Marketing Automation Trends One Needs To Follow in 2021

Ever since the internet came into existence, it has become an integral part of our lives. It has transformed the consumer's shopping experience. eCommerce has grown tremendously, such that it has changed the way of marketing. How has eCommerce transformed marketing? Many businesses have now shifted their focus from offline retail to online retail; they have quickly adopted the eCommerce business model. Hence, we see a dramatic shift in the methods of retail marketing. Today, the internet has shaped marketing and the strategies through which online sellers target their customers. Online shopping is one of the significant internet activities around the globe. As per Statista, in 2020, e-commerce sales grew up to $4.28 trillion! By 2022, we can expect it to reach a whopping $5.4 trillion market. Alt IMG tag - Forecast for global eCommerce sales Various search engines and marketplaces provide the convenience of running targeted PPC ads; these ads are known for quick exposure and drive instant results. PPC ads have become a crucial element in eCommerce and digital marketing. There are numerous benefits of PPC ads over Search Engine Optimization. A famous example of a PPC ads platform is "Google Ads." The popularity of Google Ads among eCommerce websites has increased significantly; in fact, Google's Ad revenue in 2020 was around $146.92 billion. The internet giant generates a high amount of income via Google Ads Platform that helps marketers display ads, product listings, etc. It is very critical for eCommerce stores to optimize PPC strategies that fetch them the best results. PPC in eCommerce, if implemented correctly, can allow an eCommerce website to gain more traffic, sales, and revenues. The increasing competition makes it essential to use advanced or latest strategies to stand out from your competitors. The ever-increasing business competition in the eCommerce space has made it necessary for online businesses to use the latest PPC strategies. PPC in eCommerce is pretty standard; you might be struggling to make your PPC campaign a success. There are several reasons why your PPC strategies aren’t converting; however, multiple advanced PPC tactics can help marketers perform better in online sales and customer acquisition. Source: Unsplash 1. PPC In eCommerce Is Ineffective Without Product Page Optimization! One of the most common ways to align your product pages with the latest SEO trends is by optimizing them. Many PPC marketers spend ample time optimizing product pages; it includes optimizing product titles, keyword stuffing, etc. You must consider highly relevant keywords to your products and avoid those that can negatively impact your website. Make sure to add those keywords in your description. All in all, you must recognize inconsistencies in your PPC strategies that can lead to wastage of your PPC spend. Your content team should produce unique, relevant, and engaging product descriptions. It is always fruitful to hire a professional SEO team or expert with the prerequisite knowledge of the latest PPC strategies for product page optimization. 2. Try branded & Non-Branded keyword segmentation. Keyword-based text ads enable retailers to analyze the intent of their customers. Hence, it helps them to optimize ads accordingly. Although the shopping ads were developed on a product-based bidding model, Google's auction chooses products displayed for a particular search result. Due to this model, crucial elements like optimization and bid control aren't in the retailer's hands. Why? Because they can't bid separately on a customer throughout their buyer journey. As a solution, you can utilize keyword segmentation. 3. Keyword Segmentation Is Vital When It Comes To PPC In eCommerce You can then use shopping settings and campaign priority to manage how much you want to bid. With campaign priorities, you can include the same product in many other campaigns. You can evaluate which campaign should take part in the auction for a specific product with a campaign priority that can be low, medium, or high. 4. Google Showcase Ads: For eCommerce And Digital marketing. Showcase Shopping ads came in 2016. It is a better solution for online retailers, eCommerce, and advertisers; Google Showcase ads can be a dedicated digital storefront. For customers, it acts as a window-shopping feature. You can easily group multiple eCommerce products and showcase them using high-quality pictures. You can even group your major products with various smaller products to form a "me-too" product combination and provide customers with a significant discount offer. The Google Showcase ads are often used to target non-brand queries that show up on mobile search results. On search engine result pages, the ad showcases brand-specific product images relevant to the search queries. Users can click on them to see the custom description that portrays the brand and ten other products. Showcase ads also deliver the maximum cost per engagement. Hence, marketers can set a high amount after which they'll be charged when a user expands the ad for ten seconds. Google Showcase ads are best for developing an upper-funnel tactic. 