The ongoing Pandemic has changed the way people buy products and retailers sell products. COVID 19 has reshaped the whole consumer marketing this 2020. Consumer goods manufacturers and retailers should ditch the old ways and get a new perspective about the entire operation.
As soon as the Pandemic hit, most people chose the online platform for purchasing the needs rather than risking to go out for essentials. This situation made most of the shoppers take their business to the web. Essentials mostly include hygiene-maintaining items and groceries. With this, we can assure you that the buying experience will not be the same as before.
The sales scenario in the market is completely changed; it is a sudden radical change. Covid-19 has given rise to many trends disrupting the industry. There is an increased surge in online marketing. The grocery penetration of e-commerce platforms has increased from 13 percent to 31 percent as people avoid going out and ordering everything using web apps.
However, it is even seen that those who went to stores found a different experience like maintaining physical distance, hygiene, mask usage, and significantly changed to Online shopping. Well, with these changes, if CPG companies want to survive in these situations, then they must nurture the capabilities and adopt new strategies.
In an analysis done by BCG, 40% of the consumers doing online shopping are first-timers. After restrictions easing-out, 35% of the consumers are still concerned and choosing an online platform to order essentials. It is predicted that by the end of the year 2022, the grocery category in the e-commerce platforms will be three times higher than the pre-COVID situation and two times higher than the pandemic forecast.
COVID-19 impact
Different CPG industries are facing varying disruptions to the demand and supply chain. Like the packaged food companies have seen a 54.2% increase in their sales in the Lockdown. On the other hand, royalty-based toys have reduced their sales due to postponed movie productions and sales.
The level of impact on the supply and demand of a few CPG industries are mentioned below:
Home & personal care: Due to the Corona outbreak, consumers started stocking essentials. There is a high demand for sanitization products, especially the bigger package size. Due to a shortage of workforce and centralized sourcing, the production was interrupted while coming to supply.
Food & beverages: Increased surge for online food and beverage orders. Majorly for dairy, ready to eat products, that too in bigger pack sizes. The supply of these demands was difficult as it raised sales required double the workforce and extra time for floor sanitization. Due to Lockdown, logistics delivery was also restricted.
Beauty & cosmetics: There is an increased demand for safe beauty & cosmetics. Online consultation and e-commerce sales increased. However, there was a temporary disruption in the supply chain due to restricted transportations, increased manufacturing demand from a single area; sales to on-trade channels were also disrupted.
Apparel & footwear: Steep decrease in consumer demand, as well as delay in new fashion launches, plus most of the people prioritized buying essentials than apparel & footwear. Due to Lockdown in major countries, the supply chain price increased, resulting in higher order cancellation.
According to a report from Deloitte, “Majority of the consumers are spending more on Convenience to meet all the requirements or their needs. Due to COVID-19, people are more likely citing contactless shopping, fulfillment on demand and easy inventory availability.” There are other key findings of the report as such :
As of April 2020, the year on year growth of the eCommerce industry increased, and reached to 68%, surpassing the previous 40% of the total sales. With the ongoing pandemic, and countries following strict guidelines it is expected to increase to 72%.
Convenience will continue to be king of the Market, more than half of the people have shown their willingness to spend more on what they want.
People now are more interested in private brands. Until 2019, only 40% were willing to pay for the same or private brands. Now during COVID 19, people being at home and more cautious about health and products they use, private label sales increased.
There is increased spending on hygiene, groceries, other sustainable products, and organic stuff, in these pandemic months. These brands will continue to play a key role in the market.
Where is the CPG industry today?
Consumer-goods roles are huge during this COVID crisis, meeting the increased demands of consumers and protecting the vulnerable. This sudden change may or may not be permanent. However, there will be a significant fundamental shift in the pattern of buying.
In the initial days of covid, the priorities were clear for the CPG sector: the safety and health essentials, ensure a strong balance sheet and maintain the availability of essential products with a resilient supply chain. The CPG manufacturers who are ahead in their supply curve drove increased enterprise agility, adapted cross-functional collaboration channels, and adjusted in the current scenarios.
