Category: Blog

Want to create aesthetically pleasing visuals on Instagram?…  Wondering how to develop a recognizable Instagram style without needing a design background?

To explore my options on how to improve your design on Instagram, I interviewed Kat Coroy. She is a designer who teaches small business owners to look amazing on Instagram by thier using instagram branding strategy. She creates mini-masterclasses on IGTV. Her course is called Instagram Marketing Makeover.

Ready to improve your branding game? Here, you are going to learn how to discover your unique brand style and translate it to an Instagram profile that reflects or accurately market  your brand identity. You’ll also find some dominant tips to improve your Instagram marketing strategies and discover how to take selfies with confidence.

For years, Kat worked as a brander and designer at one of the best agencies in London. She’s worked with clients that run the gamut from dog food to traders to architects, including notable brands such as Nike and Coke. Often, she was called in to do the concept work for brands as well.

After 20 years in that role, she set up her own design agency in Australia. She worked with smaller brands such as organic coffee producers.

Around that time, friends who were aware of Kat’s background in branding and design were asking if she could curate their Instagram feeds for them using her Instagram branding designs. Kat’s approach goes beyond creating a pleasant and attractive aesthetic. She brings her experience with big brands to the table and works to get at the soul of the person or business so others can feel the impact of that soul.

She’s now been teaching about Instagram personal branding for 3 years and has 11K students. Today, she helps entrepreneurs and small businesses discover how to express the essence of their brands visually by teaching them design rules they can follow on their own.

Why Marketers Need to be cautious about Design on Instagram

Design is a dominant factor than many people realize. You only get 3 seconds to capture someone’s attention on Instagram before they scroll to the next thing. Your content needs to be what Kat describes as deep pretty—content that expresses the soul and energy of your business and brand.

High quality designed content makes that expression possible and stops the scroll. And because humans are wired to seek out more of the things that we think are attractive, that scroll-stop often depicts the click-through to your profile.

On your Instagram profile, the elements of your profile picture, your bio, and the first nine images at the top of your feed combine to create a presentation of what your brand is all about. The fonts, words, colors, and images all work together to express an overall brand tone that can deeply impact someone in those precious 3 seconds. If your profile is properly designed and executed, your content will resonate with and magnetically attract the target audience  to your account.

It’s similar to the same way people walking through a mall enter a store and look around to decide whether they’ll stay and shop. People choose whether to follow you on Instagram based on the design of your profile and content. They might then go on to message you, share your posts, watch your IGTV videos, and buy your products and services.

Where to Start: Revealing Your Brand’s Purpose

When someone views your profile for the first time, can they understand in 3 seconds what your business is about? What does your brand stand for?

Or do you have a mix of 20 different things that confuse people and leave them wondering why they should pay attention to you at all? For example, are you mixing personal and business posts on the same profile? While that can work for some businesses, Kat suggests qualifying the addition of personal posts by asking yourself if the post fits with and represents the company and the brand message.

You’ll present a clear message when the elements (text, bio, colors, fonts, images, etc.) of your profile quickly denote what your business does and what it believes. Again, this is what Kat calls instagram brand’s purpose and she believes every business has one.

People don’t start businesses for no reason. Most entrepreneurs are passionate about something so they started a business to help a specific group of community to do a specific thing. There’s a deep message behind what they’re doing 

If you’re having trouble discovering your brand’s purpose, pretend you’re having a cup of tea with a dear friend. You tell that friend why you started your business—why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Once you’ve defined your brand’s purpose statement, the absolute passion and energy behind what you’re doing, you can put that knowledge into action in everything you do.

One of Kat’s clients who sold mugs on which she placed designs didn’t think she had a brand purpose.. “I’m just selling mugs.” After talking with her for a while, the deeper why surfaced: She wants to take people out of their routine and give them a special, happy moment in the day via the positive designs on her mugs.

Based on that revelation of her brand’s purpose, she made several decisions for her Instagram presence. She chose modern scripts and fonts. She decided to use a lot of white in her photography, knew what kind of photography to use, and which filters would best communicate the feeling she was trying to create.

Kat notes that this exercise works whether you sell physical products or services. In fact, revealing your instagram brand purpose is easier for people who have a service-based business because they want to assist somebody and are typically aware of who that Instagram audience is.

Determining your Brands Color

When choosing the colors for your brand for instagram, take into account the psychology of color. For example, if you’re an empowerment coach for women and use primary colors such as those commonly seen in children’s books, you’re likely creating an unintentional disconnect.

The colors you choose should not only express your Instagram brand identity but also about what you think your customers will like and resonate with. You can incorporate color into your Instagram content without turning your feed into a monochromatic display.

If you are someone who shares quote images, you can incorporate color into your quote images.

Yes, you can also use clothing or props to include those colors in your visuals. One of Kat’s students loves the color yellow. Photos of her are taken against a white background but she’s always wearing something yellow or holding a yellow prop such as a plate.

Choosing Fonts

One of the key considerations when choosing fonts for Instagram target audience is readability.

For example, if you’ve got a lengthy quote image, too much script can be hard to read at once. In which case, Kat suggests pairing the script with a block font and applying the script font to only a few select words. This approach will help you create quote images that appear open and clean.

Kat recommends using only one or two fonts for everything you do for Instagram marketing. She says that the in-app Instagram Type tool can help you enhance your text with loads of cool effects.

Instagram Stories ideas has many inbuilt creative modes that let you select a colored background and add text that makes it really easy to create text graphics (quote graphics). However, that functionality doesn’t extend to creating posts for the Instagram feed.

For creating such types of images for the feed Canva can be a boon for beginners. Not only does Canva offer ready-to-use and customizable templates, it offers lots of font options to design unique, branded quote graphics. Then people will know the images are yours before they even read them; people will recognize the color, font, and design style as your  Instagram Brand Identity.

Establishing an Image Style

According to Kat it’s possible to create quality images by adding text overlays to photos, she prefers to keep things simple and pure. Post photos as photos and words as quote graphics. Using these two types of creative separately makes your feed look upright and is a treat to your viewer’s eye.

If you want to use an image of yourself with a text overlay, be sure to stand next to a very plain background. To make sure the image is readable, you may also need to add a semi-transparent layer between the photo and the text overlay. Just make sure everything you create is readable.

Kat also suggests when it comes to using filters, filter every photo just a little bit (just enough to pull the dullness out of the picture) but be very cautious against using filters that will make your image look unrealistic. Instagram content strategy does best when it’s about authenticity, trust and connections.

Tips to Upgrade your Instagram Selfie Game

Most people are self-conscious when photographing themselves. They freeze up and don’t feel confident. The answer is to get a tripod for your phone and use the timer for delayed selfie capture.

You’re on your own so it won’t matter if you look like an idiot doing whatever you’re doing. Laugh and play around, and take as many as you want—take 100 photos if you like—you only need one good one.

The more photos you take, the more relaxed you’ll be, and the easier it will be to get the kind of photos that work for you. Some people look good when they’re in serious, moody shots and others look better in fun, candid shots. Some need to look directly at the lens and others should look slightly off-camera. Experiment and see what works for you.

