Tips for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers to Improve Revenue Amidst COVID-19
Jan 11, 2021
10 min read
The arrival of COVID-19 has made all the predictions regarding 2020 go astray. All the businesses that were expecting growth and profit during 2020 have to come up with new survival strategies since COVID-19 has changed many things for most of the industries. You will be surprised to know that about 60% of the businesses from all over the world have been closed because of COVID-19 and this number is going to keep on increasing.
Although each and every type of industry has been affected because of COVID-19, the one particular sector that has been affected the most because of the arrival of the virus is the retail sector or what people call as brick and mortar retailers. If you are running a similar kind of store and finding it difficult to keep your business alive then it's high time to come up with new strategies in order to improve revenues.
The year 2020 might have turned out to be a big opportunity for online businesses but the same year has turned out to be a nightmare for brick and mortar retailers. But in order to make things easy for you, in this blog post, we will not only discuss possible solutions for retail stores to improve their revenue but also go through the current situations and look at the most common issues.
The effects of COVID-19 on the retail sector
When the dust will settle and COVID-19 will be gone completely, a new normal will arrive in the market and this new normal will include drastically changed human behavior and habits. One such change in human behavior and habit will be a shift from impulse buying to planned purchase. Window shopping will keep on decreasing and this will lead to reduced sales in retail shops.
Another trend that you will see on the rise is crisis spending where customers will be restricted to purchase only essential products because of the economic slowdown. The crisis spending will continue to be a part of the consumer habit even after the end of the virus.
Another change that we are currently encountering is focused on individualism. For example, you will see that there is a sudden decrease in the demand for group items since gathering is being completely avoided.
Tips for improving revenue amidst COVID-19
Just because the current situation is tough and you will have to go through many changes, this doesn’t mean that you should also belong to the 60% of the business mentioned at the outset of the article. There are many retail shops out there that are still surviving and making improvements to their overall revenue.
Source: Unsplash
Here are some of the tips that you can use in order to improve revenue amidst COVID-19
Increase customer engagement via various mediums
If you are running a retail store then you must be aware of the fact that only 20% of your customers produce 80% of your revenue. Since these customers will always remain important for the survival and growth of your business, it is crucial for you to pay special attention to these customers, especially during the current situation. The loyalty of these customers will keep your retail store alive during the pandemic and this is why you can’t ignore them.
Whether it is emails, blogs, articles, or newsletters, you will have to use all the mediums possible in order to stay connected with these customers as they should be your main focus, especially when you are struggling to survive. If you succeed in illustrating that you are there for your loyal customers during a tough time, you will be able to nurture your loyal customers. Identify your loyal customers and start making changes to your current strategy.
You can follow down on the path of focusing your investment towards marketing efforts and build a presence online. This will help your customers connect with you more easily and you will be able to boost engagement. It will also help you target new customers who are looking for viable options. Localizing your digital marketing strategies will enhance the chances of people finding you and it will eventually bring in business.
Leveraging social media
Social media engagement has increased multifold over this past year. If you own a brick and mortar retail business, it becomes essential for you to garner an audience for yourself. You can also leverage the platforms in educating the masses about latest trends that you follow or the sanitization process you use to keep you customers safe and whatnot. If you are having trouble bringing in business, do not get disheartened and work towards building a brand. You need to think long-term and set up a digital base for yourself. No matter how local your brand is, you would need to establish a presence digitally to survive what this pandemic has brought on you.
Gift cards
This might look like a marketing tip from the 90s but you should know that it works really well even during the current situation. Gift cards provide all the different types of retailers with an immediate injection of cash and in addition to this, it also improves repeat purchases among customers as well. You should know that gift cards are an amazing way to stay in front of the audience and it can also be helpful in acquiring new customers as well. Even during the current situation, you can easily send digital gift cards to all your customers and make them feel special. But your digital gift cards shouldn’t be limited to your customers only as you can use them even for your prospects.
Enhance your digital presence by structuring your messages
The importance of messaging has increased by many folds just because of the current situation. All the firms out there now need to be more sensitive when it comes down to customer’s needs and this can only be done when firms will start reworking their marketing and advertising strategies.
If you were running a campaign that included the gathering of people, you will need to make some changes to those campaigns as you will need to show the reality of the current situation through your marketing campaigns. You can’t keep using the same marketing campaign if it doesn’t fit according to the current situation.
