A look at the future of influencer marketing

In 2019 we witnessed some wobbles and uncertainty in the influencer world, so what can we expect in 2020 when it comes to influencer marketing?

Firstly let’s take a look at what happened in 2019……………….

 

 

Is the worry over?

At the beginning of the year there were a lot of questions around trust. Uncertainty was rife as to whether influencers were being genuine and how authentic partnerships really were, resulting in the enforcement of #ad. We know as marketers and retailers that good influencer marketing is a key gateway to create brand awareness, so how can we move forward?

As a marketing tactic it can be very cost effective especially for smaller brands and the return on investment can be significant. Building a foundation of trust is absolutely key to the success of influencer marketing & there are certainly a few tactics that can really help with creating authenticity….

Organic influencers

We all know that we would trust someone we know or could relate to over a celebrity or public figure, which suggests that real people equal real influence. Rethinking your influencer strategy to include your customers can have real leverage when it comes to actual impressions.

According to a recent Stackla study 79% of people say that user-generated content (UGC) highly impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 8% say influencer-created content would do the same.

So how can you utilise your customers in this way?

Brand advocates, that’s what you need, the real people that buy your products, love them & want to shout about them!
So what content can be generated and used as marketing material?

  • Guest blog posts – making your customers feel valued can be very beneficial
  • Instagram takeovers from top brand advocates – putting sole trust in the hands of your customer
  • Asking questions and doing polls to your social audiences and displaying the responses
  • Case studies – Just how much impact has this product had on your life?
  • Genuine customer reviews – remember that sometimes reviews can be faked!
  • Testimonials – video & written content
  • Regramming customer Instagram stories and organic posts (e.g top customer of the week)
  • Retweeting and replying to customer queries (and complaints!) – Great customer service is essential….
  • Using user-generated feedback to guide your brand’s future content strategy

In 2020 we predict that there will be a big shift in how UGC is used by brands and how these trustworthy connections can be utilised to make an impact in retail.

So we have user generated content but what other organic forms of influencer marketing can we expect to see in 2020?

Employee advocacy

An employee, a real person, can create passionate and thought provoking content and build brand awareness across social media.

By activating employees on social media you can unlock an authentic voice that’s hard for even the best marketer to conjure up. It obviously isn’t as simple as saying ‘go’, brands need to create a plan with rules and guidelines but trusting your employees with your brand can go a long way!

In 2015 CISCO reported that employees’ social posts generate 8X more engagement than posts from their employer. That was back in 2015 so we imagine the impact will be far greater in 2020.

A great example of a brand harnessing the power of their people is Lush. They build a sense of community and are encouraged to post about what excites them and makes them happy.

If you search for #lushemployee on Instagram there are over 8,000 posts including photos of employees working instore with their colleagues, product reviews and videos, product displays, pictures of employees with furry friends & even photos of Lushies attending climate change demonstrations across the world!

Lush employees social media

Lush employees social media

Lush employees social media

Make your employees passionate about your brand and then open up Pandora’s Box to spread to word!

So there’s two forms of influencer marketing that we should see make a big impact in 2020. If you’re itching to do something like this and you need some support with your strategy then get in contact, we would love to chat.

Here’s to a prosperous year for retail!

Preparing for the festive season

If you are a retail business then I’m sure plans are well under way for the upcoming festive season. As a smaller, boutique retailer there is often a great deal at stake around this time of year, you have huge competition and it’s hard to compete on heavy discounts and offers especially around days such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Amazon Prime Day and the high pressure run up to the 25th December.

 

The market is saturated at this time of year but how can you stand out in the crowd? It’s all about the experience!

Consumers are becoming a lot more focused on connecting emotionally with brands that are aligned with their personal values and life choices. So this is how smaller brands can make a real difference around Christmas. It’s not about how much you drop your prices (to a certain extent!) it’s the delivery of your messaging and experience that will bring in the sales.
A recent report by customer journey experts, Yieldify on ‘The Shape Of Peak To Come’ reveals plans and predictions for peak trading season, surveying 400+ US & UK marketers to unlock key insights into the mad frenzy of retail in the run up to Christmas. Some of the most interesting stats and predictions being:

  • Black Friday – the first ‘peak within peak’ – is no longer a one-day event. Only 15% are treating it as such. When it comes to participation, online-only retailers are the most likely to opt out, with 1 in 5 choosing not to take part this year.
  • Pureplay e-commerce retailers are leading the pack when it comes to going against standard peak expectations. As well as opting-out of Black Friday, they were also the most likely to run discounts across longer periods. This seems to have led towards a greater focus on acquiring and retaining customers throughout peak, with website personalization their top-rated method for doing so.
  • For everyone else, email is still the king of marketing strategies. This was cited as a top tactic for promoting peak offers as well as converting visitors into customers. Retailers will need to have a solid lead capture strategy in place long ahead of peak to capitalize fully.

