In this Digital age, it is important to have an online presence for your brand. But how? In this article we discuss some important online brand promotion strtaegies that will help you in improving your brand presence on online platforms.
Digital marketing helps launch and stabilize novelty retail stores by the hundreds, mainly because it is far more accessible, and less expensive as compared to outbound marketing techniques.
The idea of promoting a ‘supply and purchase’ business plan within a brick-and-mortar store has been around for ages, making retail one of the most commonly profound and lucrative business models to date. Marketing your retail brand during a time when digital technology was new and challenging, but businesses boomed despite the inadvertent competition in the industry.
With the advent of digital technology, competition arose, giving birth to mediocre retail brands that threatened to steal the limelight of multiple, convenient or speciality retail stores with online marketing.
To keep up with the digital age, it is time to discuss how your retail store can keep up with the latest trends in online marketing.
Creating a Retail Brand Strategy for Online Brand Promotion
Before you get ready to take down the market with your brand’s unique designs and aimless marketing tactics, it is essential to develop a brand strategy with the help of following two core principles.
Core Purpose
Define the central ideology or vision fueling the core purpose of your brand’s existence today. The core purpose of creating a brand in the retail industry is to focus on what your customers need and how they need it in the first place.
Core Values
According to Jim Collins & Jerry I. Porras authors ‘In Built to Last’, every retail business model depends on a set of core values that are fueled by the niche industry’s target market in addition to the core purpose of the brand. Here, online consumer surveys can help you identify the requirements of your target market so that you can pair them with your business ideology to provide your customers with what they want from your brand.
Online Brand Promotion
Once you’ve established the core purpose and core values of your business, align them with your marketing strategy to promote your brand online in the following seven ways.
- Create a Website
This is the most important step before you initiate online brand promotion.
Before leveraging your brand through a variety of online media channels, create a website to showcase your brand’s availability on the internet. Hire a website developer or development agency to help you create a professional, visually appealing, and responsive website online. You can also design a logo with Logaster to make your website look more professional.
Align your brand’s ideology, principles, core purpose, and core values with the copy of your website so that your customers can get a thorough idea of what you’re selling and why they should shop at your retail store in the first place. According to statistics, approximately 46% of consumers are liable to judge your retail brand’s credibility on account of your website layout and design.
It is essential to design a website that showcases your principles. Your website loading speed can have a significant impact on consumers. In fact, 88% of visitors move away from a brand’s website after their first slow experience.
- Create All Types of Content
Your significant experience in the retail business will help you identify your brand’s area of expertise. From offering affordable discount pricing on quality products and regularly leveraging promotional offers, your brand’s area of knowledge relies on what contributes to your customers’ high-quality experience.
For instance, if your brand is credible for delivering quality products to the consumers’ doorstep within the shortest timeframe possible, you can leverage this area of expertise when creating content for your website.
- Weave your area of expertise in fast delivery by showcasing the experience of your existing customers as testimonials on your website.
- Create a blog that targets the inconvenience caused by late deliveries with solutions through your content.
- It’s always a good idea to turn to professional writers like those at Best Essay Education to come up with relevant and interesting articles.
- Be open to all types of material such as infographics and videos to highlight solutions to shopping at your brand via tutorials and tips. Visual content is viewed more by the consumers, as seen in the chart below.
- You can also post retail industry news on your blog and highlight them with the latest statistics to keep people interested and engaged.
- Take Over Social Media
Once you’ve created your website and filled it with content, leverage it on social media by identifying platforms where your target customers already hang around. TIt will help you to drive traffic to your website, which in turn will create a consumer base for your retail store.
For online brand promotion create a social media page and find out when your target customers come online and what type of content they prefer to see on their newsfeeds. Not every brand is successful on every social platform, so decide the social media platform where it’s most suitable to promote your brand.
- Launch campaigns of exclusive in-store events by creating similar ones on social media.
- Create referral programs and offer your existing customers a coupon or discount with every invitation that they send out.
- Launch loyalty programs and provide your best, recurring customers with coupons and discounts.
- Promote your social media accounts on Facebook or Instagram by creating a fan following ‘hashtag’ relevant to your merchandise.
After every sale, ask your customers to tag your brand in their posts which you can share on your official brand page for creating leverage. For instance, the fashion brand, Fashion Nova, asks its customers to write #FashionNova when they post their pictures on Instagram.
- Use Social Media for Customer Support
Most retail brands have little to no customer support service, mainly because they don’t believe in providing one outside of their physical retail space.
Try to incorporate artificial intelligence into your online customer support programs so that you can respond to queries much more quickly via chatbots. It will allow your live representatives to garner attention on areas that require full assistance.
For instance, if you’re launching an exclusive campaign, then make sure you offer prompt customer support via social media by answering to your consumers’ queries before they change their minds.
Amazon, an online reseller retail store, is successful primarily because they’ve centered their business model on providing prompt robust solutions to customers – wherever and whenever.
- Engage them in Surveys
To make sure that your customers return to shop, develop a database where you can store their email credentials and contact data for further engagement. A CRM database system will keep you in touch with your customers via different communication channels such as text (cellular of WhatsApp), Email List, or via social media.
Before you promote your products to a pre-existing lead, create a 2-min survey to ask your customers about their experience at your store. A survey will not only help you to take information regarding improvements for your brand but will also help you provide targeted solutions for recurring sales.
You can click here to create the next quiz that will help you identify customers’ wants and needs from your brand so that once you improve and can market those changes accordingly.
- Network with B2B Partners
Discover B2B brands – both online and offline – with a similar brand purpose and target market. Join local networking groups on social media to find strategic partners that are promoting their brand to your target market. Learn about their strategy and their principles to develop a pitch for a keen partnership.
For instance, your retail brand sells cosmetics while another brand such as a beauty salon uses them on their customers. Discover such hairstylists and beauticians by joining relevant social media marketing and networking groups on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Discover networking events via Facebook so that you can go to such meetups and establish relationships for mutual sales.
- Network with Influencers
Influencers are people who can influence the intent and purchase decision of a similar target market through their promotional content on social media. Influencers are vocal on social media, mainly because 94% of consumers believe they promote authenticity and transparency through their profiles.
Learn some influencer marketing techniques from Kylie Jenner for her brand Kylie Cosmetics.
Apart from networking with B2B strategic partners, engage with business influencers so that they can help promote your brand on their social media towards their target audience. Target micro influencers or indulge in celebrity endorsements to develop campaigns, new products, or promotional gigs of your retail store online.
Excellent post. Keep it up!|