Four-step Guide to Get Better Results From Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015
10 min read
10 min read
Like all branches of academics and business applications, digital marketing aims at searching better practices to work on various popular platforms. With the evolution of marketing practices and technological advancements in search engine algorithms, professionals can no longer rely on age old practices.
The consumer preferences are changing, people have chosen The internet over other alternatives such as Television. In fact, a market study by Marketing Charts reveals that between 2011 to 2014, there has been a remarkable decline in TV viewership.
As per Pew survey in 2014, "87% of people between 18-29 use Facebook, 37% use Twitter and 53% use Instagram".
Whether it’s discovering techniques to increase fuel efficiency or finding the impact of carcinogens on metabolic functioning of a rodent, every discovery begins with a query. Understanding how search engines work and how they affect your website ranking is not a one-day job. How do we create value in our practices to render a long-lasting impression on the industry? Simple. By experimenting and looking for opportunities where innovation can fit in. Before conceptualizing your strategy, you will need to understand these four basic components.
Asserting a Hypothesis
Narrow down your queries to some specific areas. You may want to raise your website's SERP, so perhaps you will need to experiment with link-building and see how it affects your web analytics. So stick to it, instead of having a broader and ambiguous query such as how to write a good content for your blog. Having a definite and ordered inquiry will help you define your objectives in a better and clearer way.
Sort Down The Affecting Parameters
What are the factors that may influence your website's ranking? The nature of the content, website's design layout, page loading efficiency, SEO techniques, etc. in general impacts your website's quality. Note them down so that you know what variables you are dealing with during the experimentation.
An effective way of understanding how a particular factor affects your website's worth is by altering it while keeping the rest factors constant. For example, you may change your SEO techniques (without touching any other factor at all) to see if that improves your web page's ranking.
Focussing on Strategy(and not merely on tools)
Technology is and has always been a great help to mankind, regardless of what purpose he intends to use it for. Having a ultra-modern technology may profit your website, more so when the audience is getting younger and more tech-savvy day by day. But despite all that, technology cannot overtake the value of an intelligent strategy. Focus on bringing about innovation and uniqueness in your approach.
Integrate Your Strategies With Your Consumer-Base
Every standard website has its active presence on social media sites, especially on Twitter and Facebook. You should have a strategy that caters to your audience base, and that helps the most in reinforcing your brand value. Are your customers very professional?
Then you should chalk out a marketing plan that works the best on LinkedIn. Or are your customers young teenagers? Look for an exciting plan-of-action that can be effectively executed on Facebook and Youtube. The idea is to focus on your audience's needs and behaviors.
Why Not Experiment with New Things And Control The Results?
Most of the marketing professionals refrain from experimenting. Maybe it is because people don't want to take risks or just don't have enough time to try new things. But then, are we not restricting ourselves from the wide open opportunities and advantages that experimentations can provide?
In a very dynamic market situation such as digital media, new approaches are the must-have things for survival. New media channels, unique methods of expressing and exchanging information, there is a whole lot of undiscovered America that we need to find. Having a successful experiment will not just help your website or company, but also will foster in you the zeal to use the technology with an upper hand. Attaining this will take your ROI to new quantum leaps.