With the above in mind here are some quick tips to get your head above the sand.

Identify your key target audience for this time of year

Delve into previous year’s data and create a new segmentation lists including customers that previously bought in the run up to Christmas as well as your loyal/frequent purchasers. These should be your main focus at this time, they are far more likely to convert having had previous interactions with your brand. Gaining new customers around this time of year isn’t completely absurd but it might be harder to do so due to the saturation of the market.

Personalised content

Now you’ve segmented your data and created new customer lists to target, think about the content strategies that will convert for these audiences. Look at previous campaigns and take inspiration. Your strategy should include content for email campaigns and also the personalised messaging/offers on your website if you have these capabilities. You can also tailor your social media strategies accordingly and use different posts to target different segments.

Target key influencers for these audiences

Although influencer marketing is still under scrutiny by customers and also marketers it is still hugely beneficial to smaller/boutique retailers. It’s these close relationships with influencers that love their brand that makes independent retailers shine and create a loyal following. There is no doubt that influencer’s can directly inform consumer purchasing behaviour. The content and relationships can be very believable, especially if there is a strong connection with the influencer & brand values.

As part of your Christmas social media campaigns, if you have influencers you know well and trust, why not involve them at the ideas stage to curate unique, emotive and believable content that will appeal to your target audience.

Our advice on a low budget would always be to stick with micro-influencers with a following of under 5k. They tend to have a more engaged audience and wont cost the earth to work with.

Ask for feedback/feed forward

We’ve touched upon this before in previous posts but it’s so important to business growth and future success, especially at this busy time of year. After a purchase or interaction create a simple feedback form to gain insightful knowledge on their experience and what they might look for when making future purchases. This is not only useful for making quick tweaks to current campaigns and strategies but also pre planning for the following year. It’s never too early to plan for the next festive season!

We hope that these quick tips will get you thinking about what you can do now if you haven’t already begun preparations. Good luck and let the best man win!

T-minus 92 days.

How to build trust as part of the customer experience

Would YOU buy from someone that you just didn’t trust? One of the foundations of excellent customer experience is trust. Consumers are savvier, more unpredictable and increasingly ethically minded these days especially when it comes to saving the big rock we live on!

 

 

Retail brands that are transparent about their story, supply chain and distribution can use that to build a trusting relationship with customers, gain a loyal following, improve repeat purchase rates and develop brand advocates.
Here are our tips on how to build consumer trust.

Take a stand! And shout about it.

As mentioned above, these days many consumers (but not all!) are more conscious of the impact their lives have on the environment and climate change. Increasingly people are looking for brands that take a stand on sustainability and are able to take a lead on helping to save our planet.
Brands that share their ethos on sustainability and the supply chain of their products will attract these passionate consumers, who are likely to be more vocal about the brands they love to their friends and family.

So, how best can you communicate your brand ethics? It’s simple, use the power of content. One of our client’s, Asquith, is a great example to share. The Asquith site has a dedicated page on ‘Our ethos’ including: ‘Our Mission’, ‘ECO Fabrics’, ‘Our Factory’ & ‘About Us’.

The best aspect about this content is the honesty about their products and the impact this may have on the environment. They’re transparent about the fabric used, how they source it and they explain how using organic bamboo excludes them from contributing to the microbeads issue that synthetic polyester fabrics does, but that using bamboo still has some environmental impact.

Asquith also share information about who makes their products by including content about the factory, alongside a picture of the lovely, happy ladies that make the clothes in Turkey with their Global Organic Textile Standard certification. This is very powerful, words can say a lot but imagery adds so much more, being able to visualise the people that make the clothes helps you to connect on a deeper level with the brand and product.

Many brands tell their story online but only those brand stories that feel honest and transparent truly engage and build strong connections with audiences.

Partnering with trustworthy influencers

Influencer marketing is still on a journey, with recent concerns over the last year regarding the authenticity of partnerships and the enforcement of #ad. There is no doubt that influencer marketing is a winning strategy but it’s crucial to make sure those partnerships are the right ones for your brand and your customers.

