such an important facet of your online/ face-brick store.
- We offer a unique and customized approach to digital marketing that’s just for you and is goal specific based on your vision of what the result should be. It consists of seven vital steps that start with an action plan and ends with an increase in customer traffic to your e-commerce site, customer conversion, and customer retention.
Digital Marketing for retail is in demand – no doubt about it. However, a do-all approach is not always the best approach. Each industry within the retail sector will therefore require a well-formulated digital strategy approach aimed at optimizing these niche sectors and highlighting the focal points that will make them attractive to customers shopping online.
If you are looking for a digital marketing consultancy in Toronto to help grow your e-commerce or retail store, we can assist. Contact us today to see how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals.