I hope everyone is doing well out there and staying safe. It's been a challenging couple of years for sure. Actually, though, the digital marketing industry has literally BOOMED over the past 2 years. E-commerce had a major boom due to the pandemic and the momentum more or less continued through (although not quite as strong). Overall though, the pandemic has been great for the online space, digital marketing, e-commerce, social media, and everything associated with it. So what does this mean, and better yet, how can you capitalize on this for 2023? Here are some concrete areas you can focus on that allow you to grow revenue and have a great 2023!
Prioritize CRO - making your website convert traffic better is always the goal! You have to constantly be asking yourself, "How can we make our site convert better." It should be the first topic of discussion in all of your marketing meetings. You need a great CRO strategy in place, which usually includes: tools, widgets, flows, and A/B testing, in some combination. In this day and age, it's definitely accomplished with tools/widgets, automation, and A/B testing of headlines and CTAs for instance. If you want to scale your digital marketing, you will work diligently to boost your conversion rate. Bring in an expert (like myself) and make it happen. Check out ConvertCart.com, it's a managed CRO service, a suite of 16 CRO tools. Tell them I sent you.
Ramp Up Website Data Collection - as you may know, collecting SMS/text numbers in popups on e-commerce websites is all the rage. It's a phenomenally good idea, so get right on it. You can pop up a spinning wheel and collect email and phone numbers at around a 15% opt-in rate if you're doing it right (don't accept anything less). Also, I recommend pushing an opt-in collection as well. These opt-ins feed into your site abandonment flows, which create more sales. You should always focus on building up your audiences and in-house lists since they are so valuable and produce more revenue over time as you work them. As they say, "email marketing is the best-producing channel in e-commerce."
Have Great Creative/Ads - the quality and messaging of your ads are critical to media buying effectiveness. Using Influencer created videos in your own ad campaigns is a proven, winning strategy. Using other types of videos in your ads can also make them more effective and produce the response you need. When you have truly compelling ads, it will lower your average cost per click and make it more likely to get a good return on ad spend (ROAS). Keep your ads free every month and seasonal with holidays. Never let your ads stagnate.
Message Frequently - a lot of companies/brands are worried that they will lose subscribers if they ramp up their message-sending frequency. But, as long as you deliver value and great promos they will be well received and produce revenue. Even if you lose some people to increased sending frequency, you can ramp up data collection on the front end which will vastly outpace the drop-off. You can let people choose their frequency if they want to slow it down. So don't worry about it and ramp up your sending! This can also pertain to partners, affiliates, or whomever you message. Most companies don't message frequently enough or well enough, meaning they aren't delivering enough value and not leveraging the channel to produce as much revenue as possible.
Recruit Partners - "Partnership Marketing" is all the rage these days, but I've been doing it for 15+ years. It's ABSOLUTELY the thing to do! There's nothing better than partnering with another company with a similar audience, where you can pay each other on a rev share/affiliate basis. Just keep in mind that you have to do a great job converting the traffic from your partnerships with phenomenal landing pages and great offers, or it will go nowhere and disappoint.
Produce Content and Advertise It - a lot of marketers prioritize content marketing and SEO, but how many are actually advertising the content to their target audience? Not enough that's for sure because most companies just post and share. They don't budget for advertising their content and announcements. But when you advertise/boost your content to your target audiences, it's far more effective because the people you want to see it will be guaranteed to see it, multiple times most likely. But you have to do a great job converting the traffic once they get there with popups and other engagement widgets on your website/blog. You can retarget all the people that read to content with your ads to bring them back to conversion, which is how you squeeze ROI out of content marketing and blogging.
Maximize Retargeting - so a lot of companies are using "retargeting" ad campaigns but only in the most basic forms, which do work, but there are other ways to maximize your retargeting. For instance, you can retarget on multiple platforms like Google Ads, Criteo, Facebook/IG, and Linkedin. Retargeting costs have gone up so you still have to work to make it convert as well as possible. I love using Influencer created content in retargeting ads, and ads in general, tend to work well. You can also do email-based retargeting with companies like AddShoppers. They can recover abandoning website traffic with email follow-ups even if they don't give you their email. And you pay them as an affiliate. It's a major win-win.