You’ll also want to find a really good background. Think about your brand essence and think about your colors. Choose a wall in your house or—even better—look around your neighborhood for a doorway or an old wall that has character. Whatever background you choose, you want it to be quite simple and free of clutter.

Should your photos be vertical or horizontal? It depends. Kat typically shoots in horizontal for her feed images and in vertical for her Stories images.

If you plan to use your photo with text overlay or if you simply want to post some photos that feature space to give your feed a feeling of breathing room, remember to make use of the rule of thirds. For example, if you’re by a wall, stand in the first third of the frame.

As you snap your photos, remember to put your hand on your hip or move one leg slightly forward. If that makes you nervous or you don’t know what to do with your hand, search “poses” on Pinterest. Look at all of the models and note their posture and how they’re positioning their limbs.

Finally, remember to have fun. Maybe take a friend with you—someone who makes it easy for you to smile and laugh. That genuine emotion will come across in your photos.

Consistency of high-quality Instagram content strategy

If you’re just starting out or you’re trying to level up  your Instagram presence, you need to get 9-15 feed posts up so they fill up the grid for mobile or desktop viewers. Then you can move into a regular posting schedule that works for you.

While there are some business types that can post to Instagram every day in your Instagram marketing checklist, in general, it’s recommended posting three times a week—possibly adding a video once a week.

You don’t want to just push out low-quality content simply for the sake of publishing. Your followers will feel that. It’s much better to post less often and ensure you post something high-quality.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

• Find your brand’s purpose
• Determining your brand’s color
• Choosing Fonts
• Curating and maintaining an image style
• Upgrade your Instagram Selfie Game
• Consistency of high-quality content

Learn more about Instagram Marketing

https://priyasinghi.com/instagram-marketing-4-ways-to-level-up-your-social-media-strategies/

https://priyasinghi.com/how-to-sell-on-instagram-a-instagram-stories-marketing-strategy-thats-generated-hundreds-of-thousands-in-sales-that-you-should-know/

https://priyasinghi.com/10-robust-instagram-marketing-ways/

Post credit: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/instagram-visual-design-how-to-improve-your-branding-on-instagram-kat-coroy/

Want to share your customers’ posts on Instagram? Wondering how to find and use their content without breaking Instagram’s Terms of Service?

In this article, you’ll learn how to encourage people to create user-generated content (UGC), how to find UGC, and how to legally share it.

To learn how to use user-generated content on Instagram, read the article below for an easy-to-follow walkthrough or watch this video:

Why Use User-Generated Content on Instagram?

Before diving into how to take advantage of UGC on Instagram, let’s quickly break down what it is exactly. UGC is simply content created by other people that’s about your product, service, or brand. On Instagram, you may be tagged in, @mentioned in, or sent the content created by somebody else. It’s usually your customers creating the content but it could also be potential customers or your audience in general.

So why should you use UGC? First of all, it’s content you don’t have to create. Someone else does the work and you get to add it to your content calendar. Second, UGC shows your brand from your customer’s perspective, not yours, which can be more validating and trustworthy to your audience.

How do you determine what makes good UGC content for your brand? When the content matches your brand’s tone, style, and colors, it’s a winner. And when the content highlights the benefits of your product or positive aspects of your brand, you definitely want to use it.

Two of my favorite examples of brands that use UGC on Instagram are GoPro and The Love Bomb Co. GoPro uses 100% UGC on their Instagram accounts. They don’t create a single piece of content, and yet their whole Instagram feed is cohesive, on-brand, and speaks to the power of their audience.

The Love Bomb Co. is another favorite because she only has a few products but her audience takes amazing and relevant images that showcase her products in relatable environments that make the products must-haves.

While these are highly visual brands and products, the principles are still largely the same even if you have an info product.

Now that you know why you’d want to use UGC in your Instagram marketing, here’s how to prompt your customers to create it and share it safely to your account.

#1: Encourage Your Instagram Audience to Share UGC

To get people to create UGC for you, you want to encourage them to use your branded hashtag and/or @mention you in Instagram content about your brand.

Footwear company Allbirds includes their branded hashtag #weareallbirds front and center on their Instagram bio to make it more visible to their audience.

In addition to your bio, you could include the hashtag and/or your username on receipts or packaging with a little reminder to your customers to post to Instagram and tag you.

If you have a physical location for your business, use signage or even set up selfie stations to encourage people to take photos and tag you. You can also run contests or giveaways with UGC as an entry requirement to qualify.

#2: Select the Right UGC to Share on Instagram

Once people start sharing UGC on Instagram, you may be wondering where to find it. If you use a branded hashtag, check the hashtag regularly to see what content people are creating about your brand.

If your customers @mention you, you’ll have an immediate notification that someone has created content about your brand. You may also want to use a social listening tool that will source your brand name, mentions, or hashtags across social media to find content that people are creating.

When it comes to choosing what UGC to share, be selective. Choose the right content that works for your brand and conveys the message you’re creating and edit colors or add filters if needed to match your account aesthetic. Don’t share things that aren’t aligned with your brand voice, tone, and style.

Also be wary of sharing posts with children in them, unless your brand is targeting parents of children. Many parents don’t like the idea of their children’s images being shared online publicly.

If the content includes alcohol or any other controlled substance, make sure you have confirmation that everyone in the post is over the legal age of use.

#3: Request Permission to Share UGC on Instagram

Once you’ve decided what UGC you want to share, you’ll need to get written permission before reposting it. If you don’t, you could get sued for any revenue proven to be generated by that post.

For a feed post, you can ask for permission via a comment on their post or send them a direct message (DM). Let them know that you like their post and would like to share it to your Instagram account. Then ask, “Do we have your permission to use it?” Once you have permission, you can post the content to your account but you should still @mention and/or tag the original creator.

Sharing stories is a bit of a gray area but considered safe because it retains the original content in the share so explicit permission isn’t required in the same way. However, I still encourage it.

If you’re in doubt about resharing a certain piece of content on Instagram, you can always DM the original content creator to see if it’s okay. But generally, if people are tagging you in their content, they’re open to it being shared.

#4: Share UGC to the Instagram Feed and Stories

Now let’s talk about some of the tools you can use for sharing UGC in both Instagram stories and the feed.

For the feed, there are a number of free apps for reposting. These apps snag the original post, image, and caption and allow you to post the content to your own Instagram profile. They’ll also add a watermark with the original account’s username.

Using a screen capture for sharing UGC is increasingly common and easier than most reposting tools. This is perfectly acceptable as long as you have permission and still tag the original user.

As for Instagram stories, there’s the built-in sharing feature that allows you to share stories you were tagged in directly to your own stories. If you weren’t tagged in the story, it’s not easy to simply repost that story to your own. Or you’d have to do a screen grab of the photo or video and get explicit permission from that content creator to post it since you’re not using the native in-app sharing tool.

Conclusion

Content creation is hard and can be time-consuming, especially on visual platforms like Instagram. That’s where UGC can help. Sharing content from your customers and prospects can be an amazing way to share valuable content with your audience, showcase customer stories, and connect with your audience.

