This is positive news for those brands who traditionally operate in an ecommerce environment, who can expect to see positive gains as a result. However, what about those SME businesses who adapted to lockdown 1 (and now the sequel)? And are due to face their first festive period online.
Have a digital marketing strategy
Though marketing may be at the back of your mind, it is vital to attracting the right people to your store to purchase products.
Digital marketing is a broad category and can encompass everything from paid advertisements to social media. The trick to not falling down the rabbit hole is to identify what is most important to your business.
1) Know your audience
The trick behind knowing where to invest your time is to understand your audience. Who are they? What are they looking for? How do they find you? What are their biggest challenges and how can you help them overcome it.
2) Spend time with social media
You don’t need to be a genius to know that social media (especially for those businesses marketing to 20 somethings) works. You don’t need to invest serious money into it, just your time.
Find out which platform works for your audience demographic (hint: the younger they are the more likely Instagram will work), spend some time looking at what other businesses are doing and craft something similar for your consumers.
3) Communicate frequently
Whilst too many emails can appear spammy, maintaining direct and regular contact with your previous customers and subscribers outside of social media is a fantastic way to connect with your audience. This is especially relevant if you want to promote new stock and product offers.
4) Invest wisely
PPC is a fantastic idea if you need to give your business a small boost on the run up to Christmas. However, we will always advise you to invest your money wisely. Consider where your audience are most likely to be active and consider what they may be looking for before you invest in PPC.
Optimise for all platforms
Customers no longer just purchase goods from a PC or laptop, by 2022 mobile commerce is anticipated to grow by 62%, and is likely to be accelerated further by the impact of Covid on consumer buying behaviours.
Ensuring your website is optimised for different screen sizes and loading speeds (inclusive of 4G) is key to ensuring a positive user experience and consumer retention once they access your site.
However this is not just limited to your web performance, products will also need to be optimised. This includes ensuring images are the correct size, descriptions are correct and meta descriptions are included, to ensure an enjoyable consumer experience and positive SEO rankings, tying back into the digital marketing strategy we mentioned earlier.
Need to take the load off?
We understand SMEs and even medium to large businesses are feeling the pressure. If you are in a position reading this and thinking “oh no. Not another thing I need to be doing!” We want to let you know that we are here.
Sometimes the solution can be as simple as temporarily bringing in a team member to help carry the workload. We recently wrote a blog on the various recruitment options available for businesses in todays market, including those who may be in financial difficultly, where employing a freelancer or hiring on a fixed term contract can be a viable financial solution to your workload dilemma.
If you are interested in finding out how we can help your business through the festive period feel free to reach out to either our freelance/interim team or our permanent team.