How SEO Reselling And Partnership Trends Are Benefiting The Internet Marketing Industry
SEO reseller programs are synonymous to affordability. A lot of digital marketing are complaining that local businesses just don’t have XX,XXX budget to invest into digital marketing. The upside of serving local and small businesses is that there are a ton of them out there. The benefits of SEO reselling are not limited to only the client side but also to the agency, SEO reselling can be highly profitable. It can be as soaring as 500-1000% markups when delivering the final product to end-client. For the marketing agencies the benefits do not end, here is the list: Helps Building Stronger Relationships With Your Existing Clients SEO reselling provides an avenue to the internet marketing agencies to further leverage your existing clientele without increasing your workload. Most reseller programs do not require much work on the reseller’s end. All that is required is a little bit of information to set up a white label platform. A stronger relationship always solidifies your customer’s brand loyalty. After all, by offering SEO services, you showed you’re looking for and identified a problem your customers are most likely facing. That was not enough, you took steps and proposed some helpful action and a relevant solution to your customer’s needs. SEO Reseller Programs Help The Marketing Agency Earn Extra Revenue Headline get your attention? What business owners d not want to see some extra profit coming into their balance sheet. It’s one of those services that a client is inherently going to need whether your company offers them or not. SEO reseller programs are an upcoming hot trends such that people all over the internet are searching for it. If SEO reseller wa not an option, then it was fully understandable not wanting to deal with the whole SEO side of web development and Search marketing. That’s not it. You also run the risk of outright losing your clients when they go look for SEO somewhere else. What most of the popular SEO agencies do is that they provide one-stop-shop solution to their clients that includes web designing. If you do not want your customers to start being a little shaky about their loyalty, then you have to be the same guy that offers a package of services in one convenient package. Agencies Are Able To Offer Additional Options To Cash-strapped Customers Maybe your agency is already offering a fully-fledged marketing program, including service package of SEO, SMM, content marketing and web design. We all know that often lofty SEO cost could become pretty exclusive. But there’s a whole general lot of businesses which can’t afford these premium services. They’re motivated and eager to spend their money on a top-tier solution, but just can’t quite budget it yet. If you care at all about these businesses, which by the way are many in number, you’ll definitely want them to avoid low-quality SEO services If your company is in the business of providing web design solutions and want to try offering them an alternative fully-fledged SEO solutions, certain SEO resellers have concentrated their programs that provide affordable and high-quality SEO services. This allows agencies to earn some additional revenue from customers that previously might have been turned away at the door due to a slightly lower price-point than what you normally cater to. Conclusion As it is clearly evident, there are a number of benefits to adding an SEO reseller program to your service needs, and it’s no surprise that these programs are now springing up all over the world lately. It’s a win-win situation for both the client and the marketing agency that offers it. Clients are happy because such services are drivers of new business opportunities through their doors. And, the Internet Marketing agency is happy it offers competitive pay, flexible pricing markups, and zero complicated fine print. ...
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8 Powerful eCommerce Marketing Automation Strategies and Top Tools for 2024
As marketing professionals, we understand that you are always looking for ways to keep your company ahead of the game and on top of industry trends. If you are an eCommerce brand, you know how important it is to remain relevant, acquire new customers, and retain existing ones. But have you tried marketing automation software yet? Automation plays a significant role in eCommerce marketing. It saves time on repetitive tasks, helps your team work more efficiently, and ensures you get the most out of your marketing budget. In this blog, we'll cover 8 eCommerce marketing automation strategies and introduce you to the top 6 marketing automation tools for eCommerce marketing to give you a hand. What is eCommerce marketing automation? eCommerce marketing automation means using software to handle regular marketing tasks automatically. This helps online stores work more smoothly and grow. eCommerce marketing involves a lot of hands-on work, such as getting leads, talking to potential buyers, sending emails, making sales, and keeping track of customers. Manually performing these tasks takes a lot of time, can lead to mistakes, and keeps your team from doing more important work, which can make things less efficient and productive. Also, if someone visits your online store and finds it boring or hard to use, they might leave without buying anything. To address this, leveraging marketing automation services can enhance user experience, streamline interactions, and increase the likelihood of conversion. Research shows that almost 45% of US online adults will stop their purchase if they can't get quick answers to their questions. So, using software to handle your marketing and sales can help you make more sales by making it easier for customers to buy. Benefits of eCommerce marketing automation A good marketing automation system can improve sales, eliminate unnecessary steps, and increase returns on investment. A study by Marketo found that using marketing automation could boost lead generation by 80% and lower the cost per lead by 33%. Below are some of the advantages of automating your online marketing tasks. Time and resource optimization: Automation reduces the need for manual, repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on strategic initiatives. Improved customer experience: Deliver timely, relevant messages to your audience across multiple channels, enhancing engagement and satisfaction. Increased conversions and sales: Targeted and relevant campaigns can increase the conversion rate and average order value by a large margin. Provide accurate and detailed insights: Automation tools help marketers understand customer behavior and assess campaigns efficiently, bypassing manual tracking. Globally, 60% of companies use these tools for cost-efficient processes, allowing marketers to identify performance gaps through visual reports and make data-driven predictions for improvement. 8 Proven eCommerce marketing automation strategies 1. Personalized email onboarding journeys First impressions matter, especially in eCommerce. A well-crafted email onboarding sequence can turn new subscribers into loyal customers. Here's how to automate this process effectively: Segment new subscribers based on their signup source, interests, or initial browsing behavior. Create a series of welcome emails tailored to each segment, introducing your brand, products, and unique selling propositions. Use dynamic content to personalize product recommendations based on the subscriber's preferences or browsing history. Incorporate educational content, such as how-to guides or product care tips, to provide value beyond sales pitches. Gradually introduce promotions or special offers to encourage the first purchase. 