What do you think? How often do you use UGC on your business’s Instagram account? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More articles on Instagram marketing:

• Learn how to navigate and use the desktop version of Instagram for your marketing activities.
• Find out how to plan, create, and optimize Instagram content for your business.
• Discover what Instagram Reels is, learn how to create a reel, and discover how to use reels for business.

Post credit: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-user-generated-content-on-instagram/

I think it’s fair to say that when designing mobile product pages for physical products, you’ll use a similar layout and include the same details, regardless of the website.

For instance, this is what product pages for Peloton bikes, Macy’s clothing and Truth Bars look like:

There are slight differences in how the information is positioned, with some product pages showing the product name, average rating and price first while others let the product image lead the way. Regardless, there isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room in terms of what you can include.

Designing digital product pages for mobile isn’t that straightforward.

While you might be able to design a clothing, equipment and food product page similarly, you can’t do the same for digital products like:

• eBooks and other documents,
• Media and other licensable files,
• Courses.

As consumers spend more time online and with their smartphones, there’s a growing need for high-quality digital products. If you’re interested in designing e-commerce websites for these kinds of products, you’ll need to understand the differences between the types and how to present them the right way to consumers with your product page design.

Different Ways To Design Digital Product Pages For Mobile

Selling digital products is a great way to generate a (mostly) passive income online. Digital product vendors don’t have to own or manage inventory, deal with shipping and returns or other challenges that come with selling physical items.

As for marketing those digital products, that’s when it may become challenging.

Here’s what you need to know when designing pages for the following types of digital products:

EBOOK PRODUCT PAGE DESIGN

With each passing year, more and more money is spent on ebooks around the globe. These are the projected global earnings for ebooks, according to data collected by Statista:

Because of this, ebooks are a great marketing venture for businesses these days. The same goes for other downloadable digital documentation, like templates, checklists, and so on.

But rather than leave it to marketplaces to take a chunk of those digital product profits, marketing and selling ebooks through one’s own site can help a business capture more revenue.

Let’s use the example of Smashing Magazine. While it can and does sell its ebooks through Amazon, it also has a dedicated “Books” section on the website. And I’m guessing that more sales come through the site than from Amazon… for a number of reasons.

For one, each ebook page is designed to align with the Smashing Magazine brand that readers know and trust:

This sense of consistency and familiarity is going to earn much more trust from long-time readers, much more so than Amazon customers who happen to stumble across it.

The rest of the product page does what it needs to do to encourage visitors to buy the ebook, even if they’re not ready to do so when they see this first CTA:

The ebook description is presented in a clear and straightforward manner. There are no distractions along the way promoting other books or ads.

And it’s not long before interested readers are presented with the chance to read a preview of the book:

This is a must any time your website sells a digital document. Not only should the ebook page spell out what lessons they’re going to learn (as this one does), but an excerpt in their preferred file format is a must.

Without a preview of what they’re buying, it’s going to be mighty difficult to make that sale.

Another element you should include on an ebook landing page is a section about the author(s).

For new visitors to your website and ebook landing page, they might be wondering, “Why the heck should I even listen to this person?” The author’s section enables you to put a face and context to the book.

There’s another section on this page that you’ll want to mirror your own ebook page after. I’d even suggest placing it higher up if your authors aren’t well-known names (yet):

A table of contents section is helpful for a number of reasons:

• A summary of each chapter enables readers to determine if it’s going to be valuable.
• A search-optimized table of contents would be just as effective as strategically using header tags in a blog post.
• It can also be used to generate structured data and display a partial table of contents in relevant online searches.

There’s one thing not included in this example that I’d urge you to include on your ebook pages if you can: Ratings or testimonials.

Just because it’s a digital product, that doesn’t mean readers don’t need social proof to take them from “Sounds interesting” to “I need to read this”. In fact, it’s a big part of what helps ebooks sell on platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

If your site only has one or two ebooks for sale, reader testimonials are fine. If your site includes a repository of eBooks, then add a rating and review system so it’s easy for anyone to leave their comments.

MEDIA PRODUCT PAGE DESIGN

As a web designer, you’re already familiar with the vast amounts of licensable content out there:

• Images,
• Videos,
• Icons,
• Music,
• Sound effects,
• Video,
• Fonts,
• Design themes or templates,
• Plugins.

Let’s be honest, if you’re looking for stock content or pre-designed components, you’re most likely going to go to a popular marketplace to buy them. The sheer quantity and diversity in offerings alone is much more appealing than having to visit independent creators’ websites to try to find what you need.

So, why are we even talking about this one, then?

There are two points I want to make:

If you’re tasked with designing a marketplace for licensable content, don’t recreate the wheel.

Use the tried and true formula that works for others. Customers don’t want to figure out a new way to find digital content from a massive repository just because you felt like getting creative.

If you’re tasked with creating digital product pages on the website of a small agency or independent creator, now that’s a different story.

I’m going to use typographer Mark Simonson’s website to demonstrate how you should approach something like this.

This is the landing page for the Mostra Nuova font:

When creators sell their digital media on marketplace websites, they have very little control over how they’re presented. Nor do they have control over what other distractions or recommendations are simultaneously presented to prospective customers.

By creating dedicated pages for each product on your website, however, you can control the look and the narrative as this page does:

You also don’t have to conform to the marketplace’s guidelines. Your branding and its products come first:

Another nice thing about selling media products on one’s own website is that there’s no reviewer to get approval from whenever you want to upload or sell a new media file. You also don’t have to wait for updates to existing ones to get pushed through.

This means there’s very little lag time in the marketing or sales cycle, which leads to greater profitability for the creator.

Before we address how to actually sell digital products like these on a website, I want to show you something that Mark Simonson includes at the bottom of his font pages. It’s an “… in Use” section:

This isn’t something you often see on creators’ websites, at least not for the digital products they sell. However, I think a section like this can really seal the deal with visitors as it gives them real examples of the media element in action.

It might not be feasible to provide customer examples for every digital product site you build. But it’s something to consider if the products are popular enough.

As for selling media on your website, you have a couple of options. You can do as the Mark Simonson Studio does and provide a long list of links to places where the font is sold:

The way this is presented is great because it gives customers the flexibility to use their preferred font marketplace and to get the font in the format they need. And if your client doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of managing product sales, this is definitely the way to go.

If your client prefers to own the sales process, set it up the way you would any other e-commerce site. Provide a “Buy” link, information on pricing and licensing, and then push them over to a secure checkout site. Oh, and if the content can easily be taken from the site without a purchase, make sure to slap a watermark on it.

COURSE PRODUCT PAGE DESIGN

Pre-recorded courses and classes from subject matter experts and influencers are very popular these days:

• Coursera has over 68 million learners.
• Udemy has 35 million learners.
• edX has more than 20 million learners.

Clearly, people are hungry for digital course content, especially when they don’t have to sit in a virtual lecture hall and can take the classes at their own pace.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with selling courses through these marketplaces since they’ve got huge numbers of learners just waiting to discover new content.

However, when creators sell digital course content through their websites, they can do a lot more with it and make more money, too. That’s because they offer more than just the opportunity to log in and press “Play”. These courses usually come with:

• Supplementary material,
• Newsletters and email reminders,
• Private communities,
• And more.

