Published on: 19 August 2019
Last Updated on: 30 July 2021
In the past few decades, there have been major changes in the world and our digital surroundings. While the geopolitics and social interactions of the world are in constant flux, since the beginning of the 21st century, there have been other types of changes that have occurred. Most of these alterations have come from the rise of Internet technologies around the globe. The web has totally revolutionized the world, from the way people interact with one another to the changes in the job market.
The most important driver of the economy in the 21st century is the Internet! Everything from local businesses to billion-dollar corporations uses web-based tech to survive. One part of the economy that the Internet has totally transformed is retail. Retail has in large part shifted to e-commerce, and people from around the world have been starting their own e-commerce stores.
Starting Your Own Ecommerce Store
There are numerous reasons why people start their own e-commerce stores, from the flexibility of lifestyle it provides to the potential to have a lucrative business. There is a myriad of products, which can be sold online. However, finding a niche in your products is a sure way to be successful. This is why running a pet supply eCommerce store is such a great idea. People love their pets and pay serious money for them, so pet supplies is an excellent niche that will certainly lead your company to earn immense revenue. However, if you want to be truly successful, you need to see that your organization will stand out amongst all the other e-commerce stores.
Learning How to Set Up Your Business
Once you decide to get a website for your online store, one of the first steps is to invest in a robust and user-friendly e-commerce website. This involves selecting a platform, which will allow your website to look professional, run effectively, and will enable you to organize your products and services. After your site has been launched, the next step should involve designing and executing a strong Marketing Campaign on various digital platforms.
You need to ensure that your E-commerce store highlights the hero products of your brand. For example, if you have an extensive range of liver supplements for dogs, you need to ensure that you are placing these medicines on the banner of your E-commerce store page. This will help customers identify the same and click on the page that will take them directly to checkout.
The marketing campaign should aim to create a holistic and 360-degree digital ecosystem. This ecosystem should reinforce the belief and experiences of the users. For example, your e-commerce platform should be linked to your social profiles and vice-versa. This will help redirect traffic from different mediums at all times. You would also want to adopt a creative content marketing strategy.
Your e-commerce website needs to be-
SEO optimized.
Linked to Social Media Accounts
Have a great blog section (Inbound Marketing)
Be optimized to run Google Campaigns.
Learning about these numerous facets will allow you to effectively market your e-commerce site and will let you display your brand to the world.
Final Thoughts:
As the 21st century continues to progress, running an e-commerce store will become a more popular career option. In order to be successful in this industry, you need to set up an excellent site, and effectively build your brand with a quality marketing campaign.
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
Every marketer would tell you that there are reasons why text marketing continues to become a mainstay in marketing agencies.
In fact, both conventional and modern companies highly rely on their efficacy when it comes to reaching out to their target audience. Because when you think about it, every person checks their text message inbox every time they receive a ping.
Leveraging communication strategies like an effective SMS marketing campaign allows you to grow your brand more, target more audiences, and even build closer relationships with prospects.
There are a lot of things that SMS marketing can help you with in terms of achieving business goals. But before you partake in this marketing tactic, it’s important to understand the concept behind this marketing practice. Use this guide to make successful SMS marketing campaigns.
What Is SMS Marketing?
It’s crucial to understand first the concept behind this old but gold marketing strategy. SMS marketing refers to a short message service you send to your customers to build relationships with them. It’s important for text marketers to communicate with their target audiences in a respectful and compliant manner.
No matter what your business goals are, SMS marketing puts you one step ahead of achieving them. For instance, you can drive more leads, introduce new products, lead them to check your website, and so on. The ideas that you can do with this marketing method are limitless.
Compared to email or push notification marketing, SMS marketing has several advantages. For instance, every person who receives an incoming message in their phone inbox will surely take the time to check and read them one by one.
While some people might check their emails at least once a day regarding text message inboxes, people often check them as soon as they receive a message.
Your message can be concise and clear with SMS marketing. There’s no need for lengthy advertising messages. With brief sentences that can take up less than 160 characters of the SMS limit, you can already deliver what you want to say to your prospects.
Choosing The Right SMS Marketing Tool
Now, it’s time to understand the tool to use for this marketing strategy. With the advent of technology, there is now text marketing software at your disposal. For one, you can take advantage of Drop Cowboy Ringless Voicemail service and some other brands that offer reliable text messaging as marketing services.