5. Do you have an offline store? Utilize Local Inventory ads! As per Google, 80% of the purchasers will quickly visit a store if a retailer sells the exact item they want to buy. When we talk about online searchers, utilizing local inventory ads is best to meet buyer expectations. It is one of the most effective ways to drive visitors to the store, capture, and engage them by featuring products they can buy from nearby stores. These ads feature on mobile queries too! They usually have a local search intent (e.g., “Blazers near me”) and influence purchase decisions within a radius of a physical store. The moment your potential customer clicks on the ad, they are redirected to the Google-hosted storefront page. You can customize your storefront page’s product description with images and links to your website. Ensure to add your contact number, hours of operation with a map that helps your customer with the directions to the store. Your customers can also purchase the product directly from your website. If you have a physical store, then you must update your inventories and in-store availability. Once a marketer sets up a local inventory campaign, they can use Google Analytics to monitor these metrics to optimize your campaigns further. Source: Unsplash 6. Are you updating your product pages? As discussed in the first section, your product page should be updated at regular intervals. Imagine a user visiting a product page on a holiday or a weekend. If they find your page not updated, you might lose a chance of converting them into your customer. Hence, you must invest time in revamping your product pages with the perfect sales pitch. The first section discussed how keywords and content play a massive part in optimizing product pages. However, pictures or images have a significant influence on product page optimization. You must ensure that you have clean, precise, and engaging photos of your products. If you can add a product video, that can help increase your sales by adding visual information to the product page. Adding a video of your product adds value to your webpage, which increases the chances of sales! Apart from that, you must optimize the key benefits of your shopping website like free shipping, quick delivery, no contact delivery, cash on delivery, etc. You must also get reviews of your product under the review sections because having reviews on your PPC ads can increase the conversion rate of your pages. 7. Invest in good shopping cart solutions. According to a study, in 2020, cart abandonment rates were severely high! Did you know that almost 88.05% of the online shopping carts go abandoned as they don't convert into an actual purchase? One of the key reasons behind a high cart abandonment rate is poor shopping cart software. A shopping cart is like one software on the website that allows the customer to purchase a product. Shopify, Woo-commerce, and big commerce are the most common shopping carts that are great for SEO and paid search. If there are any issues with your shopping cart, you can approach the support team for quick fixes or optimization. 8. Invest in Google shopping ads. When you Google Search “Floral Shirts,” the results pop up under the “shopping tab” are Google Shopping Ads. If you are already running Google shopping ads, you must optimize them based on the results you fetch from your analysis. You can utilize eCommerce tracking setups to see your revenue generation or ROI on each product. In this way, you’ll be able to spot ads that aren’t doing well. 9. Focus On Unique Audience Targeting Google and Bing offer great tools like demographics, retargeting, customer match, etc. Advertisers can also utilize features like custom messaging, bid scaling that can be used whenever they want to. Google can evaluate a category of people who are searching for a particular product. You can use these tactics to target a less obvious audience. As a jewelry brand, your competitors would be targeting the same chunk of the population. However, you can target a unique audience; you can target men trying to buy gifts for anniversaries, weddings, or birthdays. As a result, you’ll be able to target an audience in a low-competition zone. 10. Effective PPC ads on Instagram and Facebook Social media advertising provides a wide range of channels through which marketers can run their PPC ads. If you can target users on Facebook and Instagram, you can find the right kind of sales. Facebook ad targeting offers some powerful features like: Marketers can see the recent buying behavior of Facebook users. Marketers can leverage Life Events Targeting. ?Marketers can nurture leads with Facebook Custom Audiences. Tap into lookalike audiences. Get Granular and layered targeting options. Conclusion How has eCommerce transformed marketing? We hope you got the answer! However, it is very important for eCommerce stores to optimize their PPC strategies if they want to get the best outcomes. Mastering your PPC strategies can help you accomplish your desired business goals. With above mentioned powerful PPC strategies, your eCommerce website can tap into high-purchase intent audiences. If you have been searching for proven PPC tactics to outshine your competitors and generate more leads, then you can consult Saffron Edge's Paid Marketing experts. We curate successful paid marketing solutions that can increase your eCommerce website's visibility and conversion. ...