The key to selling a course this way is to design the digital product page like a sales funnel.

Let’s look at an example from the Career Contessa website. This is the page for The Job Search Academy program:

Similar to what we’ve seen before, designing your own digital product pages allows you to create a branded experience for learners. For those who know and trust this brand already, the next scroll down the page is a no-brainer:

For learners who are still on the fence, the powerful statistic just below the CTA button could be enough to convince them. If not, there’s a ton of content on the page that’s carefully been planned out to help them make up their minds.

While there is a lot of written content on this landing page, it’s well-formatted. Paragraphs are kept to a decent length on mobile while bolding is used to highlight important bits of text.

It’s not all walls of text though. Learners also see video content:

Scannable bulletpoint lists:

Nicely presented information about bonus content:

It’s obvious that a designer spent a lot of time giving each section a distinct look so it would be much easier to scan and read through.

If learners have made it this far, they’re going to reach the most critical part of the sales page. This is where they find out exactly what they’ll learn with a well-designed curriculum and lesson previews:

Just like you’d expect a sales funnel page to do, prospective learners are presented with a testimonial section as well as an FAQs next. These are two elements that you cannot do without when designing a sales funnel, for courses or otherwise. And it needs to be at the bottom of the page, just before you ask once more if they’re ready to sign up for the pricey course.

This might seem like overkill, but the approach is sound. You can sell your courses to casual learners on sites like Coursera and edX, but there’s no relationship there. They sign up for your course just as easily as the next one offered on the site.

When you design course pages on your website, however, you capture the most dedicated of learners — the ones who’ll complete the course in its entirety and want to sign up for more courses and content in the future.

Wrapping Up

What’s interesting to note about the examples above is how creators are selling their digital content both through popular marketplaces as well as their websites. As you can imagine, this is the best way to capture as much revenue from digital products as possible.

Just make sure that when you design digital product pages for your clients’ mobile sites that you don’t try to emulate what the marketplaces do. Often, their designs are crowded, distracting, and not really optimized for the smartphone user. By designing the creator’s pages to be more user-friendly, you’ll encourage more people to buy directly from them and, consequently, put more money into the pockets of your clients.

Post credit: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/09/design-digital-product-pages/

Any social media manager will tell you part of the job is learning how to deal with and adapt to the unexpected. In 2020 alone, social marketers have had to pivot from their original strategies to deal with both a pandemic and nationwide protests.

While there are still some months to go before the end of the year, it’s never too early to start thinking about how to improve your marketing strategy for 2021. And though marketers can’t predict what will happen in the new year, we can use what we’ve learned in the last nine months to improve our marketing strategy for 2021.

By looking at your social data from 2020, you can identify what types of content will resonate with their audience and areas for improvement when it comes to social customer service. You can also determine what you need in order to make a bigger business impact with your strategies. As your team starts looking to the future, here are five key stats from the 2020 Sprout Social Index that you need to keep top of mind when marketing in 2021.

1. People follow brands on social to stay up to date on new products and services

While some people follow brands for humor or inspiration, 57% of consumers are hoping to learn about new products and services from a brand’s social feed. According to the Index, this was the number one reason consumers selected for why they follow brands, meaning no release is too big or small to share on social.

After a few hiccups, including an unintentional leak, Xbox took to Twitter to share with its 14 million followers the release information for the highly anticipated Xbox Series S. In just over 24 hours, the announcement garnered over 184,000 Likes and added to the growing excitement from gamers all over the world.

In addition to product launches, consider what types of updates are most valuable to your audience when planning your social content. For brands in esports, your audience is likely looking for social posts with information on server issues and fixes. Due to the pandemic, restaurants have taken to social to share important updates on hours of operation and changes to in-dining services. As you think about the types of content you want to share in 2021, don’t forget to make space for the timely updates your audience needs.

2. Poor customer service will chase away your social followers

If social customer service wasn’t already a top priority, it needs to be on your radar headed into 2021. With 49% of consumers saying they’ll unfollow brands because of poor customer service, marketers can’t afford to ignore any questions they receive from followers online.

As you think about how to improve your marketing in 2021, take a moment to evaluate how customer inquiries are handled and where your team can best support. Look for opportunities to answer simple questions directly and leverage tools like social listening to ensure no message is left behind. Even pointing someone in the right direction goes a long way, like when the Riot Fest social media team wasn’t able to resolve a customer issue on the spot. The Chicago music festival, known for its sarcastic banter, responded with a suggestion to direct the inquiry to a different department.

Equally important is speeding up the time of your brand’s response, as 79% of consumers expect brands to respond within the first 24 hours of reaching out. Not only does a quick response time help resolve problems faster, it can also contribute towards customer loyalty. One Gartner study found customers are more likely to stick with brands long-term when their service expectations are met.

3. To find new accounts to like and follow, consumers look to the suggestions in their feed

Building your audience online is tough. Not only are you competing with your closest competitors, but you’re also fighting for the attention span of your audience and brainstorming ways to get your content noticed.

Getting more eyes on your social profiles starts with knowing how consumers search for accounts to follow online. According to the Index, 45% of consumers rely on suggestions in their feed or discovery tools to find new accounts to like. As you think about marketing in 2021, consider targeting consumers who show an interest in industries tangential to your own. For example: because of the pandemic, fans of traditional sports like basketball and football are increasingly turning to esports for entertainment. With this in mind, esports marketers can adjust their social content to speak directly to sports fans who clearly have an appetite for gaming events but may not know where to begin.

4. Images and video are a must-have for engaging social followers

Not only does the substance of your content have to be relevant to your audience, how you deliver content on social matters too. Research from the Index reveals 68% of consumers want to engage with images while 50% want to engage with video content. As you review all the content you’ve created over the past year, consider flagging text posts that received high engagement and brainstorm how you might turn those topics into visual or video content.

Posting about a new video game title release? Use a video to share clips from the gameplay and include release information at the very end. Conducting an interview? Try turning it into a video instead. The Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, turn player interviews into short, two-minute clips which they then share across all of their social platforms.

5. Time and bandwidth are still in short supply

All this talk about strategy is for naught, however, if marketers don’t have the time to actually execute their plans. With 41% of marketers saying they lack the bandwidth they need to make the greatest business impact with their strategies, now is as good a time as any to ask for tools to increase your bandwidth day-to-day.

Tools like Sprout Social can help you automate daily tasks like content scheduling and simplify workflows to ensure messages are approved by the right people quickly. This frees up time for you to focus on more important work, like surfacing key insights with that can support teams outside of marketing. As with any big investment, be prepared to justify why a social management platform is worth looking into and what opportunities it opens up for you and your team when you don’t have to worry about the more mundane tasks.

If you’re looking to simplify your workflows and get more time back in your day, get a 30-day free trial for a hands-on experience.

Look to the past to get ahead

Though none of us can predict what will transpire in the new year, we can apply what we’ve learned from 2020 towards our future strategies.

Instead of guessing what your followers like or dislike, you have access to data on consumer behaviors and preferences to help guide their planning. With a deeper understanding of your audience, you can tailor your strategies to strengthen your brand’s relationship with consumers and start 2021 off on the right foot.