2. Cart abandonment reminders Cart abandonment is a significant issue in the eCommerce industry, with an average rate of 70% . Automated cart recovery campaigns can help recapture these potential sales: Set up triggers to identify abandoned carts and initiate a recovery sequence. Create a series of reminder emails, starting with a gentle nudge and potentially escalating to a special offer. Experiment with different channels like email, SMS, or web push notifications to determine which works best for your audience. Use dynamic content to display the abandoned items and make it easy for customers to complete their purchases. A/B tests different message styles, timings, and incentives to optimize your recovery rate. 3. Automated price drop and inventory alerts This strategy drives sales and shows you are attentive to customers' interests. With automated alerts, keep your customers in the loop about products they're interested in, leveraging growth marketing automation to enhance engagement and boost conversion rates. Allow customers to "watch" or "favorite" products they're interested in. Set up triggers for price drops or restocks on these watched items. Create an automated email or push notification templates for these alerts. Include clear calls-to-action and direct links to the product pages to facilitate quick purchases. Consider segmenting your audience based on their price sensitivity and tailor your messaging accordingly. 4. Social media and search ad remarketing Leverage the power of remarketing to re-engage visitors who have shown interest in your products: Integrate your eCommerce platform with major advertising networks like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Create custom audiences based on website behavior, such as product views or cart abandonment. Develop dynamic ad creatives that showcase the specific products a user has viewed. Implement target cost and CPA to control bids and budgets according to performance. Use sequential messaging to tell a story across multiple ad exposures, gradually building interest and urgency. 5. Chatbot automation Chatbots can be used to give instant customer service and to recommend the right products at the right time 24/7: Implement an AI-powered chatbot on your website and social media channels. Program the chatbot to handle common queries like shipping information or return policies. Use the chatbot to guide product discovery by asking customers about their preferences and needs. Set up automated follow-ups for customers who engage with the chatbot but don't make a purchase. Continuously analyze chatbot interactions to improve responses and identify common customer pain points. 6. On-site personalization in marketing automation for ecommerce With lead nurturing marketing automation, create a customized shopping experience for each website visitor. Use behavioral data to dynamically adjust product recommendations on your homepage and category pages. Implement personalized pop-ups or banners based on a visitor's browsing history or referral source. Customize search results and category sorting based on individual user preferences. Create automated product bundles or "frequently bought together" suggestions to increase average order value. Use geolocation data to display relevant shipping information and localized content. Tailor product recommendations, offers, and communication based on individual interests and behaviors to enhance engagement and drive conversions. 7. Customer re-engagement and churn prevention automation Keeping existing customers engaged is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Here's how to automate your retention efforts: Set up triggers to identify customers at risk of churning based on time since the last purchase or decreased engagement. Create segmented re-engagement campaigns tailored to different customer personas or lifecycle stages. Engagement messages should be sent at the right time and through the most effective channel as identified by predictive analytics. Automate loyalty program communications, including points balance updates and exclusive member offers. Implement win-back campaigns for lapsed customers, potentially offering incentives for their return. 8. Cross-channel customer journey Create seamless, personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints: Map out typical customer journeys and identify key interaction points. Use a customer data platform to unify data from various sources and create appealing customer profiles. Implement cross-channel triggers that adapt based on customer behavior and preferences. Create automated workflows coordinating messaging across email, SMS, push notifications, and ads. Use AI-powered tools to determine the optimal channel and timing for each communication. 6 best eCommerce marketing automation tools Now that we've explored key marketing automation strategies, let's look at some of the best marketing automation for eCommerce platforms available in 2024: 1. Omnisend Channels: Email, SMS, Web Push Key Features: Visual workflow builder, pre-built automation templates, product recommender 2. Klaviyo Channels: Email, SMS Key Features: Advanced segmentation, predictive analytics, robust integration ecosystem 3. ActiveCampaign Channels: Email, SMS, Chat Key Features: CRM with sales automation, machine learning-powered recommendations, site tracking 4. Drip Channels: Email, SMS, Social media ads Key Features: Visual campaign builder, revenue attribution, personalized product recommendations 5. Mailchimp Channels: Email, Social media ads, Postcards Key Features: AI-powered creative assistant, behavioral targeting, landing page builder 6. HubSpot Channels: Email, Social media, Ads Key Features: All-in-one marketing platform, CRM integration, content management system 3 major factors for choosing the right eCommerce marketing automation software Choosing the right marketing automation tool is important for your eCommerce store. Here are three key factors to consider: 1. Supported Channels Make sure the tool supports all the channels you use, like your website, email, and SMS. If one tool can do all these, you will save time and the unnecessary use of other tools. 2. Key Use Cases Look for a tool to handle your marketing tasks, from simple email marketing automation campaigns to more complex tasks like cross-channel marketing and customer retention. Choose one that fits your specific needs. 3. Flexibility and Integrations Your automation tool should work well with your other systems, such as your website platform and analytics tools. Check for flexible APIs and pre-built integrations to ensure smooth operation. Conclusion By using the proper marketing automation tools for eCommerce, it becomes much easier to offer customers a more personalized shopping experience and to significantly boost your online store's growth. These tools can also help make your business run smoother by improving important factors like how many visitors buy something (conversion rates), the average amount spent per order, and the cost of getting a new customer. If you want to start using these effective strategies but are worried about not having enough time or a creative team, no worries. Contact Saffron Edge today to take your eCommerce business to the next level! ...