But this doesn’t mean that you will have to completely change your core branding message as all that you will need to do is to make sure that your campaigns fit like a glove in the current situation. Instead of being opportunistic, you will have to stay authentic during these tough times. Common and regular mistakes in your marketing campaign will mean that customers are less likely to interact with your company. This would be the best time to invest in making your marketing efforts more aligned. You can even get your digital marketing outsourced to save up on the extra expenditure.
Working on shipping cost
If you are planning for any type of cost-cutting then you should consider your shipping department for such a purpose. If possible, you should start looking for fulfilling your orders manually and you should never forget including local shipping features.
If the customers that you are serving are close to your firm then you can offer them a local delivery option in which the local rates will be applied to selected zones. You will have to align the shipping cost according to the current situation.
The NEED to move online
You should know that because of the shift in consumer behavior during the lockdown, most of the consumers have moved online to purchase goods. There are many countries out there that are still going in for a lockdown because of the second wave of the coronavirus and this will further fuel the growth of online usage.
Even people who restricted digital platforms in the past are now moving to it because they have no other options. When the dust settles, people will get into the new normal, the usage of the online platform will keep on increasing.
Because of this you will have to shift to the online platform and it doesn't mean complete closure of your brick and mortar shop, it just means having another platform for the consumers to buy your goods.
You can simply start by choosing a website developing company and get your website built in a professional manner. There are maximum chances that the website developing company may provide SEO services through which you will be able to rank up in the search results and this will further boost your digital presence. Soon after the shift to the digital platform, you will witness a robust growth in your revenue.
Get ready for the new normal because even after the end of the pandemic as consumer behavior and habit will continue to evolve. Now, if you are ready to step ahead and evolve with them, connect with Saffron Edge now!
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Where to get the best free images for your website
With over 1.3 billion websites on the web, standing out from the crowd and making a name for yourself in the noise can be hard. While every website or blog out there can publish content, what really separates the normal from the spectacular is how they make use of visual content. Content is still king, no doubt about that, but powerful content combined with creative, quirky images can turn it into so much more. Content creators throw a ton of stuff on the web every day to garner attention, including blogs, web content, social media content and what not. You’d be surprised to know that almost 6.7 million people publish on a blogging platform or website regularly and the number nearly doubles when it comes to people publishing their blogs on social media. Now, that’s a lot of content! And your audience can only consume so much. So, grabbing their attention and engaging them before anyone else becomes all the more important. And apparently, adding high-quality images (and other visual content like videos) to your blog posts and other content (social media or other) is the best way to do it. According to Forbes’, content with visual appeal gets 94% more views than textual content. And if a reader was to choose a single blog to read out of 6, he would read the blog with the best visual content that appeals to him. So, yes, visuals are indeed important. That’s why we strive to mix our insightful content with creative imagery in all our digital marketing services. But before we tell you the amazing resources from where you can get your hands on the best free-stock photos out there that don’t require any license, let’s talk a bit more about the obvious benefits of adding images and other visual content to your website - SEO & Social Media benefits Social Media is all about visuals. If you want to stand out on social media, work on adding visual elements in every single one of your posts. Simple as that. Doesn’t matter the platform. According to a Buzzsumo research, posts with attractive images on Facebook received 2.3x more engagement than posts containing just plain text. Buffer, on the other hand, experienced a 150% increase in retweets on their tweets with images compared to plain text tweets. The story is the same for almost every other social media platform out there as well. Visuals are just great in capturing the attention of users and making an emotional connection with them. Apart from the obvious benefits of adding visuals on social media, adding high-quality images to your blog posts and website can also help you rank better in search engines. By adding proper alt-texts, titles, and tags to each and every image you upload on your website, you are letting search engine crawlers know exactly what your image is about and how it’s relevant to the corresponding content, which will obviously help your website and blog posts rank better in Google image search as well. Lures readers If you are looking to stand out from the crowd, have a unique identity that gets easily recognized by the masses and make a name for yourself, creating mesmerizing images and other visual elements that are relevant to what you do is your best bet. While everyone and their grandmother can publish gibberish on the web, it’s the visual elements that can give you an edge in a space that is so crowded. If your website or blog posts are void of any kind of images, readers will bounce from your website like grasshoppers. Here’s a stat to prove it. But if your website and blog posts are studded with aesthetically beautiful images, readers will click on it, emotionally connect with it, like it, comment on it, share it with their friends and keep coming back for more (they won’t do it all at once). What else could you want from your audience? If you haven’t already, try putting all your focus on the visual aesthetics of your website and blog posts and keep a close eye on those conversions. You’ll be surprised by the results! But in order to do that, you’ll have to first find high-quality, beautiful images for your website and other marketing content. If you don’t have a photographer in-house (which most of us don’t), try making use of these free resources for all your visual needs. The images resources I am about to mention are absolutely free to use and don’t require you to create an account or buy a license. You’ll just have to credit the author of the image you are taking on some of these sites, which I’ll mention. So, let’s look at some of the best free, high-quality image resources out there- 1.Unsplash 2.Freerange 3.Pixabay 4.Pexels Pexels is our absolute favorite. Their gallery is just stunning. You’ll have to give credit to the authors if you take any picture from this website. The website also shows you an easy way to give credit to their lovely community of photographers when you download a pic from Pexels. 5.Freepik Hope these resources will help you in finding the best images for your website and blog posts, doesn’t matter the industry niche you are in. If you have any other platform in your arsenal from where you fulfill all your stock photo requirements, do let us know in the comments. ...