Looking for more data on consumer preferences and how they interact with brands on social? Download the Sprout Social Index today for the data you need to supercharge your social strategy.

Post credit: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/stats-for-marketing-in-2021/

If you’re short on money, you may feel frustrated by the fact that you only have a limited budget available to market your ecommerce store.

However, having a limited budget can often be a gift in disguise, when it comes to marketing an ecommerce store or for any kind of marketing, for that matter.

That’s because a limited budget forces you to think creatively, ensuring that you get the most out of any money or time that you spend on your marketing.

Nevertheless, you’ll be happy to know that there are methods that can bring you success, even if you don’t have a lot of money to spend.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at how you can market an ecommerce store on a budget and get great results in the process.

You’ll learn why you don’t need to have a lot of money in order to achieve success and how you can maximize your results, so that they last a long time. We’ll also take a look at high ROI strategies that you can use, if you only have a small amount to spend.

By the end of this post, you’ll feel confident that you can market your ecommerce store, even if you’re strapped for cash.

Let’s begin!

Traffic is the key

First we need to cover something that you might have forgotten about – traffic is key.

Yes, I know that sounds obvious.  But, it’s important to look at this from a 30,000 foot view.

Your ultimate goal is drive sales.

But, when it comes to marketing on a budget, you should first think of driving traffic.

To refine your research and thinking, you first need to separate traffic from sales.

Once you think about things in terms of driving traffic and not sales, it frees you up to develop dozens of creative ideas as to how you can market your ecommerce store.

This is different from having a large budget for PPC campaigns.

If you’re running a PPC campaign, you have to think about sales right away, as each visitor costs money. Sales is your foremost goal – as traffic is already taken care of.

With low-budget marketing strategies, you need to figure out how to get attention first and later worry about optimizing for sales.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that sales is something that you should just forget about.

You should definitely do the bare minimum to ensure your ecommerce store is set up to convert, because you want sales to rack up, once you drive traffic.

But, you need traffic, if you want to optimize your store and figure out how to improve conversions.

In any case, when you think about things from an attention-capturing and traffic driving perspective, it’s easier to think outside the box, in terms of how you’re going to get people visiting your store on the cheap.

Content marketing on a budget

Content marketing, even when done on a budget, is something that can be incredibly powerful, when it comes to driving traffic.

After all, as I’ve shown in my $100,000 challenge, a blog can be used to drive a lot of sales on Amazon, if you do things the right way.

Doing content marketing on a budget isn’t that hard.  And, for the most part, budgeting just means that you’re going to have to spend a lot more time on your content marketing campaigns.

I’ve covered how you can do content marketing on a budget here.

To begin with, it helps to pick one content type, understand how to get the best results from it and then create a lot of high quality content in that one format.

Because you’re doing all of your content creation efforts on a budget, you’re likely going to be the person creating the content.

To make the best use of your time, it helps to focus your efforts.

So, decide now – are you more comfortable creating blog posts or videos?

Or, is there another type of content that you find yourself leaning towards, such as podcasts?

Once you’re sure on what type of content you’re going to create, you then have to create content that is engaging for your target audience.

When looking to create engaging content, there are two approaches that you can take.

If you want long-term content marketing success, it helps to create a catalog of evergreen, highly useful content, that covers issues that your target market cares about.

My advanced guides are an example of how this can be done. Such content will be a steady source of traffic and will build awareness, slowly but surely.

In-depth blog posts/videos/podcasts are also an example of this, provided that you provide a lot of value in a single piece of content.

Home Depot, is a great example of how this can be done, if you’re using YouTube and video as your main means of content marketing.

Their ‘How-to’ collection has racked up over 48 million views. If you take a look at these videos, you can see that they’re all in-depth views that teach people how to achieve a specific result.

Consider what market your ecommerce store serves and then go about creating useful, actionable content for that niche.

On the other hand, if you want some short-term content marketing success, then it can be a good idea to create some content that is unique, engaging and somewhat unusual.

Such content is a great way to spike awareness.

Examples might include case studies related to wild experiments that you have conducted in your business. It may also include weird, wonderful and even extreme uses of your product.

You could argue that my $100,000 challenge, in a way, is an example of this. Though such content is valuable, it is a different kind of content, when compared to my ultimate guides.

The GoPro videos of people skiing through death-defying routes could count as another example of content that can quickly raise awareness of a product.

These videos aren’t designed to educate you, they’re designed to impress you and make you aware of what the product is capable of.

Even though such pieces of content can drive traffic for years to come, they’ll often produce a large spike of traffic to begin with.

It’s hard to say how you can create this kind of ‘short term content’ for your ecommerce store, specifically.

You’ll need to take a step back, to think about how you can be unique and interesting enough to draw attention.

Another kind of content marketing that you might also want to take a look at is ‘User Generated’ content.

If you already have some fans of your product, reach out to them and see if they’d be willing to create a video that will show them using your product and highlighting the benefits.

Again, GoPro is a master of this strategy.

If you visit their YouTube channel, you’ll see hundreds of videos that show people using their GoPros.

In fact, it’s estimated that there are 6,000 GoPro tagged videos uploaded to YouTube every day.

When doing any form of content marketing, it is also important that you master promotion.

Because you’re on a budget, you can’t use PPC advertising to drive traffic.

The topic of content promotion is a massive blog post, in and of itself. If you want tips on how to promote content effectively, you can read this guide.

In any case, one of the best ways to promote content on a budget is by emailing people who’ve shared content similar to yours in the past.

This will take a lot of time, but it can be a good way to get your content shared by people who have audiences similar to yours.

Build a community first

Another way that you can market your store on a budget is by placing a focus on building a community around your brand.

If you take the time to build a community of people, perhaps using a Facebook Group, over time, you’ll have easy access to a group of people who represent your target audience.

It’s worth noting that building a community is often easier when you combine community building with content marketing.

For example, you can use content to promote a Facebook Group.

You can then also keep people engaged in the Facebook Group, with the help of content marketing.

You could host live webinars, or ‘Facebook Live’ videos, to provide some kind of value for your audience.

You’re free to provide these videos as recordings, later on down the line.

For example, if I were in the business of selling bicycles, I might host some Facebook Live videos or webinar sessions, where I go through how to repair a bike or how to train for a bike event. I might even bring on some guests.

You can also provide value to this community, by making it a place where people can get quick answers to any questions that they might have.

Building a community doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.

As I mentioned above, content marketing can be done sufficiently on a budget. You only have to be willing to put in the time. The same goes for community building.

When done properly, influencer marketing can create disproportionately positive results, when compared to other marketing methods.

Note: Yes, it is going to cost money, in order to approach influencers. However, if done correctly, you’ll be able to get amazing results, even from a small spend.

Plus, it’s worth spending money on influencer marketing, because this form of marketing can also facilitate most other forms of marketing.

These may include word of mouth and brand-related searches, which also help to generate sales. This widespread effect is somewhat harder to replicate, when using the same budget on PPC advertising.

In any case, what’s the general concept of influencer marketing?

Your goal is to find people who share similar audiences to you.  Then, get them talking about your product.

There are multiple ways that you can get influencers to promote your offering.