Dominate Search Advertising - Search is still the #1 source of targeted traffic on the Internet and the vast majority of companies aren't able to realize all their paid search volume because their websites don't perform well enough! How depressing! But, what it tells you is that's where the faucet is and you have continually been cranking it up as success is shown. Also, you just have to out-convert your competition with hard-core CRO tactics, strategies, and tools. Managing PPC campaigns isn't rocket science (although there is a technique involved for sure in set-up and optimizations), but the emphasis needs to be placed on converting the traffic as well as possible by any means necessary. Also, a lot of companies don't leverage Bing/Microsoft advertising, which can be very effective and cheaper than Google Ads. Give it a try on an exact match or phrase match, no broad match to start!
Tap into Influencers - I love working with influencers! But, the reality of it is, you can't really count on them to drive revenue. They can drive revenue, but for the costs involved, I've found it doesn't produce a return on spend for a lot of brands I've worked with over the years. That being said, it can produce revenue/sales if done with a lot of strategies and with a strong enough offer and conversion rate. But most companies won't be able to pull that off, so what all brands should do is have influencers of various sizes create great little story videos that the brand can use in their own ad campaigns. That's where the true power of influencers lies in my opinion for the majority of brands. Sorry to burst bubbles! It can be a great branding play though with the right influencer and the right audience. Check out FindYourInfluence.com for a great Influencer platform.
Recruit More Affiliates/Publishers - I have a saying, "you can never have enough affiliates!" But, they have to be the right types of affiliates that drive incremental sales in my opinion. A lot of companies think all affiliates-referred sales are good sales, and that all affiliate methods are fine. I have to disagree. You have to really know how each affiliate/publisher operates and does what they do. A lot of the big affiliate producers on affiliate networks are capitalizing on the brand's inherent traffic or are coupon searchers that are already in the purchase process. Browser extensions are some of the biggest ones that capitalize on the website's inherent traffic, so if you choose to work with them you have to calibrate their commission rates downward because of the nature of their referrals. So bottom line: you have to really know each affiliate's methods. To recruit affiliates, you should be constantly reaching out to relevant content affiliates/publishers, review sites, email publishers, other companies...basically anyone and everyone that looks like they could be a good affiliate for you. You have to reach out in a very engaging and convincing way also. A lot of affiliate outreach sucks and is ineffective. You can offer new affiliates a bonus if they sign on as an affiliate of yours or a first-sale bonus to sweeten the deal! I'm launching my own affiliate/publisher-finding tools very soon so stay tuned!
Grow Customer Referrals - having a customer referral program is similar to having an affiliate program, in that they are potential sales referrers. Using tools like ReferralCandy.com and FriendBuy can really facilitate the sharing of your links with friends and family. Customer referral programs really need to be pushed hard on your audiences though, again and again over time, or they won't get the uptake it needs to produce consistently. You have actually made it part of the company culture and put it everywhere customers may see it. Your customer service agents should be emphasizing it on their calls with customers, and things of that nature. Some companies get as much as 25% of their revenue from happy referring customers! It's another great way to build your brand by creating passionate brand ambassadors.
Leverage Social Good - one of the hottest and most effective trends in e-commerce is to do social good as a brand and let your customers participate in that effort with their purchases from you. Give is the e-commerce marketing platform that grows sales, creates social impact and reduces discount dependency for brands. You can automate spend threshold, percentage-back, product-specific, and coupon code campaigns that utilize donations instead of discounts. It's really a great tool for increasing website conversion rate and doing social good at the same time! Not to mention it could get your brand off of coupon code dependence. Check them out and tell them Evan Weber sent you.
Building your Brand - so a lot of people talk about the importance of building your personal brand, especially here on Linkedin. Personally, I don't think it's for everyone because not everyone wants to or is really capable of doing that. They may not have enough knowledge to post "thought leadership" content but they can surely engage with the company's page posts and make Linkedin posts themselves that are insightful and deliver value. When your staff does this it helps your brand get more exposure, so you have to strategize with your team on how they need to be doing this and then make it part of what they do every day on Linkedin. Building your brand can also consist of other types of activities like running retargeting ads to your website's visitors, targeting your databases with ads, and advertising for page followers. I recommend always running campaigns like these at some level, even if it's $10-20 per day because is effective and cost-effective to do so.
Thanks for reading this newsletter! Here are some recent webinars I appeared in where I'm delivering a ton of value. Let me know your thoughts! If you have any questions about anything in this post, let me know! I'm happy to answer them for you.
Thanks,
Evan Weber, CEO, Experience Advertising, Inc.
Bình luận