One successful approach to influencer marketing is to build trust with the influencer first. A good example of a successful influencer strategy is from watch brand Daniel Wellington’. Their strategy is built on authenticity and gives those working with them a level of autonomy and control over their posts rather than being told what to say and do. This helps the content to remain fresh and varied with an injection of the influencer’s creativity and personality. Below you can see an example of the brand reposting content curated and shared by an influencer.

They also repost user generated content by picking a #DWpicoftheday winner for what seems like every day! This encourages advocates and unknown influencers that are fans of the brand to create their own content in the hope it will be featured on the DW channel.

Customer insight can be hugely beneficial for finding out what types of influencers your customers follow. Sending out customer surveys with questions around interests, values, hobbies and influences, can then adapt the strategy according to the results and identify influencers that will connect with your customers on a personal level. This will not only increase engagement but also customers will be more likely to see this content in their own time, within their own social space which will make the whole experience more authentic.

Ask for opinions

Another fundamental aspect of trust building is giving customers a platform to voice their opinions and have their say. It’s not just about asking for feedback but asking customers for ‘feed – forward’. By involving customers on future decisions not only builds brand advocates but also helps you create a customer centric strategy.

Brands can ask questions about new product lines, loyalty schemes, events, basically anything you’d like to get an opinion on. When people feel like they are being listened to, it’s a basic human instinct to form bonds. So why not start putting your trust in your customer and see what happens!

So, retailers ask yourself these three questions:

1. Are we transparent about our brands ethos, products and distribution?
2. Do we work with influencers that would connect with our customers?
3. Have we asked our customers their opinion in the last 6 months?

If the answer is no, for any of the above, then it’s time to make some changes….

Customer experience needs to be exceptional as standard

Customer experience has been at the forefront of retail marketing for years, but 2019 brings a new shift for all brands. Exceptional customer experience is no longer an optional extra for retailers, it should be a given. Giving your customers a great experience no longer sets you apart from the competition, simply put without out it your business is at risk.

2018 saw some serious fallout with retail giants such a Toys “R” Us, Sears and many others hitting the wall. Looking at why these businesses failed, it wasn’t a lack of demand for their products but consumers opting to buy elsewhere, from businesses they could get a better experience with.

Omnichannel customer experience

With the rise of online shopping many retailers faced the task of breaking down silos, especially between online and in-store, retail and wholesale, but how many have extended this to their customer experience?

Consumer expectations are changing, with greater emphasis on the brand experience. Retailers need to shift their strategy to drive retail as a service, it’s no longer a simple transactional exchange. What will set brands apart in 2019 will be their ability to really connect with their communities and create a seamless personalised experience, regardless of channel.

With so many touchpoints available to consumers, brands need to focus on making that experience feel the same across them all. The current trailblazers leading the customer experience revolution are focusing on far more than the product and the transaction. They are creating engaging experiences, encouraging people to spend time with them, come back frequently and increase their interactions.

This evolution has to be adopted across the entire business. Long gone are the days that retail jobs are what you do while you’re waiting for a proper job. In-store and online teams are ambassadors for the brand and are integral to creating this epic experience for customers. Consumers are seeking experiences rooted in genuine engagement, empathy and emotional intelligence.

Using data to drive authentic experiences

Data to drive sales has been a dominant topic in the industry for years. It’s no secret understanding more about how people shop and buy helps drive sales. Little discussed topic is how to use your data more effectively to create a meaningful experience for your customers, enhance all interactions with customers across all channels and innovate the experiences you give people.

Customer insight should go beyond the ABC1 profiles. Who are your actual customers? Don’t just look at where they live, how old they are or what they buy, ask what they care about, what motivates them, how they view you as a brand and how they view themselves as people. Understanding the people behind the purchase will help create these authentic experiences.

Get personal

The more you know the more personal you can get. Empower your customers through a personalised experience. The daddy of personalisation is of course Amazon, but this hyper personalisation is no longer restricted to the big retail giants. Think beyond simple passive product recommendations, use the data you have to proactively provide consumers with recommendations based on your actionable data.

If you’d like to know more about creating an authentic, engaging experience for your customers across all channels, get in touch.

Do you have your Christmas 2018 Strategy in place?