Text message delivery depends on the tools and services you choose. Such software comes with pricing plans that fit your marketing budget and goals. Unlike any other conventional marketing promotions like print ads, TV ads, and billboards, this marketing campaign is priced reasonably better. Also, consider partnering with the best SMS marketing service provider to automate your text messages to your target recipients.
How To Maximize On SMS Marketing Campaigns
As mentioned, a high percentage of people open text messages every time they receive one. By sending promotional messages via SMS, you ensure your customers will read them because they will arrive directly in their inboxes.
Check out these ideas in which you can maximize your SMS marketing campaigns.
1. Limited-Time Promotions
You can use an SMS marketing strategy to encourage your customers to avail of coupons and discounts or even redeem incentives or gifts. Offering these incentives for a limited time makes them even more effective.
Announcing that the campaign only runs on a promo period is an effective call-to-action strategy so your customers won’t miss out on such opportunities. It’s one effective strategy to get your business to high ranks.
Considering SMS marketing's high open rate, it’s the most effective way to communicate time-sensitive offers with customers. As a result, you ensure your customers don't pass up a good deal. This yield win-win situations for both the customers and your brand. They get discounted rates, and you could convert your sales funnel more effectively.
2. Reminding Customers
One good purpose for SMS marketing is when you could send notifications regarding the recent actions of your customers.
For instance, whether they checked your website, changed passwords, or linked different payment modes, an SMS notification will be sent to inform them that the activity is successful. Sending notification messages is essential for many businesses, and they’ve realized how effective it is in retaining customers.
By relaying notifications about their recent purchase or online activities, the customers will grow their trust in your brand. It could lead to continuous patronage. Also, they will feel at ease by getting reminders of how your brand is already dealing with their orders or purchases. Receiving reminders is valuable, especially for customers who are always busy with other things and obligations.
Make sure your brand is always at the top of your customer's minds. It’s a job that SMS is best suited for. With SMS marketing, you can remind your customers about everything from their most recently liked products to the purchased ones that are going to arrive soon.
3. Order Updates And Confirmation
An SMS is also useful for customers to receive updates regarding their orders. Once they make a purchase, a message will be sent regarding the successful transaction. It ensures peace of mind for the customer.
Also, the confirmation messages sent via SMS will allow them to use them as proof or evidence regarding their purchase. If products don’t arrive as planned, they can refer to the SMS notification.
4. New Product Release And Launches
SMS advertising is also useful for announcing new product releases. It’s the most cost-effective way for marketers to advertise new product launching. Without paying for the expensive talents of celebrities to promote new products, a large number of users will discover your new product offering through the message they can read in their SMS inbox.
Using this method will generate buzz and interest, and you could even entice old customers to come back and check out what's new. You can also use SMS campaigns to drive traffic to your website or storefront. Thus, you can simply include a link they can visit to check your new product or any offers.
5. Send Welcome Messages
Send your customer a welcome message once they subscribe to your SMS marketing campaign. Companies must start building relationships with their customers. As a result, you will be able to communicate with them right away, as they will know they have been subscribed.
It also alerts them to expect a few messages from your end every now and then. There’s no need for lengthy or complex welcome messages. Sometimes short but sweet thank you message about their subscription are already enough for your customers to remember your business.
6. Customer Service Tool
SMS is not limited to being a marketing tool; it’s also a customer support tool. In this era where customer service should be at the forefront of any business, SMS strategy can be used to ensure customer satisfaction.
It’s imperative that your work processes are as transparent as possible, and you can achieve this by constantly sending them SMS in case necessary. After all, a text message is the easiest way to communicate with pre-sale customers and post-sale tech support.
7. Collect Customer Feedback
It’s essential for businesses to receive customer feedback to determine what they are doing well and what they need to improve. And it’s something that’s being offered with SMS marketing. You can send out surveys through SMS, and customers can answer them timely and convenient.
There are many ways to create survey forms for them to easily fill out. The key is to attach the link to your SMS. Another option is to ask customers to rate you using a ranking system that’s easy for them to use.
8. Announce VIP Programs
By offering a VIP program, you can encourage loyalty among your subscribers and customers. If you want to make your VIP customers feel special, offer them VIP-only discounts. This sense of exclusivity allows your customers to treat your brand with more respect and value.