But, to begin with, you need to find some influencers.

There are three types of influencers that you’ll want to get the attention of:

• Bloggers
• YouTubers
• Instagram Users.

Finding bloggers is relatively easy, as you can simply type in a keyword that relates to your niche and then type in ‘blog,’ next to it.

So, for my example of cycling, I just use ‘cycling blog.’

In some cases, you can pull up a list of the top blogs in your niche, by typing in ‘top 50,’ next to your keyword.

Here’s an example of how that would work, when trying to find a cycling blog.

The process for finding YouTube influencers is very similar.

Just head over to YouTube and find people who are covering a topic related to your ecommerce store.

For my cycling business example, I would just go to YouTube and search for videos related to cycling.

Note:  When it comes to finding YouTube influencers, it helps to think in terms of audiences, rather than niches.

For example, if I’m in the business of selling bikes, I don’t just approach people who review bikes or create videos around repairing bikes.

I also approach people who create videos that revolve around fitness. Or, I could approach YouTube channels dedicated to traveling, using only a bike.

When searching YouTube for content related to a certain niche, it can be a good idea to combine the word ‘Vlog’ with the keyword that relates to your niche.

Vlogs is a word that’s used to describe ‘video blogs.’

When you look for such content, you’ll often come across channels where there is typically a good connection between the audience and the host of the show.

Here’s what comes up, when I type ‘cycling vlog.’

Note: What you’re looking for here is a YouTube channel that has a lot of engagement.

The YouTube channel with the most engagement is almost always going to provide better results than the YouTube channel that just has a lot of views, but little engagement.

High engagement channels are likely to have viewers who trust the host of the show more and, therefore, will be more receptive to products mentioned in the video.

A lot of the time, you can approximate the engagement levels for a YouTube video, by taking a look at its ‘Video statistics.’

You can find this information by clicking on ‘More’ and then ‘Statistics.’

If you notice that the video is driving a lot of Subscriptions and Shares, it’s often a sign that engagement is high.

Comments and ratings are, of course, other signs that engagement is high – especially if the majority of them are positive.

If you want to find Instagram influencers, the process is a little more tricky.

If you’re happy to trawl through a large list of Instagram accounts, then you can search for them using Google.

Use the search string ‘“inurl:Instagram.com “Your Keyword”.’

Here’s what came up, when I used that search string to find cycling related Instagram accounts.

If you want to make it easier to find accounts that are probably open to deals, add ‘enquiries’ to your search string.

You then need to go through these accounts and see if they’re a suitable match.  Do they have the right kind of audience?  Are they large enough to produce results?

This is something that you’ll need to test, but try to find accounts with a follower count above 40,000, for now.

Note: When it comes to obtaining the contact information of an influencer, you can use a tool like Mechanical Turk to help you.

If you want to make the process of finding Instagram influencers more ‘foolproof,’ then you can use a platform, such as Whalar.

Using this platform, the process of finding an influencer that can generate results will be easier – but it could also be more expensive.

So…What do you do, once you find influencers that look like a good match?

Well, you have a number of options.

Note: Different influencers are going to have different rules, in terms of what they will allow. You should respect these rules, as they often help you out more than you realize.

If it looks like the influencer is making too much of an effort to commercialize their platform, engagement levels can often drop, which means less traffic and sales for you.

In any case, one approach is to sponsor a show/blog/Instagram account.

If you’re sponsoring a YouTube show, you can have the influencer add a small segment about you at the start and end of their show.

For a blog post, the influencer may be willing to put a mention at the start and end of their content, for the sponsorship period.

For an Instagram account, you might just ask that they put a link in their bio and occasionally post pictures, announcing your sponsorship.

You can sweeten the deal for an influencer, by providing a coupon code that they can give to their audience.

You might want to arrange an affiliate deal with the host, so that they get money on the back end, in relation to how many coupon codes were used– making it a better deal for both parties.

You also could provide the influencer with a giveaway that their fan base can take advantage of.

To increase the odds of ‘virality,’ you could mention that the person who shares the most, gets the most entries into the giveaway.

You can do this, using a tool known as Gleam.

And, you could just email the influencer and ask them to review your product, in a non-pushy way.

Here’s an example of how that can be done.

When you do this, make sure that you highlight why your product is a good match for their audience.

The influencers that you’re targeting are probably getting bombarded by messages, a lot of the time. You can separate yourself from the pack, by being respectful and writing out individual emails for each influencer.

Conclusion

Marketing an ecommerce store while on a budget, is definitely a challenging task.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

If you think creatively, your results, while on a budget, can often be better than if you have a lot of money to spend.

Because you’re on a budget, it helps to separate traffic from sales.

When you take a step back and realize that your goal is to capture attention, you’re free to think  about where and how your audience is spending their time and how you can creatively get them to discover your store.

Of course, when your spending limit is so small, you need to be prepared to put in a lot of legwork, so that whatever you do try works out for the best.

In any case, think about how you can use what you’ve learned to help your ecommerce store reach new heights.

Post Credit: https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-market-an-ecommerce-store-on-a-budget/

The percentage of total retail sales attributed to ecommerce has been growing with each passing quarter for years. That healthy market is good news, but on the down side it points to increasing competition. For each individual ecommerce business, it can be harder (and more expensive!) to attract the right customers.

Via the US Department of Commerce.

But there are plenty of levers to pull so you can get more out of your ecommerce digital marketing campaigns. And now is the time to get started, with the busy holiday season just around the corner.

Here are six simple and effective ways to start driving more online sales across your ecommerce funnel.

1. Reach in-market shoppers with Google Shopping ads …

Google Shopping campaigns are a no-brainer for any ecommerce company. With a Shopping campaign, you can prominently advertise your products at the top of the Google search results at the exact moment people are looking to buy the kinds of products you sell. Your Shopping ads can include product images, price points, ratings, offers, and other key info that makes it easy for customers to “add to cart.”

Once you’ve uploaded a product data feed—a master spreadsheet that describes key attributes of your products—to Google Merchant Center and connected your Merchant Center account to your Google Ads account, Google will automatically generate ads for your products whenever a user searches a relevant query.

To learn more, you can check out our guide to Google Shopping campaign structures as well as our guide to product data feeds. In the meantime, all you need to know is that launching a Google Shopping campaign is a fantastic way to drive a lot of relevant traffic to your site—fast.

2. … and remarket to them with display ads!

According to our Google Shopping benchmarks report, the average Google Shopping conversion rate is a little under 2%. In other words, about 2% of all clicks on Google Shopping ads convert into purchases. Does that mean Shopping campaigns are a waste of time? Nope. Even if it doesn’t immediately lead to a sale, a click represents a valuable interaction between your business and your prospect.

Here’s what the 2% conversion rate does mean: You might have to do some additional work if you want to bring those shoppers back to your ecommerce site. That’s where remarketing comes in.

Remarketing increases your ecommerce conversion rate because it reels on-the-fence shoppers back in. You can remind them about that pair of shoes they were eyeing last week. Maybe now they’re ready to buy!

You can even use remarketing campaigns to target people who found you through Google the next time they’re on Facebook! For more help with ecommerce remarketing, check out these remarketing tips plus display ad design tips from our awesome in-house designer, Kate Lindsay.