As we sit in a baking hot office in the middle of another heat wave, we long for cold winter nights, wrapped up by the fire, sipping mulled wine and snuggling under a thick duvet. You might think it’s too soon to start thinking about Christmas 2018, but it’s not, especially if you’re in retail. If you haven’t already it’s time to get your festive hat on………. or maybe a nice cool straw hat for the time being.

 

So what can the marketing teams be planning now, here are some tips to start future proofing your success for A/W 18:

Get your trend on

Look at the fashion, interior and Christmas trends predicted for Autumn/Winter 2018. Start pre-categorising your A/W product range into these trends. Re-write product & page copy ready to upload to dedicated pages, when the time comes, to maximise on natural search results.

Experiment with some of your paid search spend – what trend related search terms could you appropriately target to pull further traffic into your product pages?

Ensure your social team are incorporating relevant trend hashtags into their posts about your products, you could inspire engagement from a new audience if you’re visible.

Include nods to the trends that sit best with your products with any seasonal photography, to ensure your imagery stays fresh and ahead of the curve

Try product placement or developing a relationship with key influencers within each trend niche – featuring in their marketing and media not only positions you well within a trend, but is worth PR riches.

The top fashion trends as cited at Paris Fashion Week in March are:

1. Head to toe animal print
2. Leather dresses
3. Cape crusaders
4. Silver, holographic and Sci-Fi
5. Tweed
6. The 70’s – think shearling & crochet
7. Pleats
8. Silk
9. Obvious logo/brand placement
10. Layering coats

Interior design colour trends are:

Colour trends

1. Navy Blue
2. Autumn Maple
3. Neutral Gray
4. Toast
5. Scarlet Red
6. Tawny Port
7. Golden Lime
8. Shaded Spruce
9. Light Blue

Christmas 2018 trends as shown at Christmas World are:

Vivid heritage
A mixture of traditional handicraft skills from different cultures combined with strong colours similar to Golden Lime, Scarlet Red and Shaded Spruce. Think embroidered patterns inspired by folklore and ethnic tradition.

Eclectic Gathering
This trend includes reflective, shiny and sparkling materials such as crystal, foil, mirrored glass and mother of pearl incorporated with lively details, over the top shapes and patterns. Colour palette combines pink, lemon, mandarin, azure, rosé, black and gold.

Balanced Sobriety
A mixture of matt brass, light coloured wood and shiny black surfaces with a Japanese influence. Colours range from pure white to rose gold, a shiny but cool grey, a deep red and black.

Splendid History
Think historical treasures. Lace, feathers, semi-precious stones, pearls and marble combined with dark, saturated colours with accents of aquamarine and gold.

Plan ahead for big shopping days

Don’t get stung by Black Friday or Cyber Monday but embrace them and create a plan that works with your business. Also look back at last year’s data and see what your best shopping days were and use them as additional opportunities.

You don’t have to discount all your products to keep your head above the water but create exciting deals for your existing customer base, that could also entice new customers. This could include exclusive offers and enhanced loyalty offers.

Think cleverly around your content strategy on all your platforms. Create a content plan specifically for the run up to and including big shopping days which includes engaging content in partnership with key influencers.

For smaller brands, Black Friday or Cyber Monday can actually be an opportunity to catch the eyes of new customers. Yes they’re hunting for the best deal but remember they are also looking for a great experience so make sure that you have all your ducks in a row and the experience from pre purchase through to post purchase is seamless. A great returns policy goes a long way!

Not forgetting the importance of resource. Ensure you have enough staff clued up and your website and team can handle the high volume of customers and sales. Your customer service team need to be super charged and understand all the many things that could go wrong so they are fully prepared to diffuse any situation that might arise.

Connect with your customer

Get the customer involved by sending out a small survey to see what they want around Christmas, exclusive offers? Exclusive content? Tips and how to guides etc. This sort of priceless insight can help to shape your content plan as well as boosting your customer engagement by making an emotional connection.

Christmas can be a joyful experience for most but also very stressful for those that have big families entertaining large groups or those that just dislike Christmas! Think about how you can alleviate some of that stress for your customers. Try and tap into your customers’ needs and help solve their stressful shopping problems. This sort of insight can be gained by using the survey. Content can then be created around the specific pain points and drip fed across all your channels in the run up to Christmas.

If you have a physical presence, connect online with offline by offering unique services instore to gain footfall like a free gift wrapping service, instore product demonstrations or personal shopping services. Try and make the shopping experience as enjoyable as possible as it can become quite the chore.