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Types of Google Ads Extensions
The Internet has provided a level playing field to all of its users, which is a blessing and a challenge at the same time. As it gives opportunity to everyone, staying ahead of the competition is crucial. If you're relying on Google Ads as a cornerstone of your marketing strategy, you already understand the importance of driving high-quality clicks and maximizing the impact of your campaigns. That's where Google Ads extensions come into play. Google Ads app extension is a powerful tool that enables you to enhance your ads and provide additional information to potential customers, ultimately increasing their engagement and conversions. While you may already be familiar with some types of extensions, it's essential to stay up to date with the latest additions and optimizations to make the most of your PPC investment. In this concise guide, we'll delve into each type of ad extension, unraveling its technical intricacies and exploring strategies to optimize its performance. From site link extensions to callout extensions, we'll dissect each extension's purpose, implementation, and best practices. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be equipped to fine-tune your Google Ads extensions to achieve maximum impact and generate a higher return on investment. So, let's decode the true potential of the different types of Google Ads extensions and also understand what's the maximum number of ad extensions, harnessing their capabilities to propel your PPC campaigns to new heights of success. Why should you incorporate Google Ads extensions into your advertising strategy? The answer is simple: Google search ads extensions provide a powerful means to enhance your ads, increase visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs), and help potential customers make informed decisions. The benefits they offer are not only limited to providing more information and improving visibility; they extend much further, positively impacting your overall campaign performance. One key advantage of ad extensions is their ability to deliver more information to your target audience. With the expanded ad text, you have the opportunity to present a compelling case, enticing users to click on your ad. This additional information allows you to showcase your unique value proposition and convince potential customers of the reasons they should choose your offering. Moreover, the increased visibility on SERPs resulting from ad extensions gives your ads a stronger presence and higher impact. The larger size and more prominent placement capture the attention of users, increasing the likelihood of engagement and clickthroughs. This boost in visibility alone can significantly enhance your clickthrough rate (CTR), potentially driving a notable increase in user interactions. However, the advantages of ad extensions go beyond CTR improvement and visibility enhancement. They also contribute to improved lead quality. By providing more information upfront, extended ads help potential customers self-qualify and make informed decisions. This means that the individuals who click through to your landing page are more likely to be genuinely interested and ready to take the desired action, resulting in higher-quality leads. Additionally, utilizing ad extensions positively impacts your ad ranking. Google considers various factors, including expected CTR, relevance, and landing page experience, when determining ad positions. By leveraging ad extensions, you provide Google with a better variety of ad formats, thereby improving your overall ranking and visibility in search results. Furthermore, ad extensions can help optimize your PPC budget. As they enhance your CTR, they contribute to lowering your cost-per-click (CPC), enabling you to maximize the value you derive from your paid advertising investment. By driving more engagement and conversions with the same budget, you can achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in your advertising campaigns. Types of Google Ads Extensions Google Ads extension types can be divided into two main categories: manual and automated. Manual extensions require setup and configuration, while automated extensions are applied by Google based on its prediction of improving ad performance. In February 2022, Google introduced significant changes to automated extensions. Notably, they can now be displayed alongside manually added extensions such as site links, callouts, and structured snippets. This strategic adjustment allows ads to occupy more space on the search engine results page (SERP) and generate higher click-through rates (CTRs). Manual extensions can be added at different levels, including ad group, campaign, or account level, providing flexibility in customizing and optimizing your ad strategy. Furthermore, their inclusion in reports enables comprehensive performance tracking and analysis. Now, let’s explore the kinds of extensions available to you. Location Extensions: For businesses relying on in-person transactions or seeking to enhance their legitimacy, location extensions are paramount. By displaying your address, contact information, and even maps, these extensions help users easily locate and engage with your physical locations. Ideal for restaurants, retail stores, and service providers, location extensions enable users to find you effortlessly and make informed decisions. Product Extensions: Linking your Google Merchant account to Google Ads enables you to leverage product extensions, enhancing the visibility and appeal of your offerings. With product-specific information, such as images, prices, and descriptions, these extensions captivate users' attention and increase the relevance of your ads. Perfect for campaigns focused on product sales, product extensions empower you to highlight your inventory and entice potential customers. Sitelink Extensions: Sitelink extensions provide valuable navigation options to users beyond your landing page. By directing them to specific pages such