3. Turn likes into sales with Shopping on Instagram

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that search marketing is for driving sales and social marketing is for building brand awareness. Though search (including Google Shopping) is certainly a good way to convert low-funnel prospects, and though social is most definitely a good way to reach new audiences, this absolute distinction between the two channels is becoming less and less valid every year.

Why? Three words: Shopping on Instagram.

Once you’ve set up a business profile on Instagram and uploaded a product catalog to Facebook (Instagram’s parent company), you’re eligible to tag your products in your organic feed and Stories posts. All of a sudden, the users who see your organic content no longer need to navigate to your website if they want to make a purchase; instead, they can simply click on the product they’re interested in and follow the link to the corresponding page on your website.

Basically, what makes social shopping such a strong ecommerce marketing tactic is the elimination of friction. By enabling your followers to effortlessly make purchases, Instagram has effectively brought the power of search to social media.

For more ecommerce help in the social media realm, check out 4 Facebook Ecommerce Tips to Boost Sales.

4. Instill trust with customer reviews

So—you’ve started using Shopping on Instagram. Things are going well in the sense that it’s driving a substantial amount of traffic to your product pages, but things are also going poorly in the sense that those pageviews aren’t converting into sales at a terribly high rate. Is there an ecommerce marketing tactic you can use to boost your conversion rate?

Yup: customer reviews. Limited discretionary income makes consumers cautious about spending their money, and few things are more reassuring (read: persuasive) than a glowing review from someone who’s already bought one or more of your products. Throwing ratings and reviews on your product pages is a time-tested, straightforward way to turn more site visitors into customers.

5. Up your cross-selling game with pop-ups

Another way to boost your ecommerce digital marketing strategy is with pop-ups: the windows that temporarily take over site visitors’ screens to present them with additional offers. You can use pop-ups to entice a prospective shopper with a discount offer or to add another product to his or her shopping cart.

I know, I know. Pop-ups have a bad reputation—but there’s a reason they’re so pervasive. They work! Especially when used to present people with legitimately relevant offers—a limited-time discount, a BOGO sale. Use them correctly and they can drive a ton of additional revenue for your business.

6. Win new customers with referral marketing

One last ecommerce marketing tip: Use the power of referral marketing to turn the enthusiasm of your most loyal customers into a steady stream of new business.

For those who may not know, referral marketing is the practice of incentivizing your customers to tell others about how much they love your business. The idea, of course, is that your prospects are far more likely to trust their friends and family than they are to trust your advertisements. Tactically, it’s pretty similar to curating customer testimonials; the key difference is that it’s more direct. Generally, your prospects trust their loved ones more than they trust random people on the internet.

Here’s a real-world example to get the wheels turning. Before their official launch, women’s athleisure wear company Girlfriend Collective decided to give away free pairs of their high-end, eco-friendly leggings. Because this offer was so irresistible—and because it only lasted for a short period of time—Girlfriend Collective generated a ton of buzz within their target market. All of a sudden, everyone and their mother wanted a pair of their leggings—and they hadn’t even officially launched the company yet! You better believe that plenty of these initial customers came back for more once Girlfriend Collective started charging for their products.

Critical Pass—an exam preparation company that sells flashcards to help law school students get ready for the bar—provides another great example of the power of referral marketing. To incentivize their happy customers to spread the word to their friends, Critical Pass offered $10 to anyone who passed along a referral link that ended up generating a sale. Because the price of their flashcard set is well above $10, this tactic proved extremely profitable for the company!

Get your ecommerce marketing strategy off the ground!

No ecommerce business can succeed in an increasingly crowded landscape without a thoughtful, full-funnel marketing strategy. If you want to keep the sales coming, you’ve got to start brainstorming now. With a handful of tactics to try at each stage of the marketing funnel, you’ll be in great shape. Get to it!

Post Credit: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/09/05/ecommerce-digital-marketing

There’s a well-known moral exemplified in the tortoise and the hare fable – “slow and steady wins the race.” The same is true in ecommerce marketing.

Customers aren’t always easy to engage — the average cart abandonment rate is 69.2%. It takes persistence and a variety of marketing strategies to reach your audience and increase sales. The alternative of slamming customers with aggressive marketing at once overwhelms buyers or, even worse, irritates them. Instead, effective marketing boils down to reaching audiences repeatedly over time to build familiarity and eventually encourage purchases.

Any merchant can promote their store without an expensive agency. The 10 marketing techniques in this article are easy to do yourself on any budget, regardless of whether you’re a small or large business.

Sellers who implement these tactics will have a diverse marketing strategy— one that enables long-term connections with returning customers and offers opportunities to engage and attract new buyers.

1) Spread the word on social media

Social media marketing is all about consistency — posting regularly at times that fit with your customers’ schedules allows you to frequently reach and engage buyers.

Don’t spread yourself thin by using all social media platforms. Instead, focus on the channels that their buyers are actually using. You can track which platforms their buyers are using the most with data-driven tools, like Google Analytics.

Pick your customers’ favorite social media platforms, and share industry-related news and trends to keep your accounts informative and useful to buyers.

The tea shop Harney & Sons used their Facebook account to share an upcoming industry event.

You should also share links to your website and products, but don’t overload customers with direct ads. Too much self-promotion makes your social media account less valuable and helpful to buyers. A recommended ratio is 80/20 – 80% topical industry news and 20% plugging your site and products.

You can post regularly on social media without needing to constantly monitor your accounts by using a social media management platform, like Buffer. This software allows you to schedule posts ahead of time and track your posts’ performance from one central hub.

2) Utilize PPC advertising

PPC stands for pay-per-click, a type of marketing where companies pay for every click that their ad receives. PPC advertising enables you to measure whether campaigns are cost-effective by comparing the ad costs to the amount of traffic and sales generated by the ad.

The most common type of PPC is search engine advertising, with Google AdWords being the most popular PPC software. AdWords enables you to create ads that appear on Google’s search engine and place your ads through an auction process. You bid on a keyword, and ads are chosen based on bid amounts and the ad’s quality score. Link your Analytics and AdWords accounts to measure customers’ activity after they click on a Google ad. This post by AdEspresso explains how to do just that.

Social media advertising also utilizes PPC models. Ads will appear on a user’s feed or timeline, depending on the platform, and you pay by CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Snapchat are all examples of social media channels that utilize this paid advertising model.

With PPC, you have to commit to testing and improving your campaigns on an on-going basis. When you regularly check these paid campaigns, you ensure that your click money is being spent wisely to generate greater traffic and sales.

3) Form strategic partnerships

Generate buzz around your store by networking with major players in your industry. Contact blogs to see if they’d be happy to review your products or website in a post. By having your website featured in a post on a popular site, you can drive thousands of targeted visitors to your ecommerce site.

You should also reach out to and connect with social media influencers in their industry who can post and share content about your store. Once you’ve identified social media accounts that have large amounts of followers and are affiliated with your industry, begin engaging with them on a regular basis:

• Like their Facebook profiles and Pages.
• Retweet, like, or reply to major influencers’ tweets, especially if they are about your store. Comment and thank influencers who retweet your posts.