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Most of the successful marketing teams value the role of analytics and the metrics in deriving insights and strategy formulation. Available big data is crucial in understanding your consumer's behavior, the context and the methods operating on them while they make a purchasing decision. Whether it is checking the change in your email response rate or understanding the variation in the leads, everything that impacts your online business is important data.Analyzing the data is crucial because it is both able to present a concise picture of things that happened in the past and can, to a great extent, predict the pattern of consumer behavior and how that might change in the future. That's why Drucker remarks, "What gets measured, gets managed". But Can I Trust My Data? Based on the sample size, the duration when the data is collected and other factors, you derive an interpretation from the available data. What I find out is that quite often, it is the interpretation and not the data that is to be doubted. At times, we put too much emphasis on a particular set of data while ignoring the rest and thus we build a prejudice. Consequently, the selected metrics might lead us to draw inaccurate and non-relevant conclusions that can cost us after a certain duration. These data streams may indicate improvement, but it is not always that they have strong connection with your organization's progress.Moreover, since these data are dynamic and have time-dependency, they do not always correlate with the figures that matter for your marketing strategy. Some of these deceptive metrics are: Web Traffic Who does not like more attention? Especially in the digital marketing world, it seems that there is a race to get as much web traffic as one can acquire. But is getting more web traffic always a good thing? Let's suppose that you decide to boost traffic on your website and spend a large amount of money on Google Adwords. You might get more traffic consequently, but will that be any good if none of those users convert into buyers or proceed to email sign ups? Certainly, in that case, the acquired traffic is not connected with your company's mission. Number of Downloads Often, websites provide free resources such as e-books, brochures, and other PDFs to attract a particular segment of the audience. Tracking the number of downloads is not very helpful because it does not reveal who is downloading those resource nor does it tell you how these users found it. Due to the lack of a proper context, this metric can not be used to derive any actionable. Time Spent On Your Site Most of the marketers consider the time by the users on the website as an important metric. Unless this data point is used along with other available data point to make a comparison, it is no good to analyze the time. Though considered as a behavioral metric, it does not suggest you any much on how to improve the content. To make this metric work better, you will need to find out more about the users who download your content. Are those visitors lying in the potential customer belt or are they rival professionals keeping a track of what you are doing? Number of Unique Visitors Essentially, this number tells you about how popular your website is. More the unique visitors, the better it is for your website's popularity. Again this metric is not very actionable superficially, and you will have to check for the user's activity on your website to understand whether the unique visitor is worth your attention. Use analytics to find out what they clicked on, the source from where they landed to your website and other meaningful behavioral information about these unique visitors to have a larger picture. What Then Is a True Metric? Though there can not be any general formula to determine a universally accepted list of metrics, a true metric should have the following characteristics: It should suggest an actionable Whenever you see a proper report about some metric, the results should convey an actionable that should be incorporated to get better results.For example, when you see a report about split-testing, you should be aware of what improvement your site needs so that the discrete consumer group gets to see different versions of the product and thus get a more personalized response. It should be accessible and easily generated If you report about a tree falling in a forest and the report is incomprehensible, is it any valuable? In essence, the metrics should be reportable in a format such thati) all your team members can grasp them ii) everyone in your team can have access to the latest data reports To make the accessibility feature even better, the duration between executing actionable and seeing results should not be very large.To achieve that end, the metrics should be presented in a very simple way. Some examples of metrics that you should really care about: Email Newsletter Subscription More the subscription, more the chances that you can get the subscribers converted into buyers. Cost Per Lead It is calculated by dividing the marketing expenses by the number of leads generated online. It can give you a rough idea about the amount you need to spend to get one customer onboard. Conversion Rate The conversion rate is one of the crucial metrics that you must look for since it is an indicator of whether your marketing efforts are working or not. Regarding results and total revenue generated, this metric can provide useful information. The Average Length of Account Subscription Just counting the number of subscriptions won't help. To get desirable insight, it is recommended that you keep track of the duration of the account subscription. Also, you can analyze the number of account upgradations to keep a better check on your website's performance. Conclusion Website's metrics presents before you the macro picture of how the website has been able to engage its audience. It should also tell you about the progress you are making to increase its influence and by optimizing the areas that need improvement, you can design actionable tasks to make your website better. Also, these data sets are concise information about the trends that are working in the market, so with an intelligent choice of metrics that matter, you can predict consumer behavior, and that is key to your organization's success. ...

