Future Focus: Three experts, one guide: Maximise online retail sales in Q4
A guide to boosting online sales during Q4 and into 2021
With another UK-wide lockdown – in place, generating online sales for your business as we head full steam towards Black Friday and the busy Christmas period will become ever more important.
Between them – Jaye Cowle, Ben Hocking and Katherine George – presented the latest Future Focus webinar sharing tools and tips on how you can maximise online sales for your business in Q4.
Google tools to help you with online sales.
From Jaye Cowle, founder of award-winning Google Premier Partner, Launch Online.
1) List your products on Google shopping, to take advantage of selected placements where your products can now show for free. Link your Google shopping merchant account with eCommerce systems such as Shopify and Woo Commerce to create a product feed.
2) Really focus on building reviews on Google or approved review aggregator websites; this will set you apart from the competition. Those ‘trust’ signals are important for consumer purchasing decisions.
3) Ensure your Google My Business account is up to date, especially opening hours, contact information and uploading products.
4) Make sure your eCommerce tracking is enabled in Google Analytics. The phone app for Google Analytics is efficient and handy to track your website traffic.
5) Ensure your product pages are marked up with structured data to tell search engines the cost of your product, delivery information and more. This will help boost organic rankings as well as show your product information in the search results.
What makes great content on social media?
From Katherine George, owner of international multi-award winning agency Oh So Social.
1) Think about sharing content about key dates like Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Last delivery dates before Christmas but also key topics that are trending. If anything is trending on Facebook and you write content around that you will be given preferential organic space on Facebook. Make sure trending content is relevant to your audience.
2) Speak directly with your customer: have one-to-one conversations and be ‘social’. Ignite conversation starters and share things people care about relevant to your business. People tend to engage positively to imagery in posts which include faces, this promotes a connection – especially this year.
3) Use emojis – these are a great way of translating human emotion if you don’t have time for video.
4) Have one message per post, don’t water down your message by trying to sell nine different product lines in one post.
5) Design video for sound off – most of us watch video with no sound.
What makes a great email campaign?
From Ben Hocking, Client Success Executive at independent Email Marketing Agency, Jarrang.
1) Pre-send planning: Ensure your purpose is clear, step back and think back about what you want to achieve. Is your idea realistic? Ensure the purpose and outcome is in harmony with other marketing activities. Make sure you have considered your send-time and make sure your database is segmented so the right audience receive the right email.
2) Strong subject lines: This is the biggest determinate factor as to whether your audience open your email or not. Keep it short, keep it concise: seven words is optimal. Emojis can be a fun way to stand out but use them appropriately and only use one emoji at a time. Questions are a good way to encourage open rates and personalisation. Don’t be ‘safe’, have fun with it and split test different ideas. Words like ‘discover’ and ‘explore’ work very well.
3) Imagery and Layout: Make it easy, simple, don’t cram in too much content: this will make it difficult for the reader to digest. The first image is so important – the rest of the copy can go to waste if the first image doesn’t ‘sell’ the rest of the content.
4) Content: Maintain the same tone of voice throughout. Emails don’t need to be long, give enough away but not too much. Leave them wanting more to encourage them to click through to your website. You should aim for around 60 words per story. If you do have long text, break it up as bullet points and use bold, italics. Your CTA is valuable, and it is the last chance to entice and encourage your reader to act.
5) Reporting: Analyse how you got on after sending your campaign. Consider vanity metrics as well as deeper metrics like direct and assisted revenue conversion rates. Correlate these metrics against tracking on Google Analytics.
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