Have you heard yourself saying this lately? "I'm getting all these page views, but not many sales." You might have a whole bunch of potential customers discovering your brand, but your issue might not be getting eyes on your products-see, you want the right eyes.
You want customers who are looking for your product and its benefits to discover you, and if you're making the wrong marketing moves, the exact opposite might be taking place: a bunch of dissatisfied folks are leaving your website. When it comes to finding the right customer, the key is quality over quantity (though quantity never hurts).
We'll help you get in the right mindset that will help you bring the customers you need to your brand.
Understand your brand
Every marketing endeavor worth its salt starts with a journey of self-exploration. If you and your team do not have a clear vision and understanding of what your business actually is (not what you want it to be) you cannot get it to become the entity that you want it to be. The process doesn't have to be dire, you're likely already running a successful business if you have the time to do an exercise like this. Here are 3 important components to generate a fuller understanding of your brand.
Understand the audience you want
What kind of audience do you want? Customers with disposable income isn't specific enough. This isn't a trick question, and in fact, it might be the audience that you already have. This portion of business discovery can be fun because you just get to think about the type of people for whom your products fulfill a need. But, you also have an opportunity to do a deep dive into demographics and customer research to determine what particular types of customers buy your products.
Customer experience takes priority. According to a Walker study, by the end of 2020, unique customer experience will overtake price and even product as the key differentiator between brands.
Know the competitors
Understanding your ideal audience (and your own customers) will naturally lead you toward your competitors. This is an important step. Understanding who you're competing against lets you know the potential unmet needs of your customers that your competitors might be filling, and then you can respond with products and marketing that fill those needs. Using tools like SpyFu, Google Trends, and Google Alerts to get an idea of what your competitors are doing is a good place to start.
Know yourself
After you've done the first two, you then have to take a good long look at your products and services. What does your product actually do for your customers? Are you promising something that your product does not deliver, which prevents you from getting your ideal customer? If so, make adjustments. Micro adjustments in marketing plans can pay big dividends.
Target the right customers
Not everything is for everybody! It can be hard to internalize this fact when it comes to your business, but it's the truth. Some customers are simply not looking for your product and what it provides. However, Google gets around 5.6 billion search queries a day, so odds are that there are more than enough people looking for products like yours. Now, how do you find those customers and point them to your products?
Explore the possibilities of organic search
According to a BrightEdge study, organic search drives 51 percent of traffic. Organic search results are unpaid, meaning that they're delivered to the person searching in the search results page as a normal item, not an ad.
What does this mean for you?
It means that it's time to start (if you haven't already), producing content that brings the customers you want while also doing keyword research and optimization so you can start ranking in the organic search results. This is not to say that advertising is ineffective or that you should start neglecting social media, but a solid strategy is to start researching keywords to determine pieces of content that you can use to compete for the eyes of your ideal customers.
Build the baseline of your content strategy
It would take an encyclopedia-sized post to explain the ins and outs of creating a quality content strategy, but to start getting the customers who are looking for your products, there are some basic steps to take.
What format?
When examining your brand, you need to identify what format will work best for your customers. Infographics? Video? Blog posts? Different customers will be looking for different formats, but you also want to make sure that you're creating content that matches your brand.
For instance, if you sell furniture that customers have to assemble at home, a combination of how-to videos, schematic infographics, and blog posts on interior design might be a winning combo.
Where will you publish?
This can be a major component of a content strategy, or PR campaign as well. Because we're talking e-commerce, content that indexes to a Google search is likely where you're going to want to publish, so on your e-commerce website's blog, or on websites that will provide good linking opportunities to your own. There are also physical options, including but not limited to, press releases, community engagement, brochures, newsletters, events, sponsorships, and partnerships.
What visitors are you going to compete for?
This is the big one. You've done the work, and you know what type of customer you want to compete for, but how will you do it? A great place to start is with keyword research. Ecommerce SEO tools like Ahrefs or Moz are fantastic ways to start researching competitive search keywords that your ideal customers are using. You likely won't be able to compete for ones that are highly sought after, but using your content to compete for keywords that are less searched for or competitive is a powerful way to start bringing the customers you want to your brand.
Don't be afraid to be human
This is more of a philosophical tip. People don't just select a product or company to purchase from based on their need for the product. They're much more likely to purchase something that comes from a brand that they connect with. When someone is looking for shoes, they're looking for shoes that express something that they feel about themselves. So, when it comes to creating a content strategy or plan for your e-commerce business, remembering that the culture that you create, the humanity that you put on display can be just as important as the price tag that you attach to the item.