Also, use this program for customers to gain early access to sales and other promotions. One way for them to qualify for your VIP list is to encourage them to fill out a signup link. However, since it’s VIP, make it seems more challenging for them to enter this list. The harder it feels to qualify, the more special and valued they would feel.
Tips To Apply Effective SMS Marketing Strategies
Applying SMS marketing strategies require effective implementations. When done right, they can produce the best outcomes for your business. Here are some tips to apply effective SMS marketing strategies for your brand:
1. Ensure That Your Customers Opted In
Your customers probably already provide you with their phone numbers. However, one common courtesy is to get their approval to start receiving SMS from your brand. Mass texting them without their consent is ethically wrong and will only lead to adverse effects on the customer. Ensure to get your customer’s clear opt-in before starting to send out text message campaigns.
Your website or other online channels can allow customers to opt-in to receive text messages. However, you should get a text confirmation before you send them anything. There are ways to get their opt-in consent. One is to make them reply Yes or No to your single SMS regarding SMS subscription. Another way is through your website.
They can press a CTA button regarding their receiving SMS messages from your brand. When the user clicks the link in the offer, they can fill out the subscription form and enter their number so they can start receiving your SMS campaigns.
2. Take Time To Introduce Yourself
A good practice is to take the time to introduce your brand in any of your SMS campaigns. Chances are your customers don’t know where the messages are coming from. Failing to include your company name or brand name on the message will only forfeit its purpose. Hence, it’s important to include your company or brand name in that short message that you’re sending.
3. Make Messages Fun And Short
It’s common for people to use SMS messages to communicate with friends and family informally. Texting should remain fun in your SMS campaign in the same way as a fun communication tool between people. Be friendly and personal with customers to build trust.
Use local trending words that are popular with your target audience for the time being. It ensures to catch their interest and make them read your text message completely. The maximum number of characters in an SMS message is 160. With an opt-out option and the need to identify yourself, that's not much to work with. Don't waste any characters, and go straight to the point of what you want to say.
4. Don’t Forget To Use Target Keywords
To encourage users to connect with you, you should select contextually relevant keywords alongside simple messages and shortcodes. Using such keywords will allow them to easily remember anything about your brand or company. If they want to research you online, they can use the same keywords found on your SMS.
5. Give An Option For Customers To Opt Out
All marketing communications should follow these standards and rules. Much like getting their buy-in, you should also give them the option to opt out and unsubscribe from your SMS campaigns. You are more likely to lose customers if you constantly text them when they do not want to hear from you.
Your messages should come with the unsubscribe option, so your customers can freely opt out anytime they want. There are some viable reasons for them to do this. But it doesn’t entirely mean that they won’t be good prospects for you in the future. It’s just that not everyone prefers to get this kind of information via text.
SMS open rates tend to be much higher than those for email, so you should also expect a higher unsubscribe rate. After a message is sent, unsubscribes may spike and treat it as a normal occurrence.
6. Be More Informative Than Promotional
You should be extremely considerate of your buyers' inboxes since promotional SMS messages can easily be turned off. Therefore, staying informative and interactive is best, and not focusing too much on sounding sales or promotional.
A good rule of thumb is to focus most of your communication on order, whether a status update or a request for feedback. Schedule your promotional messages and send them at least only twice a week at a minimum. No one wants to keep receiving promotional messages that are obvious that they want to make money from you.
Conclusion
You can increase engagement with your target audience by using SMS marketing. Keeping your customers' attention is easier if you market to them where they are most active.
Therefore, if your target audience is always in their phone’s SMS inbox, it’s worth considering SMS marketing as part of your marketing mix. Use this guide and wait for results to reflect your bottom line soon.
Read Also:
Calling Out – How Telemarketing Allows You to Reach a Wider Audience
How To Move Your Career In Social Media Marketing Up A Gear?
Best Marketing Strategies For Lawyers In Houston
Marketing is an essential part of business growth because people will buy your service only when they know about your existence. And people will know about you only when you promote your business on various platforms where they are looking for your product or services. Therefore, marketing tools play an essential role in spreading brand awareness.
Digitization has provided an equal platform for every large and small business; all you need is the right knowledge and skills to use marketing tools to grow your business.
What are Marketing Tools?
Marketing tools are techniques, strategies, and materials used by marketing specialists of brands to create, enhance, and promote their products and services in order to expand their visibility. They are used for market research, generating leads, data analysis, content creation, SEO, and other categories of marketing.