However, now the case might be changing with an increased level of uncertainty; as the restrictions are slowly removed, many nonessential retailers who were forced to shut are re-opening their businesses. While it is uncertain as the Pandemic is not entirely gone, it can potentially spread and impact the economy.
Another concern is the changed buying pattern, and increased buying concerns may be carried forward to the future. While the CPG companies are the least affected than any other industry such as retail- the hospitality and traveling industry is the most affected sector.
The edible industry, such as food and beverages where growth is monitored concerning population and income, is seeing increased demand. This results in a massive surge in pantry loading and delivery.
A historical change is seen! The food & beverage sector usually lagged in other categories such as apparel & footwear, beauty & cosmetics has seen a steep fall in their sales. In contrast, the demand for food & beverage has increased. Choosing the online platform for buying than going to shops has increased. The CPG manufacturers can work with the retailers and lower the cost-to-serve to maintain their operations.
It will take significant time for the consumers to shift from current frugality and embrace the older ways. But the heightened uncertainty will be there for some time. The retailers and on-premise places should try all possible ways to win back customers’ trust. In this Pandemic, people face a financial crunch, forcing them to shift to buy products at lower prices and save money.
The ongoing pandemic has been a boon for the Consumer Packaged Goods industry. The demand for CPG increased from 10 percent to 12 percent in countries such as Italy, France, the UK, and the US.
Demand has also affected a lot and saw a market downfall, as consumption shifted from on-premise to home. It is likely to stay and persist. Most people are continuing to work at home, so companies have also taken a fresh look to strategize the workforce accordingly. It is better to change the plans according to the need of the hour and embrace new strategies.
Engage Consumers with CPG marketing
Ongoing Pandemic has increased the use of Digital Platforms by most of the Companies and customers. This situation has made the brands to look over and revise their marketing strategies to gain new opportunities and fulfill the changing consumer demand.
Some of the companies thought to take a dive and enter the direct-to-consumer market. For instance, a company launched a platform dedicated wholly to B2C. In contrast, most of the companies are still using the subscription order procedure.
However, some CPG manufacturers want to maximize their platform reach in the market and engage retailers to grab a significant share with an increased e-commerce demand. In this case, the retailers are enabled to:
Placing orders online directly
Avoid or reduce the stockouts by implementing the real-time inventory management
Have the optimized SKU’s for digital channels
Assessing new disruptive routes to market by partnering with a logistic and delivery business
There are many challenges, and the CPG companies should overcome all these to succeed in online sales. Entering into e-commerce and utilizing technology that will engage consumers by keeping a note of their preferences and priorities isn’t that easy.
Priorities the CPG industry should implement to survive now and post-pandemic
As most of the consumer’s shift to e-commerce channels, the sales of food and beverage categories will increase to 70% approximately by the year 2022. This will be the gain of CPG companies, who can develop effective omnichannel capabilities to maintain their position in the market. Simultaneously maintaining an interactive and innovative presence in the social channels.
Below are the statistics showcasing increased CPG sales during the Lockdown. It is a representation of CPG sales by channels. The first one represents the increased sales of Grocery and the second graphic representation is for Multi-Outlet and Convenience. Amid this crisis, people are trying new brands, 50% of the consumers have tried new brands, however, 66% of them are likely to stick with these new brands.
As everything is turning from Pandemic to recovery, the CPG manufacturers must shift their focus to future plans. To make your mark in the market in such a situation, the below priorities should be focused on first.
Tailor all your capabilities to unique needs
As you will already have a standardized sales practice, it would be better to concentrate on approaching the consumers and targeting different channels and segments. This means customizing how to leverage data and other information to connect with retail consumers’ unique requirements. Analyze the collected data and check what the consumers want and also what they are interested in.