• Search the people who use your hashtags on Instagram to see if any major influencers have used these keywords, and follow any influencers you find.

Interacting and connecting with major players in your industry frequently builds awareness around your brand and products so they can help spread the word about your store. If you aren’t sure where to start your networking, try marketing software, like Group High. It connects users with bloggers and influencers and reports on the performance of your shared content.

4) Launch podcast ads

Marketing doesn’t always need to be visual. Podcast ads are a great way to reach your targeted audiences since shows are typically geared towards specific groups. Many online stores, such as Dollar Shave Club and Blue Apron, have used podcast ads to reach and engage buyers.

Reach out to podcasts related to your industry to discuss fees and explain your brand’s value. Their messaging about your online store will benefit from a solid understanding of why your products are useful and worth buying. If you’re unfamiliar with podcasts, check out Midroll, a network that pairs companies and brands with podcasts for advertising.

Consider the content of your message when picking your podcast time ad placement. A shorter pre-roll or post-roll spot at the beginning or end of a podcast is ideal if your ad only requires a few lines. For a more lengthy message, opt for a longer mid-roll ad in the middle of the podcasts when listeners are more engaged and settled in. Mid-roll ads usually cost slightly more than pre- or post-roll ads.

5) Go multichannel to attract more buyers

Expand the reach of your brand by selling on multiple channels, like Amazon, eBay, or even niche venues like Etsy. Our research indicates that merchants who sell on 3 or more channels sell 144% more.

Because marketplaces tend to gain higher amounts of traffic than a single online store, selling on multiple venues increases the visibility of your online store and brand. Each channel has a unique set of site visitors who may not have otherwise have encountered your online store. You can reach these potential buyers by spreading your products and brand across multiple channels.

After exposing these customers to your products through marketplaces, these buyers are set up to develop brand loyalty and explore your products more on your online store.

Going multichannel does present a logistical issue — how do you spread out your inventory efficiently to avoid overselling and delivery issues? You can easily solve inventory management issues with the assistance of a program, like Sellbrite. Our software serves as a central spot for controlling your listings and shipping across all channels so you can fulfill orders from a single interface.

6) Have an SEO strategy

The disadvantage of selling from an online store is having less traffic than major marketplaces, like Amazon and eBay. You have to optimize your online store to receive more visits by incorporating SEO keywords into your product listing titles and descriptions. You can drive more traffic and boost sales to your online store by including frequently-searched terms and phrases into your site.

Identify SEO keywords by using an outside tool, such as Ahrefs, Amazon, or Google. Check out this guide for using these tools to select keywords.

Once optimal keywords are identified and included in product descriptions and titles, you can measure the success of your SEO strategy with Google Analytics. With this tool, you can view the Channels report of the Acquisition section to see which organic search keywords are leading to increased traffic and greater sales.

7) Create a blog

You don’t need to be a crafter or foodie to engage in content marketing. Companies across all industries have launched blogs to provide their buyers with valuable content and build trust in their brand. Promotion via blogging is ongoing as content can be posted and shared on social media and drive traffic through search engines.

Not sure what to write about? Gather the questions buyers frequently ask your customer service team. Generate posts that provide answers to these issues so that buyers can continually return to them when they face future problems.

When brainstorming article ideas, also consider the lifestyle of your typical buyers. How do they engage with your product on a day-to-day basis? Write an article that offers tips or a tutorial about how they can integrate your items into their life in different, useful ways that they haven’t considered. For example, the plant-based protein powder company Vega posted a blog on 10 protein snacks for their health-conscious customers.

Adding visualizations, like charts and videos, to your blog is an easy way to make your content clearer and more exciting for your audiences. Consider using diagramming software, like Gliffy, to create flow charts, Venn diagrams, and other visualizations.

Posting blog articles regularly and promoting the content on social media enables you to generate buzz around your product, drive traffic to your online store, and boost sales.

8) Use email promotions

Email marketing is an easy way to target buyers with promotions that are catered to their specific needs. Customers are mainly interested in how your product can benefit them, so they are more likely to engage with discounts and offers that serve their wants.

For example, store visitors who viewed products but never made a purchase would benefit from an email discount for first-time buyers.

Loyal, returning customers can’t use a first-time buyer offer but might enjoy an email reminder about your store’s large semi-annual sale, since they’re already a fan of your brand.

Buyers’ emails are often collected on online stores through pop-up promotion windows (“send your email for a 20% discount”) or at checkout when buyers are asked if they’d like to receive email promotions. Segment collected emails by purchasing activity, location, and any other relevant messaging that informs email promotion content. You can also utilize tools like Campaign Monitor to track buyers’ interactions with emails and determine which campaigns led to increased store traffic.

9) Encourage product reviews

Reviews are a critical way of building trust around your online store and products. Online buyers can’t see merchants or their items in-person, so they make purchasing decisions through the phenomenon of social proof — determining what is correct behavior by looking to others. Store visitors read the product reviews of past customers and use the feedback to decide whether they should buy your product.

Product reviews sway customers when:

• there are plenty of them
• they are mainly positive (4 to 5 stars, on average)

Encourage customers to leave more reviews by encouraging feedback in an email. A few days after the buyer receives the item, send an email to politely request feedback on their shopping experience. You can even incentivize reviews by offering a discount or entry into a contest in exchange for feedback.

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You can also use tools like Yotpo that help businesses collect more reviews from buyers.

Encourage positive feedback by constantly reading your buyers’ reviews and resolving any issues that customers mention in their feedback. Once you resolve buyers’ problems, you can ask the buyer to comment underneath their review to indicate that the problem was resolved. If your store is enabled for feedback removal, you can also request to remove the review. Removing or editing negative reviews will show future store visitors that you care about your customers’ happiness with your products and build trust to encourage purchases.

10) Retarget your ads

How do you win back the store visitor who doesn’t make a purchase? Retargeting is the answer. This method places a cookie from your site on visitors’ computers. When they go to another site later, the cookie enables ads to show up for your products. The appearance of your ads on other sites keeps your products visible and accessible to buyers who need that extra push to make a purchase.

Ad retargeting is most effective when it is geared towards specific customer wants. For example, a retargeted ad might show the product that an individual customer was looking at, rather than show a general picture of the brand. Retargeted ads also perform well when they include a promotion and have a clear call-to-action.

Use a retargeting platform, like AdRoll, to place cookies in store visitors’ browsers, show ads on other sites that they go to, and track the performance of their campaigns. You can also use retargeting tools that are included in paid advertising services. For example, Google AdWords users can set up remarketing campaigns through the AdWords software.

Slow and steady wins the race

With ecommerce growing and competition amongst sellers peaking, putting effort into your online store marketing is more important than ever. With that said, implementing this guide’s strategies takes time. The tactics cover different channels that all need to be routinely checked, and results won’t come instantaneously.

However, spreading your effort over different strategies is the key to long-term marketing. Using a diverse set of tactics increases your chances of marketing success — if one fails, you have other strategies to rely on as you improve your efforts in other venues. Being willing to use multiple tactics and improve your methods as needed enables you as a seller to reach more buyers and drive more sales through your campaigns.