The online retail landscape is becoming an increasingly crowded space. Consumers have a multitude of choices, and with these come a multitude of marketing messages. So what can you do right now to make sure your message stands out in this sea of noise?
Well, first of all you need to ensure you understand exactly who you are trying to connect with and how they should be reached. Consumers today don’t follow the traditional purchase routes that retailers have become accustomed to – hence why older marketing methods like print, TV and radio ads are becoming less and less effective.
We live in a world where consumers are more empowered than ever before; a 24/7, always-on digital environment that has raised expectations and forces retailers to work much harder as they strive to get noticed. Now I’m an old school marketer. I studied and learnt my trade in the early 1980’s when the aim was to shout as loud as possible to as many people as you could. Today – regardless of who you are, or who you are selling to – your customers are increasingly going digital. They’re also getting very smart at using technology to choose who they want to engage with, and filtering out those they don’t.
The adoption of social media marketing has changed the game entirely. Pushing reams of sales messages by email, print, TV and radio is failing to engage with the current consumer audience because they want precisely that – engagement!
And this is why social media can provide huge success for those retailers who take the time to get it right. Twitter recently conducted a survey which reported that 72% of people who follow your business are highly likely to purchase from you in the future. More interestingly, 61% of followers choose to follow businesses for the opportunity to interact with that company. The beauty of social media is that it creates a two way dialogue between businesses and their customers. It allows your consumers to have their voice heard.
As scary as it sounds, the best advice I can give is to forget what you learnt about marketing for a pre-digital era. The companies that attract our attention today are not the ones that shout the loudest, have the biggest budgets and the glitziest TV adverts. They definitely aren’t the ones that interrupt our daily lives with irrelevant messages and offers.
Now we pay attention to the companies with great content, the ones that have a conversation with us, the ones who are willing to listen. And all this is welcome news because it levels the playing field. Marketing effectiveness is no longer dependent on how much money you have to throw at it. Anyone with a story can command an audience, and if you tell it well then your followers will be willing to share it with their online community.
To get social right you need to tap into your followers interests. No one on Twitter is going to pay attention and actively seek to engage with the company who only posts discount offers 20+ times a day. But they would be willing to retweet and share a link to a brand video that asks for their fans input, or a piece of really fantastic content that isn’t just a straight-up sales pitch.
Video is a great tool to help brands increase their online visibility. From a search perspective, Forrester Research have reported that brands with video content are 50 times more likely to appear to on the first page of Google than those without. From a marketing perspective, video helps to put a face to a faceless business. Ecommerce, by its very nature, can be quite impersonal. But videos can help demonstrate brand personality, and are far more sharable than any other type of content. Over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter every minute, demonstrating the incredible reach video content can have when combined with social platforms.
If you are considering video content ideas, try to build episodic content as this will sustain long-term interest in your brand and encourage consumers to return. Whilst viral videos have a huge initial impact and are a big boost to brand awareness, they do very little to generate brand loyalty. Episodic content will build a genuine relationship between your brand and your consumers, encouraging them to return to catch the next instalment and to become subscribers to your channel/series.
As more and more retailers are forced to drop their prices in order to compete, some are searching for alternative and sustainable ways to differentiate themselves. Any online retailer can take advantage of social media and video to improve their brand presence and, most importantly, build a loyal brand following that will continue to purchase from you in the future.