as contact information, pricing, promotions, or testimonials, site link extensions improve user experience, increase engagement, and drive conversions. Particularly effective for e-commerce sites, sitelinks allow customers to explore specific product categories and find what they're searching for effortlessly. Seller Rating Extensions:In the digital landscape, building trust with potential customers is paramount. Seller ratings extensions are a powerful tool to showcase your business's reputation and credibility. Google aggregates ratings from reputable review sites into a single rating displayed on a five-star scale, along with the total number of reviews. These extensions instill confidence in users and significantly impact their decision-making process, leading to higher-quality clicks and conversions. Callout Extensions: With callout extensions, you can emphasize important selling points, promotions, or unique features of your business, products, or services. These succinct 25-character snippets complement your ad text and grab users' attention, enabling you to differentiate yourself from competitors and convey essential information. Utilize callout extensions to showcase limited-time offers, discounts, free shipping, or any compelling aspects that set your business apart. Structured Snippets Extensions: Structured snippets enable you to highlight specific products, services, or features that users may be actively seeking. By using concise descriptions separated by colons, these extensions provide quick insights into your offerings, capturing users' interest and driving quality clicks. You can manually select the snippets or allow Google to dynamically apply them based on user intent and context. Call Extensions: Call extensions streamline the process for users to contact your business by incorporating a click-to-call phone number directly into your ad. This convenient feature is particularly valuable for mobile users, as it facilitates instant connection with your business. By tracking call conversions, you gain insights into the effectiveness of your ads and measure the value they generate in terms of phone inquiries. Affiliate Location Extensions: For businesses selling products through third-party retailers, affiliate location extensions are indispensable. These extensions help users locate nearby stores that carry your products, guiding their purchasing decisions and driving foot traffic to your retail partners. This is especially beneficial for manufacturers collaborating with major retail chains, as it promotes product discoverability while leveraging the established retail presence. Price Extensions: Price extensions play a pivotal role in shaping customers' buying decisions. By displaying clear pricing information upfront, you establish transparency, build trust, and set accurate cost expectations. Whether you offer variable pricing, service packages, or a diverse range of products, price extensions enable users to make informed choices even before they reach your website, leading to more qualified and conversion-ready traffic. App Extensions: In the era of mobile applications, app extensions are vital for businesses looking to promote their apps and increase user adoption. These extensions provide a download link within your text ad, simplifying the process for interested users to access your app directly from the ad. With the ability to track downloads based on keywords, app extensions offer valuable insights into the performance and impact of your mobile app marketing efforts. Promotion Extensions: To attract users actively searching for the best deals, promotion extensions are a powerful tool. These extensions highlight sales, promotions, and limited-time offers, effectively capturing users' attention and driving clickthroughs. You can customize the display of promotion extensions based on specific dates, days, or even hours, allowing you to leverage pre-populated event tags like Black Friday or seasonal promotions. Lead Form Extensions: The latest addition to Google Ads extensions, lead form extensions, revolutionize the lead generation process by eliminating the need for users to fill out forms on landing pages. These extensions allow users to submit their contact information directly on the SERP, streamlining the conversion journey and reducing friction. With pre-populated information for users signed in with their Google accounts, lead form extensions drive qualified leads into your marketing funnel and accelerate the sales cycle. Video Extensions: Video extensions provide an excellent opportunity to extend the reach of your message and engage users beyond the primary video content. When displayed below your video ad on the YouTube mobile app, these extensions offer additional calls to action and enable users to take immediate action, contributing to higher engagement rates and improved campaign performance. Image Extensions: Image extensions allow you to incorporate relevant visuals alongside your text ads, adding a visual dimension to your advertising efforts. While not available to all advertisers, meeting specific requirements grants access to this impactful extension. By pairing images with compelling ad copy, you can captivate users' attention, differentiate your brand, and drive higher performance. In Conclusion Google Ads extensions are powerful tools that can significantly enhance the performance of your ad campaigns. You can increase your ad's visibility, provide more information to potential customers, and improve click-through rates. Whether you choose manual extensions for more customization or automated extensions for convenience, incorporating these extensions into your Google Ads strategy is essential for maximizing your advertising efforts. To make the most of Google Ads extensions and optimize your campaigns, consider partnering with a trusted digital marketing agency like Saffron Edge. Our team of experts can help you implement and optimize various ad extensions to drive better results and achieve your marketing goals. Contact us today! ...