To increase productivity and make marketing time cost-efficient, there are various marketing tools in the form of software that helps you with various activities related to marketing.
Here We Have Listed Ten Must-Have Marketing Tools:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
HubSpot CRM
Zendesk
Social Media Tools
Buzzsumo
Buffer
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
SEMrush
Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension
Content Creation and Design Tools
Canva
Adobe Spark
Lead Generation Tools
Unbounce
Instapage
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
These tools let you interact with your customers through data analysis of gathered information. They compile data from various communication channels such as the company's websites, calls, emails, live chats, and other marketing materials posted on social media platforms. The data analysis helps a business know about customer behavior, their needs, and demands to provide them better services, which is an integral part of growing a business as they help to form business growth strategies to retain customers and drive sales.
1. HubSpot CRM: being free, every small business can have access to this incredible free tool. The tool saves a lot of time for the sales team as it gives you complete visibility of your entire sales pipeline on a clean and visual dashboard. It lets you connect to the prospects through free meeting scheduling, live chat, email templates, click-to-call functionality, and more.
2. Zendesk: it is an easy-to-love sales tool that will boost the productivity of your sales team, make data-driven decisions, and deliver enhanced customer experiences. Additionally, you can build and manage a pipeline that aligns with your business.
Social Media Tools:
social media helps to expand enormously, as most of the world's population is an active member of at least one social media platform where you can connect to them on a personal level. Therefore, it is highly important to manage what you post and how your followers respond to your content. Social media tools help you schedule your posts and get the right analytics from the posts, even from the channels where it can be hard to get the information.
3. Buzzsumo: The tool explores premium content that can help you get more likes, links, and shares. It analyses a vast amount of data to enhance your social media marketing strategies. Moreover, it helps you find influencers who can be an asset to your campaign. Another most important feature of the tool is that it tracks comments and trends to make a real-time connection with your audience.
4. Buffer: it is one of the most affordable and intuitive tools to manage your social media activity. It analyzes the data, helps your plan and schedule your posts, filters out important comments, and responds quickly to them. Additionally, it lets you track down your activity and analyze your progress to make better strategies.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
SEO is an integral part of digital marketing, as only an optimized website of content is visible on the search engines such as Google, which are the primary gateways for customers to enter a conversation with your brand. Therefore, you need SEO tools to manage and plan various SEO-related tasks such as keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page ranking.
5. SEMrush: It is an award-winning tool used worldwide as a single platform to do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing. Specifically for SEO, it uncovers millions of local, and national keywords, analyzes any domain's backlinking profile, tracks your SERP position on a daily basis, and runs technical SEO audits.
6. Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension: this add-on browser is easy to install and is compatible with both Chrome and Firefox. The extension shows monthly search volume, CPC, and competition data of keywords on multiple websites. Therefore, it will save you time that you can utilize to strengthen your business growth strategies.
Content Creation and Design Tools:
Content such as social images, logos, blog posts, or eBooks is the most influential way to attract people's attention to your brand. And there are many tools to create them.
7. Canva: the tool lets you create professional designs with premium features such as brand kit and background remover. It lets you can plan, create, and edit the content on your own or with your team. Additionally, the Built-in comments feature helps you communicate, work, and resolve suggestions in real-time. Therefore, with Canva, you can create world-class designs and share them with the world in just a few clicks.
8. Adobe Spark: it is a collection of three web/mobile apps, namely Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video, to allow the creation of social graphics, flyers, logos webpages, videos in various themes, and other types of content in no time. It has thousands of templates that any beginner can use to create effective content.
Lead Generation Tools:
To expand your business, you need to generate leads, and it is the most challenging part of marketing. Lead generation tools will help you make the lead generation process easy and simple as their automated features increase the process of conversion.
9. Unbounce: with this tool, you can launch overlays on top of any web page that has a call-to-action feature. You can customize the triggers and targeting rules to choose who sees the offers and when. This feature helps to make your brand reach the relevant audience whose chances of conversion are maximum. Additionally, you can personalize your overlays by making your copy adaptable to what your audience searches for.
10. Instapage: the tool lets you create and optimize relevantly, on-brand, mobile-responsive post-click landing pages and experiences without the help of a developer. It helps to increase visitor engagement and conversion with unique landing page experiences for every ad and targeted audience.
