E-commerce is on the rise for quite some time now. A major surge in its usage was seen during the Covid-19 restrictions but the appeal of shopping without getting out of your house hasn’t died even after the uplifting of mobility restrictions. Now, the world has moved to online shopping, and businesses are left to devise new ways of reaching out to their customers. Though marketing is as old as business itself this new paradigm of business demands some new approaches. To increase sales, marketing budgets are allocated a hefty sum of the overall budget.
Multiple marketing options are now used by successful businesses to reach out to their potential customers. This is a proven fact as businesses that have used multiple marketing types have seen high returns on their investment with significant growth avenues opening. Though it seems quite expensive, by using a customer acquisition cost calculator, you can find that the means justify the end.
With a proper effective strategy, you can ensure that your customer acquisition and retention costs don’t exceed your available resources. For this, you have to know your customers first. Get a clear understanding of what they are demanding and how you can get to them most efficiently. Learn about the attitudes, values, and shopping behaviors of your target audience. Then, you can apply the customer acquisition calculator to have an idea of what they are going to cost you in terms of salaries of staff, renting/purchasing tools, marketing activities, etc. Always keep room for additional expenses. The next step is to chalk out a marketing strategy to target them.
Social Media is the most effective marketing tool to spread your brand awareness. Though paid advertisement options are available, you can do much without them if you leverage them a little smartly. Customers trust something if they see continuity and rapid responses to their queries with genuine realism. Though it will be a little tough to make your place on already teeming social media platforms, it is worth the effort.
Develop your website and hire an expert to optimize it smartly. With a good search engine optimization strategy, you can make your website attractive to a lot of customers, increasing your brand awareness and sales. SEO is all about increasing your website’s ranking. Much more than social media platforms, customers are prone to trust google websites with a good layout. Though the approach requires no less amount of patience, the results are satisfactorily reliable. Work on your keywords and once you start getting traffic, it’s only a matter of time before you become an authority in the market.
Email is another effective tool to reach out to customers. Moreover, you can keep customers updated regarding the latest developments or products. But the drawback is that people tend to not look at all the mail and although it’s cost-effective, the chances of your mail ending in the trash bin are great. Email marketing though not a new phenomenon, has gained traction in recent years. A more advanced approach is being promoted nowadays known as targeted email marketing. Here instead of reaching out to everyone, only potential customers are targeted. This narrows down the audience significantly while making the operation more effective. However, do make an attractive newsletter keeping only the relevant information, making it as concise as possible. It should be designed in such a manner that the customer can comprehend everything in just a single glance. Various free email campaign services are available, but you shouldn’t shy away even from the paid ones as the potential returns are enormous.
In the lieu of marketing concerns, make sure you don’t neglect what you are sending out. As said earlier, keep your targeted audience in mind, its values, attitudes et cetera, and design your content accordingly. Always double-check that everything is in its place before sending out anything. Even a single negligence can impart an amateurish impression which is the last thing you would want. If you rely only on promotional material, your clients are not gonna get hooked. For this, you will need to converse and engage with your customers. Your content must be research-based and must not conflict with your customer’s attitudes.
Business is all about trust but for this trust to establish people must try out your product at least once. And to get people to try you out, referrals are important. It has been found that people are more likely to respond favorably to a business when it comes from a familiar source. Although building your customer base through referrals can be a challenge but with a well-put strategy, you can get there.
This is the ultimate goal of every business but few understand that building a loyal customer base is not a stand-alone phenomenon and requires a multilateral approach. If your customers are happy, they are surely gonna return and bring many more with them. If a business is able to retain its first customers, it won’t need any further assistance since customer satisfaction starts a chain reaction bringing many more to your fold just because their brethren have been served right and a feeling of trust is established. If you can keep this trust, your business can become a command in your field in no time. You can also incentivize them for more gains.
Once you have served your customers and are getting positive responses, the next step is to leverage these reviews appropriately. This is a very cheap yet efficient way to promote your business. Most customers rely on these online reviews to establish trust in a business entity. Don’t just rub off criticism, but show that you are willing to deal with any dissatisfaction that your customers may have encountered. This will give you the originality that customers so desire.
In the end, these are just market strategies and can deliver the customer to your door front, but to retain them there depends on your products and services.