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Are Inbound Marketers Better Advertisers Than Their Industry Counterparts
Internet marketing has been evolving with a neckbreak speed and so are the approaches, perceptions, audiences and technology. And it’s a marketer’s job not anyone else’s to keep up. B2B marketers tend to be focused on Return on Investment(ROI) rather than lead conversion as is the case in the B2C market. But even then, many fail to lead to a conclusion that there calculation of ROI is correct across all the marketing channels, with only 53% thinking they are rightly doing it. Having a short sighted strategy is all too common in the industry. Email marketing appears to be the most successful channel for a one-to-one communication, but often its success is generated with the help of other digital channels, but many fail to understand this. So how do you pick between the two - Outbound or Inbound which one is performed better by the marketers over the past few years. Let’s find out on both sides. The Outbound Way The definition says that the outbound marketing is based on a hard sales approach where you convince your client that they need your products or services. Using traditional marketing tactics such as cold calling or BTL/ATL advertisements. The two most commonly used Outbound digital marketing techniques are PPC(Google Adwords) and Affiliate marketing. PPC Technique Pros: You’ll get as instant results as you want depending on your target audience. Brand visibility, and segmented targeting one of its features and let’s you be as aggressive or conservative based on your limit/budget. Cons: People have become sceptical towards paid-for-advertising and most of the times paid-clicks don’t result into conversions. Your ad expires as your budget spend ends and the click costs can soar very quickly. You need a lot of time to understand PPC or you’ll hire an agency to do it so that’s another extra budget spend. What’s more is that unethical competitors can click on your ads until your budget has been depleted and your ad disappears. You’ll pay for accidental click costs too- very pricey. Affiliate Marketing It is a network based advertising via affiliate or co-operative platforms. It’s a cooperative effort between the publisher, the advertiser, and the prospective customer who clicks on the ad. The publisher advertises via the banner ads on his website and closes the sales in return for a commission from the advertiser. Pros: It’s a win-win situation for both advertisers and publishers- like having a 24/7 salesman but only paid on performance. It’s easy to setup- just select your platform and program and signup. Cons: This approach is not foolproof, and may not generate as many sales on a regular basis. It has also been known that link hijackers or spammers have taken commission from publishers. The Inbound Way Inbound marketing is comprised of many sub-categories of marketing channels- Content marketing, that relies on organic search traffic and attracts genuine leads, Search Engine Optimization, based on serving content according to the keywords in the search query, and Social Media Marketing, which we all know is popular for bringing traffic to websites by enticing customers with posts on social media business page. The focus of this type of marketing relies on the principle of attracting potential customers by serving them with content about the products and services that can solve their needs. The focus here is on earning your client’s attention and not buying it. The leads that are generated are genuine and are more likely to convert. It is very gradual process and requires a lot of effort on the forefront of all the channels. Pros: You’ll gain a better brand recognition by providing and the right content and solving the materialistic/information needs of your customers. You’ll also position yourself as the industry expert to consumers. Cons: You need a website with specific functionality like blog page, email subscription signups, etc. but these are fairly simple and are very commonly used by businesses online. It takes a lot of patience and hardwork to make your web pages to rank on top in the search rankings. You’ll also need to establish a decent following on social media for your content to be shared widely. All of this takes time and effort. Weighing It All Up Outbound marketing campaigns are undeniably successful in the short period of time. But when you stop funding your outbound campaigns, you are likely to disappear from the hearts and minds of your potential customers very quickly. It has been shown and is fact that Outbound marketers spend 40-70% more than their counterparts in the inbound marketing segment, and has lower and harder to measure ROI. The reasons are logical: people are sick of clicking on bombarded adverts and messages and they right away move away from them- they would want to get engaged in conversations just like Inbound Marketers employ. If you use outbound marketing then you must prepare yourself for facing ad blocking techniques, which by the way many people all over the world have enrolled for. Inbound marketers prove their much worth while advertising for their firm and are better advertisers than Outbound Marketers. ...
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