The main motive behind using these tools is to enhance the productivity of your sales department. You can make the best use of these marketing tools by hiring an expert who knows them in and out to save your time by focusing on your product and services and letting them do the rest of the job.
The best part about these marketing tools is that they are affordable, and some of them even offer free trials and templates. So, even if you are short on funds, you can still make use of these marketing tools to grow your small business.
Author Bio:
Joe Martin is a long-time contributor in the tech industry as a leader at Adobe, CMO of CloudApp, and SVP at Scorpion. With his business and marketing degress from Utah and Stanford and his work in tsech he brings a unique balance of strategy and execution to help businesses large and small grow.
When we think of digital marketing, a lot of things cross our minds, but complacency is the enemy number one to digital marketing. The trends that worked yesterday may not be working tomorrow, and that’s a fact. Digital marketing companies in Dubai are making best efforts to continually follow up on marketing trends and implement the best digital marketing strategies they can whenever a change occurs. Since the Dubai and United Arab Emirates became a nesting place for the IT sector, a lot of companies are moving to the UAE. Many people have moved from their home countries to Dubai to enjoy the benefits and see all the action first-hand.
What’s The Best Solution?
There is no simple solution to ever-changing trends in digital marketing. You can always follow up on trends, and when they go extinct, so will your marketing strategy. Waiting for new trends to appear and to implement them can happen instantly, or you’ll have to wait for some time, but that’s not the ultimate solution you’re looking for, right? If you ask professionals about their opinion, all digital marketing companies in Dubai would suggest you consider this ultimate guide on how to foolproof your digital marketing strategy once and for all https://uhurunetwork.com/digital-marketing-strategy/.
Why Do Companies Struggle With Their Marketing Strategies?
Any digital agency Dubai will tell you the same thing, and that is if your company is having a marketing strategy based on implementing one tactic after another in an endless cycle, you should think about making a sound and firm tactic that will be useful for good. Circling around and waiting for a miracle to happen is never a good tactic. Building a marketing strategy that will work incredibly for years is what we all need, and for achieving this goal, contact our digital marketing agency Dubai to schedule a consultation and a meeting.
Digital Marketing Tactics Performance Review:
Be sure to review your company’s marketing tactics performance regularly. By keeping a close eye on the stages of your growth, you’ll have a better insight into what’s actually happening. In case you’re working on multiple projects at the same time, you’ll have a lot of things to pay attention at, and from observing all of your projects, you’ll most likely see where you could implement some improvements.
Try to schedule a performance review meeting every quarter. The insights will help you set up the next set of targets for your business. Find the most effective ways to implement digital marketing into your business by following this link https://contentrally.com/effective-ways-utilize-digital-marketing/.
Listen And Respond With Personal Touch
Creating a business all by yourself is somewhat possible, but it’s not fruitful. There will always be people around you with new ideas or better solutions. While listening to what they have to say or suggest, you should think about using those suggestions. By utilizing their solutions into your business and by giving that solution a “pinch” of your own idea, you’ll get the best possible results that’ll bring satisfaction to everyone. Make sure that you always engage with real people over personal meetings and phone calls.
It is always a better idea to talk to people up front and seek their suggestions. This will help in understanding the execution of various digital marketing strategies on the ground. This will also show you whether you need to continue or abandon the strategy. Getting feedback from as many channels as possible is helpful for your brand. Social listening has emerged as one of the top avenues of reputation management for businesses. You can use digital software to find mentions of brand names. You can also look at Quora and Reddit and see which threads your brand is a part of.
Interpreting Your Story:
After reviewing your entire strategy and after discovering the likes and dislikes about the processes, you can include that feedback into a new content which will further become more engaging for your target audience.
The most appropriate way to carry this out is by narrating your experiences in front of an audience. This will help you engage with people on a personal level. This method allows you to come up with new areas for future usages and contexts. When people hear your side of the narration, they will feel more confident about opening up to you at both a personal as well as a professional level. This is the best team-building exercise that a company carries out.
The Importance Of The Steps Above:
Businesses and people working in them need to constantly evolve. If people and businesses do not evolve or adapt, they slowly start perishing away. In order to be successful, companies need to keep improving and connecting with their professional peers. This helps in improving productivity, efficiency, and results in fewer situations of conflicts and friction.
Read Also:
5 Types Of Digital Marketing
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Exploring The Different Types Of Digital Marketing Strategies