For instance, if a manufacturer wants to meet specific needs, they can reorganize its cross-functional sales team. For one retail consumer, there can be more data analytics experts in the team to facilitate the omnichannel strategy at work. However, there can be an addition of supply chain and operational experts for other retail customers, streamlining retail operations.
Making your sales model more flexible will help satisfy more customers and get a leading share in the market.
Partnership to improve omnichannel experience
Retailers have to serve hugely to customers in multiple channels; having a partner will help take care of the services, insights, and products. The job is not done just by moving in between stores, navigating mobiles, and e-commerce platforms. CPG companies should support the partner to do out-of-the-box things, grab people’s attention, and build even greater loyalty.
The consumer sales team should be clear about certain things before entering into it, such as, are they working the best with the online and in-store retail partners, is there another opportunity to increase it that they might have overlooked, are all the resource allocated in line with channel strategy, how to manage conflicts between retailers, e-commerce platforms and direct-to-consumer platforms. These are some important questions that must be analyzed before jumping in.
In an omnichannel experience, the more that data, the more accurate the result. A retailer knows what’s happening in his/ her region, while the manufacturers know how the products are performing in the market and different channels.
By having analyzed information, retailers can understand and optimize the omnichannel experience. If we take a step further, this analysis can innovate new ways to reach people.
Increase efficiency with Digital Tools
Now we are in such an era where contactless buying is preferred. With the outbreak of Coronavirus, people prefer less risky or contactless buying. Prioritizing the online process and minimizing human contact to avoid infections.
This situation arose a digital wave, where every business is trying to be on the online platform, mostly the product selling companies. Most aspects, such as taking the order, delivery, and customer service, are digitized.
This crisis forced the consumer goods industries to minimize human contact in the production and delivery department. In the same way, it forced the retailers to reduce human connection in distribution to stores.
However, digitization came as a savior in this crisis period. The three digitization process that came in handy are:
The route to market model digitization letting the customers know about your products,
automation of all in-store activities,
having advanced analytical experts by your side to get informed insights on shoppers’ patterns and product performance in the market.
The services such as telesales, messages, emails, e-commerce presence will, for sure, retain the market popularity of the product once the Pandemic passes.
Acting fast and adapting to an ever-changing market will always help the business. COVID-19 crisis has created a lot of challenges and changes in the market. It also discovered how important a retailer and manufacturer relation is.
In the Shutdown and panic buying situation, some recognized companies have stood still; well, on the other hand, few of the recognized brands are facing a steep fall in their sales. It all depends on how fast you grasp the changing market and shoppers’ interest and adapt to it.
The more resilient the company is, the less impact it has on its business. Simultaneously, it might take some time to wear-out the impact of COVID-19. This situation has reinforced the consumer-goods company’s values, providing the best chance to strengthen the retail partners’ marketplace.
Now it is time to be more analytical and plan to work uniquely and create increased value, presence, and engage people in their product.
Although you may not operate from a physical store, there are still just as many costs involved with running an e-commerce business. Everyone wants their business to be successful, and that success depends on making money. As product and operational costs continue to rise, it’s essential that you keep not only your prices competitive but that you also find ways in which to increase your profits. The first strategy that comes to mind would be to find ways to boost sales or grow revenue. Although cutting operational costs is another critical way, you can put money back in your pocket.
Won’t reducing operational spending put strains on your business? Not if done strategically and practically. Costs can get out of control if not monitored. Here are some great strategies for cutting the operational costs of your e-commerce business.
1. Contract your staff
The top way in which you can reduce your operating costs is by contracting your team. While hiring a full-time employee may be necessary for certain aspects of your business, it probably isn’t for the majority of them. By contracting an employee, you can cut all sorts of costs. Firstly, you will have less to pay for wages. You can pay for exactly how many hours you require the employee to work. Beyond that, you will not have to pay benefits or holiday pay.