Listen to your customer

Did you get any bad reviews, feedback or complaints last year? Take a look back at what issues your customers voiced and make sure everything is fixed for 2018. This could be delivery problems, product information, site speed, checkout issues, the list can go on but ensure you have all of them ironed out and content updated so that your customers don’t face any of the same issues.

The key thing to remember is that a retailer’s main focus around Christmas is to inspire customers and take the stress out of the largest shopping event of the year which will lead to more revenue. Try and make it fun and interesting but most of all be prepared!

If you want any help or advice in putting together your 2018 Christmas marketing strategy give us a shout on [email protected].

Onwards and Upwards

And just like that January was over, we’re all eating pancakes and love is in the air!

It’s safe to say that it’s been a bit doom and gloom in the world of retail last month. Looking back at 2017 in a haze as many retailers (but not all!) report a disappointing end to the year.

 

It’s now February so let’s not let all that news bring us down! There’s also a great deal to look forward to as we continue to march into 2018 with arms wide open and prove that retail can overcome the many obstacles it faced in 2017.

Here’s what we’re excited about:

Artificial Intelligence for the marketeer

Proper Sci fi geekery alert! Yes we’re at that point in time, artificial intelligence is now becoming the norm and something retailers are going to have to open their minds to if they want to be competitive.

It’s a bit mind blowing really, there’s now too much data for the human brain to handle on a daily basis which means we’ve needed to bring in the big guns and ask for a little help from the robots.
Using technology such as machine learning and deep learning methods can be hugely beneficial to brands, it’s basically adding brain power to your business that doesn’t sleep.

Machine learning and deep learning methods can assist data analysts to help recommend optimisations to content to improve organic search as well as detecting patterns in real-time to give marketeers an advantage at understanding customers, competitors, or market changes – turning insights into action!

If you want to read more about AI we recommend the following:

“artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-what-are-the-opportunities-for-search-marketers”– Search Engine Watch
“innovation-how-can-brands-keep-up-with-unpredictable-audiences” – The Drum

Understanding the customer even MORE

It’s no secret that retailers, especially if they haven’t already, need to get to grips with their customer data to stay ahead of the curve. Many retailers out there still don’t understand their customer’s behavioural patterns, needs and desires and this needs to change.

It’s time to dig deep into the data and updates in Google Analytics are allowing marketer’s to do this on a daily basis. The standard report function now enables more insight into user-level behaviour within sessions, User Explorer has been re-vamped to include lifetime metrics and dimensions for individual users, marketers can create audiences and publish them for analysis within the platform which enables comparison between different audiences over a period of time and finally conversion probability – Google can now identify recent site visitors with the highest probability of a future conversion by analysing historical data and automatically identifying the patterns between variables within sets of high-value customer. We’re in analytics heaven!

#BFF

We read a great article from Econsultancy last month explaining how the ‘working backwards method is key to superior customer experience’. We’ve been thinking this for a long time now and working with our clients to better understand their customer profiles before implementing any kind of digital strategy. Addressing their customers’ needs/desires and problems using the insight provided by the data.

In 2018 brands should be able to predict their customer’s behaviour even before they can, getting to know them inside and out, essentially becoming their #BFF.

GDPR

Ok…this one isn’t as exciting BUT very important and ties in nicely with the necessity of customer data. It’s the talk of the town and we all need to get prepared for 25th May 2018.

The regulation is there to protect EU citizens from privacy and data breaches in an increasingly data-driven world. It isn’t new but it’s the latest evolution of regulations on data privacy and protection so if your business is already compliant with the Data Protection Act you should be most of the way there.

We will be dedicating one of our next posts to GDPR, so watch this space……

Let’s not put our heads in the sand after a tricky year, let’s keep them high and rise to the challenges that 2018 will bring.

Remember, the customer is always right!

Using Christmas 2017 trends to grow sales

As well as keeping on top of developments in retail strategy, our many years living and breathing retail has made the Leapfrogg team keen design trend spotters.

Although not always relevant to a consistent or seasonal product strategy, understanding how design and visual trends are developing is important when helping us make recommendations on how to keep merchandising and marketing imagery fresh, how to ensure email marketing is on trend and how your product images stay fresh and engaging on social media.

Rosie is a frequent speaker at Pulse and this year, came back with three main trends that had been spotted at the show:

Bloomsbury Christmas

Rosie’s favourite, Bloomsbury is a festive celebration of the dark interiors trend, rich, dark colours and textures, with big blooming florals. Layering is key to create a luxurious, sumptuous feel.