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Engage and Nurture East Coast Prospects Insights
Are analytics showing a spike in the number of viewers/visitors on your website? Amazing, isn’t it? But this is just the first step to a cyclic journey that never ends. After all, the marketing world runs on the systematic approach to attract, engage, convert, and retain. And while attracting them with judicious strategies is a challenging task, going further uphill from there to engage and nurture the audience is as essential as it is even more difficult. Why do you ask? Because your audience will take a microsecond to move to your competitor if your website is not able to engage them with the right information and services that add value to their lives. Did you know engagement is the driving force behind a 23% share of profit, revenues, and maintaining the relationship between business and customer? Yes, the right engagement strategy can take your business to greater heights! But before we dive into our tips that will boost your ability and empower you to engage and nurture prospects going forward, lets touch upon the basics, shall we? So, how would you define customer engagement and nurturing? Engagement and nurturing are two aspects of marketing that are responsible for forging and fostering trust and building long-term relationships with consumers. With the aim to enrich customers’ experience, engagement in the simplest form can be defined as the process of interacting with the customer, keeping two visions in mind- one of fulfilling customer’s needs and second, yours, of checking the list of the unique set of goals. Why is customer engagement important? The unique interaction between the customer and the brand, which lays the foundation of a relationship is important in the long run. It goes beyond just communicating and using tailored and customized processes to serve the audience and convince them to move towards the buying and retention end of the sales funnel. The touchpoints at which engagement goes beyond communication are marketing, shopping, and purchasing, and this is where you can make the difference. How your business and brand is perceived is what makes the targeted audience choose you over others and build loyalty. Price(81%), quality(80%), and convenience(55%) drive engagement while loyalty is ensured by likeability(86%) and trust (83%). It is necessary to keep the customers interested and show them how committed you are to deliver to their personalized needs and how every product and service is aligned to resolve their issue and add value to their purchasing cycle. Proactive and personalized communication through email, messaging helps both ways- the consumers can better understand your business. With regular communication, your business can devise strategies that hit the bull’s eye. This ensures customer loyalty. If put in the right manner, customer engagement strategies with defined and periodically tracked metrics can continuously grow and improve. The defined metrics will help your team, work towards dedicated factors for customer satisfaction. So what should you practice? Don’t overlook the impact of feedback. Not gathering and implementing feedback will become a roadblock in your business’s growth and development. Be clear with your message, make it readable, easy to understand, and even easier to retain. This will guarantee retention marketing is done right. Connect with the audience with a personal tone. Take, for instance, address customers by their first name, or go for app-style chats, which give off the personal vibes. What you should avoid? Businesses often lack or don’t make enough effort to establish a human connection with consumers. We understand bots have made the work efficient, but nothing can replace the human touch. If your business does not have a case-by-case flexible solution and system that resolves issues, then the standard one-size approach will ruin the customer experience and affect the loyalty of your customer base in the long run. Having covered the basics, now let us move to some effective customer engagement tips that will help you maintain and grow a loyal customer base in 2020: What are some of the customer engagement strategies that will drive your business in 2020? Let us look at them: Conduct Surveys: Surveys are an effective form of communication that will not only engage your audience but also devise and implement strategies based on these surveys to improve your business’s brand engagement and loyalty. This will help you identify what process or system is the audience most satisfied with and want changes in. Utilize multiple channels: Keep your brand active on every possible channel where your target audience is. This will broaden the scope of awareness amongst your followers and widen the loyalty base. But it is essential to keep in mind that you need a different strategy to engage the audience on the respective channel. What would attract the Instagram audience might not be likeable to the Twitter crowd. Omnichannel engagement strategies have proven effective in retaining an average of 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies not utilizing engagement seriously? <!