1. Focus on Customer Retention
Brands struggling to recover from the unfortunate COVID events of 2020 should be focusing on existing customers as first priority and new customers as a bonus. In an uncertain economy, most brands—especially niche retailers— should focus on existing, loyal, customers.
You should consider personalized push notifications on smartphones and loyalty incentives if you download mobile apps to shop or transact in directly.
Keeping existing customers happy is cheaper than acquiring new ones because brands have bypassed the early stages of the customer journey and have more data to work with for personalized messaging.
Keep in mind, mobile interactions like SMS and email, are a direct link between brand and customer. The pandemic has been catastrophic for small businesses so this simply further heightens the need for small companies to own their audience and have a strong brand reputation.
2. Start Selling on Social Media
Social Commerce is a new trend you might not have heard of yet. In 2020, Facebook launched Shops for both Facebook and Instagram, allowing users to shop directly on their platforms.
Social Commerce brings a whole new opportunity for marketers and business owners to put their products in front of potential clients. Retailers are working hard to reduce the friction from product to purchase, using in-app shopping on social media channels.
Social commerce is a viable long-term strategy, allowing the retailers to easily, speedily, and directly test new markets.
3. Build Trust with Your Customers
The COVID pandemic accelerated a trend in which consumers are looking to spend money with brands that not only share their values, but brands they trust.
Consumers have become more selective of where they spend their money. They want to know the businesses they support have their best interests in mind. Building trust doesn’t require a large budget or hours of marketing to them. All you have to do is make a solid promise to your customers and keep it.
4. Optimize Your Website for Voice Search
It’s the Year “Hey Siri”, “Hey Google”, “Hey Bixby” and “Hey Alexa”
We’ve seen voice search in previous year-end predictions. However, 2021 may be the year it really takes off as consumers start to use their voice-enabled devices more while they were at home during the pandemic. A lot of time at home meant people were willing to explore what their smart home devices could actually do. They opened a dialogue with them and begin to learn and rely on them daily.
As a result, brands should optimize for voice search by focusing on longer-tail keywords that reflect how consumers ask questions or make requests verbally to stay ahead of the curve.
About 22% of users use voice search by Google to get details of local businesses and the numbers are steadily growing.
5. Use Retailer Media Networks
Retailers like Amazon and Walmart were among the few to benefit from changes spurred by the COVID pandemic.
In recent history, Amazon has also diversified its advertising portfolio, adding units like Sponsored Video Ads, Sponsored Display Ads and OTT ads.
Amazon has become a fully enclosed ecosystem, supporting the whole marketing funnel from product discovery to purchase. Advertisers can use OTT and Sponsored Display to build awareness, video ads to educate and engage visitors and traditional sponsored product ads to drive transactions. These developments mean advertisers can receive a better reach and performance on Amazon than ever before.
The spike in e-commerce and related impact on budget allocations are projected to continue. Figures from eMarketer, which show advertising on e-commerce platforms jumped 39% in 2020 and will grow another 30% in 2021, capturing 13% of total U.S. digital ad spend. E-commerce sites know a lot about their customers, which is key to ad targeting without reliance on third-party cookies.
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