Rich burgundy, deep plum tones and navy are accentuated with the satin textures of orchid, magnolia petals and pearl.  Think luxe, butter soft leathers, with hints of opulent gold and richly scented candles to create an intimate and luxurious mood.

Decorate table tops with lavish floral arrangements and collections of exotic, metallic trinkets

A brand that brings the Bloomsbury Christmas to life is interiors stylist and designer Anna Hayman, for more inspiration on this trend, follow her on Instagram (her gold leather curtains are our particular fav!).

Nomadic Christmas

Gwen’s favourite, Nomadic Christmas is a combination of this year’s global nomad and scandi themes; the bare woods and simple, clean lines of scandi interiors are softened with rustic finishes, artisanal soft furnishings and oodles of greenery

This trend is embodied by a cool and calm palette of eucalyptus greens, warm greys, navy, charcoal and dark denim blue. Rich browns and pops of dusty pink add an earthy element.

Feature furniture pieces are made from bleached wood, draped in patch work and geometric patterned rugs and heavy rustic fabrics.

For the Christmas table, think heavy linens, crackle glazed artisanal bowls, miss-matching plate settings and wooden serving spoons.

For inspiration on this interiors trend, check out blogger Kate Young on Instagram.

Indulgent Christmas

Lucy’s favourite, the Indulgent Christmas trend explodes with excesses of glitter, tinsel, clashing brights and glitter, plenty of glitter!  High shine metallics and over the top decorations in man-made fibres and plastics, a room decorated in the Indulgent Christmas trend looks like a bomb went off in a party poppers factory and some unicorns tried to put it out with a glitter cannon.

Colours are vibrant and clashing, with Miami inspired colour combinations of turquoise, orange, pinks and lilacs adding lightness to the usual Christmas reds and golds

More is more with this interiors trend, so spray paint objects pink and tie them to the tree and cover everything in rainbow glitters – including yourselves!

Read blogger Sarah Akwisombe’s Christmas styling posts for inspiration on how to bring this trend to life.

We’ve put the following tips together to help you make the most of these trends:

  • Go through your product portfolio and identify any that could sit well into a trend, refresh the product copy if relevant and optimise for any trend related natural searches
  • Experiment with some of your paid search spend – what trend related search terms could you appropriately target to pull further traffic into your product pages?
  • Ensure your social team are incorporating relevant trend hashtags into their posts about your products, you could inspire engagement from a new audience if you’re are visible
  • Include nods to the trends that sit best with your products with any seasonal photography, to ensure your imagery stays fresh and ahead of the curve
  • Try product placement or developing a relationship with key bloggers within each trend niche – featuring in their marketing and media not only positions you well within a trend, but is worth PR riches

 

How retailers SHOULD mention the C word (Christmas) right now!

If you’re a regular to our blog you’ll know we preach Christmas planning every year! However with the growing popularity of Black Friday, and savvy shoppers starting their Christmas buying earlier every year planning your Christmas and pre-Christmas strategy now is essential to success.

Building on our recommendations from previous posts:

Tis the season to start planning for Christmas

Christmas in July what you should be doing now

We have even more top tips for you!

What do your customers want?

All good strategies should start with customer insight, ask your customers about their planned shopping behaviour for this year. A simple Survey using a tool like survey monkey can help you unlock data for planning your Christmas marketing strategy.

Will your customers be looking out for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals? If so what deals most appeal to them?

Use this to test popularity of your Christmas Gifting products by asking your customers which ones they would be most interested in. Who they might be gifting for and how much they might be looking to spend.

Check in with them on what channels they use when researching there Christmas gifts, are they reading blogs? How important are reviews? What social channels do they focus on?

In a crowded space understanding what is most important to your customers will help you plan your budget and tactics effectively.

Social media

We talked lot in our previous post about getting you content right on social, making sure your potential customers have an exceptional experience with you is also not to be forgotten. With increased traffic, customers and sales making sure your customer service through all channels is impeccable is essential to creating happy customers.

With social media taking an ever more present seat in customer service, and those comments and conversation being available in the public arena up weighting your customer service staff is a must. Whilst that’s not rocket science ensuring you have enough time to train them and get them up to speed with your brand and social media guidelines, get them fluent in all the new product inventory and offers will only make for better customer service and improved sales.

So make sure staff and training is included in your budget.