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Source: Pexels It's thrilling to launch a new company, but when the first burst of enthusiasm wears off, it can be difficult to discern a clear plan or road forward. Building a name from scratch might take a long time, perhaps even a decade or more, but how long it really takes depends on how well you can picture the end result. Since DTC (Direct-to-Customer) companies are usually small and have limited resources at the outset, they need to have a crystal clear long-term goal. A brand strategy may be developed in potentially countless ways; after all, even a broken clock is correct twice a day. We may all take our time and do as much or as little as we choose of the trial-and-error process until we find the solution that works for us. Taking your business abroad was a huge undertaking ten years ago, and it won't become any simpler in 2022 or the coming time. The rapid evolution of the online retail sector means that penetrating a new market today necessitates careful planning. Consider this: did you know that 67% of customers think they have more expectations than ever before, while 51% say most firms fail to deliver on those expectations. About 55% of consumers prefer shopping on websites that utilize their native language, and 56% of consumers say that being able to get information about products and services in their home language was more significant than pricing. Seventy percent of buyers said that a company's delivery choices influenced their decision to buy from that company. What exactly is DTC? Selling to end users without going through traditional retail channels is called "direct to consumer" (DTC). It's a method of doing business that avoids the headaches of conventional distribution channels. Companies no longer simply make their wares and hand them off to a distribution system. They bypass intermediaries and sell their items directly to the customers. Due to the proliferation and effectiveness of e-commerce platforms, direct-to-consumer companies are becoming increasingly competitive. The consumer products industry has been revolutionized by online retailers and the technology that powers them. Companies that make things no longer have to rely on middlemen like wholesalers and distributors to sell their wares. Alternative routes to the consumer exist. Online stores make it easier to begin selling directly to consumers. How to turn your small DTC brand into a global business? Obviously, you now need to expand your brand's marketing to other geographic areas. Here are eight methods to assist you on your journey. Create a solid plan for using social media. A increasing number of people are using social media every day, making it a great platform for promoting your brand. Sites like Facebook and Twitter already have sizable worldwide user bases, and niche social networks are available to target certain areas of the world. By their very nature, social media and digital marketing are fantastic resources for promoting your business on a worldwide scale. You should make sure your website is in top shape. Customers will leave your website for a competitor's if it has broken links, ambiguous wording, or is difficult to use. Since 75% of multilingual consumers prefer to shop from websites in their native language, it's important to provide your website in many languages so visitors feel at ease. Establish solid rapport with your clientele. Customer Loyalty is crucial for your brand to succeed. If your clients have faith in you, they are more inclined to share your product reviews with others and spread the word about your business. To demonstrate you ‘care’ in today's global marketplace, it's important to learn about and respect local traditions and beliefs. Try seeking help from marketers to know your customer patterns/ behaviour. Invest in thorough study on each country to which you plan to export goods or services. It's possible, for instance, that shipping regulations vary from one jurisdiction to the next. Yet, you may find that their customer markets and buying patterns are radically different from your own. Create a plan for expanding your business overseas. Because of the various differences across nations' marketing practices, such as tax and other regulatory requirements, it is sometimes beneficial to work with a local agency or establish a local partner. Furthermore, even if you have never considered international marketing, building your company with the notion of potential foreign markets might aid you when you begin selling your items to a worldwide audience. In order to facilitate day-to-day operations, you may decide to establish a foreign base as your business expands. Consequently, you can't just ship goods overseas; you need to staff up and even negotiate lease arrangements, and language barriers could be a major stumbling block to your success. You may lessen the likelihood of misunderstandings by employing the services of a worldwide interpretation agency. To further develop your brand, keep at it. Utilize your time by creating brand-new concepts or bettering the quality of existing products and services. Therefore, you may avoid having your brand come off as antiquated and instead always look modern and on-trend. Keep a firm grasp on your financial situation by diligently managing your money. This lessens the likelihood of your experiencing financial hardship. You shouldn't be reluctant to seek more funding from investors. Benefits Challenges of DTC DTC is gaining more popularity as you read this. The competition is fierce and brands have to actively adapt to market trends and strategies to conquer this realm. Let's have a look at the main pros and cons of a DTC approach. Using them can help you decide if going directly to consumers is a worthwhile strategy. Benefits You Can Get Your Customer Information Back Sure, you've heard of the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Named for the dominant technology of the time, these eras are often used to categorize historical epochs. For the same reason, we should probably just call this era the Information Age. The adage, "knowledge is power," has never been more appropriate. More information than ever is being produced nowadays by both people and businesses. Its collection and utilization are critical to the performance of several corporate procedures. Wholesale business models for brands result in the elimination of a valuable informational resource. Their data from customers is not easily accessible. The retailers are the ones who find out all the juicy details about the customers. The DTC model allows companies to reclaim their client information. Information previously unavailable includes consumer demand, online shopping patterns, demographics, and more. Consequently, there are fresh opportunities for data analysis and BI. Data about consumers may be used to improve