-- --> Keep Customers Updated: To keep your customer base engaged, it is essential that you keep them well informed about any new service that is being launched or if you are coming up with a new update of a product. Pre-renewal communication and offering personal discounts will keep your customer base stay loyal to your brand. Now that you know the what, why, and how of customer engagement, let's move on to nurturing. So, what is lead nurturing? While many businesses can generate leads and begin through the first step of the sales funnel, they find themselves stuck with how to convince those who visit but do not buy. This is where nurture marketing comes to rescue. Nurturing goes one step ahead, which taps on the consumer's experience to understand better and devise effective strategies that can build a loyal base of customers who will become advocates of your products and services while they are moving through the sales funnel. Why is nurturing important? This nurturing marketing through effective communication empowers your brand's standing as the authority after the consumer is done with the researching across the channels for the product that desire to invest. Some of the common examples that effectively used nurture marketing to convert prospects into buyers are Nike Run Club, Amazon, Helix, etc. Amazon, take, for instance, sends emails to remind you of the products you have added to cart or a wish list but didn't go through the purchase. While it takes time to deliver results, incorporating nurturing in your sales and marketing strategy will result in an exponential increase in return on investment. Effective nurture marketing increases the number of opportunities that enter the pipeline and further enhances response to the campaign. When incorporated right, nurture marketing plays a crucial role in improving prospect segmentation and push the conversion rate to a higher level. The Annuitas Group reported a 47 % increase in the purchase made by leads that were nurtured throughout the sales funnel compared to those that weren't. With nurtured leads, companies can shorten their sales cycle by 23% and generate 50% more sales leads at a 33% low cost per lead. As the marketing landscape gets competitive, research shows that compared to before, 48% of businesses now need a more comprehensive cycle for nurturing their leads before they convert. What should you practice? Make use of marketing resources to pique interest in the users and how your product/service will add to the customer's life. Keep track of the step where your consumer is in the buying process so that you can confidently send relevant, targeted content. Take a cue from Apple with the way in which it asks people to create free content which enhances the personalized buying process. This drills the company's name in the consumer's mind, affecting their purchase decision. What shouldn't you do? Don't skip the research. It is important that you know that thorough research of the prospect is important, not just in capturing them but also in building long term relationships. Don't go all sales-ey the minute you receive a lead’s contact information and overwhelmed with information about your products and service. Never overlook email campaigns in the lead nurturing. Take Amazon, for example, which makes use of captivating email reminders if the consumers have shown interest in certain products but didn't, but it or have abandoned their cart. Now that you are aware of the basics, allow us to help you with the tips to create an effective lead nurturing process that will deliver in the long term: Segment the audience: Do you know what is a good way to lose your customer? Trying to sell your product and service without keeping into consideration the stage of which the audience is, in the buying process. This is why you should first segment your audience on the basis of their buying behaviour, which can include the blogs they read, the material they downloaded, or the video they watched. The audience segmentation will lay the foundation for a strong nurturing campaign. Go Multichannel: Consumers now spent more than half of their time online. It only makes sense to be present to get the maximum return on investment from the nurturing campaign. Retargeting, social media monitoring, website content are just some of the ways which will help you build brand awareness and reach out to a broader spectrum of prospects. Automate email marketing: Invest in an automated email marketing system to boost the impact of your nurturing campaign impact. You can opt for drip-feed or event-based trigger email campaigns. When compared to standard marketing rates, automated email messages generate 70.5% of enhanced open rates and an increase in the number of clicks by 152%. The aim should be to make consumers feel valued, especially in this testing times of COVID, by devising strategies to approach with the products and solutions in a way that culminates into a long term relationship. The aforementioned strategies should help influence retention marketing and convince consumers to repeat the purchases. You can always reach out to a team of digital marketing specialist of Saffron Edge for effectively engaging and nurturing your prospects with the maximum possibility of a higher return on investment. ...
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