Mobile first

Again not an unfamiliar message from us on optimising for mobile, with Google planned Mobile First index roll out if it’s not on your list to be looked at it should.

Google assures us it’s some months away but that shouldn’t stop you from getting started now. Here’s a couple of great articles on what mobile first mean and some tips on how to prepare from our friends are search engine land.

 

90 days may seem like a long time but it’ll be here before you know it. For support planning your Christmas strategy do not hesitate to get in touch

Black Friday & Cyber Monday – How to use them strategically to make a positive difference to your business

Christmas 2016 was a bit of a mixed bag for retailers, with the ‘new normal’ trading peaks of Black Friday and Cyber Monday now firmly entrenched in consumer’s minds.  We remember a little last minute panic as retailers hadn’t hit targets early in the Christmas trading season, but overall the on-and offline high street had done well by the time the alka selzer had stopped fizzing and the New Year’s hangover had receded.

The retail industry has been gearing up for this year’s festive season since July, but after a tough year for some, how do you ensure that Christmas 2017 becomes your game changing season?

The biggest question in retailer’s minds at the moment, is Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Now an established feature of the trading calendar, it’s an event in itself – but how should you approach it and is it right for you?

We’ve rounded up the key ways for you to identify the value of this retail event to your business to help you approach and plan for Christmas differently this year.

SCRUTINISE YOUR DATA

We know, you’ve heard this before, but central to your decision to stay on or jump off the Black Friday / Cyber Monday band wagon is a cold hard look at how it affected your overall Q4, and 2017 sales figures.

Did you genuinely make more because of your early discounting, or did you make the same across the period, just at different points?

The customers that you won over this period, have they gone on to become loyal repeat customers, or did they buy at a discount to be never seen again? You have 3 Qs worth of transactional data to crunch to enable you to make a strategic decision to invest time, energy and product to Black Friday / Cyber Monday.

We’ve spoken to many retailers who are going to resist the temptation of black Friday this year, but behind that decision is a very clear understanding of how potentially damaging (or indeed, rewarding) the effort to take part and get the cut through you want, is.

CAN YOU USE BLACK FRIDAY TO IDENTIFY AND TARGET THE GROWTH OF YOUR DATABASE?

It is possible to use Black Friday / Cyber Monday strategically of course.  If from scrutinising your data, you won some customers that did make a positive difference to your business, can you win more look-a-like customers from offering a similar offer than you did last year?

DO YOU HAVE THE TIME AND RESOURCE TO GENUINELY CONNECT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS WELL BEFORE BLACK FRIDAY?

We know you have an email marketing strategy and you probably have a solid content strategy – but can you, hand on heart, expect your customer’s loyalty this Christmas, or do you risk their heads being turned by a different and exciting brand in the melee of Black Friday / Cyber Monday?

Along with the scrutiny of your transactional data – make sure you know how to really engage with your customers to keep them with you during the festive period.  It’s disappointing how many bland marketing messages are seen at Christmas and if you choose to not do Black Friday, then you need a laser focus on your customers and an effective plan to engage, upsell and retain them.

Alternatively, why not just target your existing customers with a Black Friday message?  Focus on rewarding them just before Christmas with an added value message to encourage further loyalty.

Retailers don’t have to be beholden to Black Friday & Cyber Monday to win this festive season, but by taking a step back, identifying its bigger picture value to your business and planning to make the most of it, you can make Black Friday work strategically for you, if indeed, you discover it’s right for you and your business at all.

Boost your Festive ROI – Five top tips to maximise Christmas sales

With £24 billion spent online in the UK in the 8 weeks running up to Christmas in 2015 and a further 11% rise predicted for 2016, how prepared are you to take advantage of this years bumper sales season? In this post I am going to explore five top tips to turn up the dial up on the activity you are doing already to boost ROI.

 

Dedicated Landing Page / Onsite Content

Your onsite strategy must include bespoke landing pages dedicated to Christmas, ideally getting pages live in October so they have time to bed in and become well established in time for the busy period.

Make sure your customer is at the heart of your content, consider how they might be searching, who are they buying for, what budget will they spend? Creating relevant onsite content that is useful, engaging and that has a clear call to action will be key to driving conversion.

Curate your best edit into a Christmas Gift guide, price band filtering to easily aid customers who have a specific budget in mind, along with ‘Gifts for him’, ‘Gifts for her’, ‘Gifts for kids’ to direct users to the most relevant content.