advertising, sales, and other aspects of a company's operations. Increased Agency in Managing the Customer Experience We have discussed the significance of the customer's experience. There is no way for producers and buyers to communicate directly through conventional distribution channels. That means you, the maker, have zero say in how your product is received by the end user. With DTC transactions, however, it is no longer the case. Your brand's influence now extends to every point of contact a client has with it. You make your goods in the same way you always have. You are now responsible for promoting the company's name, distributing advertisements for its goods, closing transactions, and attending to customer service issues. You have the ability to keep consistent quality throughout the duration of a customer's experience with your company. Integrating Customer Feedback to Improve Services Another benefit of being in complete charge of the customer's journey is that you can better tailor your offerings to their needs. What this implies is that you may strengthen your connections with customers. Any customer's experience at a store is shaped largely by their interactions with the vendor. Customers are likely to keep in mind the helpfulness of the staff they interacted with when shopping either in-store or online. If they find the product to be of great quality, they may have a favorable impression of the company that made it. But that is, at best, secondary. Every encounter a customer has with a business includes a direct-to-consumer brand. One way to establish trusting connections with customers is to provide service that exceeds their expectations. That's the secret to a high client lifetime value and repeat business (CLV). This is why many direct-to-consumer firms prioritize customer engagement and community-building. Development of Emerging Markets and Merchandises Every new product launch begins with extensive study. No business would risk its reputation by releasing a new product without first gauging customer interest. Under the DTC framework, companies and consumers can have an open channel of contact. So, it's usually far less difficult to investigate potential new purchases. To save money on market research, companies may simply communicate with their target demographic. We know from experience that Me Undies includes this sort of community engagement in their monthly subscription fees. Critical information about how people feel about new items may be gleaned in a shorter amount of time. Adaptability and quickness Change is constant in the business world. Often, significant shifts occur in what seems like a nanosecond. Consider the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic as an illustration. It just took a few short weeks to completely flip the world on its head. The economic fallout from such an unexpected occurrence is far-reaching. All sorts of brands need to act as swiftly and efficiently as feasible. Better flexibility in action is achievable with a DTC model. The channel of dissemination is simpler. Everything depends on you, so be sure you're ready to take command. To put it another way, you aren't dependent on any intermediaries. That facilitates instantaneous change and adaptation. Challenges Customers with High Expectations Thanks to greater control over brand messaging and consumer involvement, nearly all firms are waking up to the rising challenges of satisfying customers. This shows that customer expectations are rising quickly! What was once thought to have a "wow factor" has now become the standard. It's not always terrible for your brand when people have such high expectations of your company, but it can put a lot of pressure on you. How can you customise the interactions your clients have with your brand at every stage of the customer journey? The Processes That Occur Past the Purchase Internet shopping is more complex than it seems at first glance. Manufactures should keep it in mind before making the switch to DTC. Consider the countless actions that can be taken "after the buy" button has been clicked. These actions are crucial, yet they take place after the customer has made a purchase. Traditional and direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce websites equally sometimes fail to provide them with adequate attention. Critical actions that go beyond the "purchase" button are abundant. Order processing, transport, and accounting are three of the most important. And such procedures need the help of others. Inventory management, storage, and logistics are all a part of these support functions. For those unfamiliar with the DTC world, it might be difficult to understand the significance of these factors and find success in them. Getting Results From Effective Content Marketing Your digital strategy's cornerstone is content marketing. Doing it DIY can be difficult. You should do the following if you want to invest in content marketing: Find excellent writers who can create copy that resonates with your audience and influences them to make a purchase. Create quality content on an ongoing basis. This can take a lot of time and money, even if you don't have a comprehensive editorial calendar planned out for months or years in the future. Determine the effectiveness of various content types at generating sales, and then, based on their performance, decide how much to invest in each category (or lack thereof). Relationships with Retailers: A Breakdown One of DTC's main advantages might also be one of its biggest problems. This means fewer middlemen, including wholesalers, distributors, and retailers, are needed to complete the sale. When you bypass middlemen and go straight to your customers, you reduce your reliance on them. It's not likely that you'll want to completely separate from them, though. Keeping your business connections from falling apart is the problem. Maintaining amicable, win-win connections with retailers is essential. When trying to market to their ideal customer, that's not easy to do. When choosing if DTC is right for you, your ability to complete the process is crucial. Conclusion Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing is a vital strategy for every modern eComm business. In response to consumer desire for seamless interactions, this concept has become increasingly prevalent. Meanwhile, the expansion of e-commerce has facilitated direct sales to consumers for a wider variety of businesses. Direct-to-consumer sales channel strategies are more complex than they appear at first glance. It's an idea that might revolutionize the retail industry as we know it. Before deciding if Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing is good for your company, you need to learn all you can about it. We hope you've found what you were looking for in this detailed manual. ...

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