Getting your onsite content nailed then allows you to integrate your offsite strategy and funnel people to the most relevant content. Creating a consistent message on and off site, increasing awareness, engagement and ultimately conversion through a targeted approach.

Make sure messaging, offers and promotions in your offsite activity are clearly detailed on the landing page you are directing customers to, there’s nothing more frustrating than landing on a page without the relevant information on the offer, promotion or product you’ve seen.

Brand Paid Search

Brand Paid Search can be used cheaply and effectively to promote onsite messages and promotions. Creating consistent messaging across touch points.

“But no one is bidding on my brand term” I hear you cry “why would I pay for traffic I am getting organically?!” A very valid question…

Not all retailers run brand Paid Search year round, if you have no competition on your brand terms why would you? Competition or not, tactical use of Brand and Brand + Product Paid Search gives you seasonal and time sensitive flexibility in your message, that your well optimised but generic Natural Search listing can’t. Using site links to drive traffic to your Christmas content, gift guides and dedicated landing pages, plus call out extensions to highlight key messages such as delivery, price matching, returns etc.

If you haven’t already completed your trademark authorisation with Google, this allows you to associate your Adwords account as the trademark owner, create a list of authorised resellers if appropriate. We’ve seen clients brand CPCs drop after they have claimed and managed their Trademark authorisation.

Personalisation of offers

Use your data wisely, tap into your customer segments and personalise your message across touch points. Offering your customers relevant and timely offers that will drive them back to the site to buy.

Not all site visitors are made equal, use your remarketing lists and customer segments to create a more personalised message depending on the visitors site behaviour.

Abandon baskets being the Holy Grail and those primed to buy. Often retailers are all too quick to go straight in with a discount, when people can be tempted back without taking a big hit on your margin. We have seen great success with a tiered offering, for example:

No purchase within 24 hours – Free Next Day Delivery
No purchase within 1 week – Gift with purchase / free gift wrapping
No purchase within 2 weeks – X% discount

New vs returning – Depending on your strategy whether that be acquisition, retention or both! Use your remarketing list for search ads to show new and returning visitors different, relevant and personalised messages e.g. introductory offer to new customers, returning visitor promotional code. Also optimise bids based on behaviour so perhaps a 25% bid increase for returning customers.

RLSAs will also allow you to target terms you wouldn’t normally target, it opens up keywords that perhaps would be too expensive and perhaps broad, just for visitors who have been to the site or who have converted before.

Create sense of urgency

Black Friday was the busiest trading week last year with estimated sales of £4.3 billion last year, up 62% on 2014. In just two years the shift from Black Friday being a Bricks and Mortar event on a single day to a week of online offers.

Why have we all gone so crazy for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Creating that sense of urgency with time sensitive offers is a brilliant conversion tactic to push people to purchase, however don’t over use it or people will learn to ignore it.

  • Some examples on how to do this:
  • Flash sale / promotions for a limited time period
  • AdWords dynamic countdown ads are a great, they have proven to significantly increase CTR and drive more traffic to the site
  • Sneak previews for your VIPs – let them have access to say the Christmas edit, Sale or similar 24 hours before it’s unveiled to the general public
  • Shipping offers for a limited period
  • Last order dates to get in time for Christmas
  • Stock levels for products with limited availability

Social commerce

So you’ve spent 2016 gaining followers, driving engagement, so how can you monetise social further in the busy period?

Optimise your calls to action, for example on Facebook:

  • Shop Now – direct fans to your website if sales are the primary objective
  • Send Message – Allows fans to send a private message directly to your Facebook account, where you could start the order process
  • Call Now – you get the idea right!

Facebook Shop:

Most ecommerce platforms now have an app or plugin to pull your site inventory into Facebook. We saw sales increase 50% after launching a Facebook Shop and promoting through Paid Social ads. With the rise of mobile commerce people are far more comfortable buying direct from their phone and through social commerce.

Content Optimisation:

Ensure that content is optimised for each channel. This will ensure a high quality appearance, better visibility within users’ timelines and increased engagement. One size does not fit all!

Promoted Content:

Organic reach has declined dramatically on all platforms, particularly Facebook. Boosting posts on Facebook and Twitter with small amounts of budget can drastically increase reach and engagement, as well as driving fan acquisition.

Ultimately these tips are designed to help you squeeze the ROI out of activity you are already doing, maximising visibility and efficiency of budget and time invested over the next 10 weeks.