Tasks such as web design, admin, and social media management do not take 40 hours a week. Having a salaried employee for these areas will end up costing you way more than is necessary for these tasks. An admin assistant can jump on 30 minutes a day to answer emails. A social media manager can put in an hour a day to schedule posts and engage with your social communities.
High-salaried employees, such as those in your IT department, are huge budget suckers. While it’s nice to have someone on hand to fix inevitable tech problems, many companies contract out IT support. Companies such as Capstone IT Services handle any technical issues that you may have, at whatever time you need them.
2. Make strategic and quality investments from the beginning
While it may be tempting to take the cheap route when setting up your business, it may lead to financial losses in the long run. Investing in quality options from the beginning will mean that you won’t need to keep paying for constant updates.
When it comes to your website design, an investment in a high-quality web designer is worth it. The site is the virtual storefront and, therefore, the most important investment that you can make as an e-commerce business. Investing in quality design from the beginning will mean that you’ll have a great foundation to work from. Web design can get quite costly if you need constant updates and revisions. Start with an excellent base from which you can make small changes as required.
Your branding is another area that is worth the initial investment. Continually changing your logo and brand identity will only act as a deterrent for potential clients. Take the time to develop a well-thought-out brand identity that you are confident about and can stick with going forward.
Always choose quality over a cheap price tag, because in the end, it will end up costing your business more. Try to avoid opting for an inexpensive designer and instead hire experienced, trusted professionals with a proven track record.
3. Know the market
The more products you offer, the more it’s going to cost you. If all your products are flying off the shelves, then that’s great, but this is not usually the case. You need to know the market and understand what your target consumer is looking for. Stocking products that don’t sell is a waste of resources and the physical space that it takes up in your storeroom. Stay updated with current trends in your industry. What’s the competition like? What products are selling the most? You’re better off offering a smaller range of high-demand products than a massive range of items that don’t sell.
The same goes for if you are selling a service. If you offer tons of services, but only a few are selling, then focus on them. While they may not take up physical space, you’re probably wasting valuable marketing budget and your time promoting them. Know when to offer discounts or coupons to help clear out stock that isn’t selling.
Focusing your efforts on the products and services that the market wants will save you tons of money on storage, marketing, production, and more.
4. Limit your payment methods
While it can be tempting to offer as many payment methods as possible, it can cost a lot of money. Payment processing fees will add up very quickly, and the more options you provide, the more expenses you’ll pay. Identify the most popular payment options among your consumers and stick to them. Since the majority of people have more than one payment type, it shouldn’t limit you from converting sales.
5. Choose the most effective marketing channels
Spending on marketing is significant for the growth and success of your business. That said, if you are spending in the wrong channels, you may as well be throwing money into the wind. Marketing costs can be high, so the key is identifying which channels deliver the highest ROI. It will vary for each e-commerce business, depending on their specific industry. The most effective way to find out where you should be allocating budget is through web analytics.
Web analytics will show you exactly where all your website traffic is generating. It will let you know which of your marketing efforts is paying off the most. Maybe you’ll notice high traffic from link-building via relevant blogs, or perhaps it’s from Facebook ads. Regardless of how your visitors get to your website, you will be able to identify which channels aren’t converting and discontinue those campaigns.
You can dramatically cut costs on your marketing by basing your campaigns on your web analytics.
6. Customer retention
Converting sales from current customers costs seven times less than converting new customers. Retaining the customers that you already have will save you a lot of money on marketing. Not to mention, loyal customers exponentially increase your reach through referrals. It’s free marketing at its finest. By engaging with your customer base, offering loyalty programs, and using email marketing to stay relevant, you can encourage your consumers to keep buying.
Conclusion
The quality of your e-commerce business does not need to suffer for you to reduce your operational costs. You can still employ expert, qualified staff who will help your business to run efficiently and productively for a fraction of the cost. Your website design can make an impact and create a brand identity that will help you to stand out against the competition, helping you to form a loyal customer base. By running strategic and analyzed marketing campaigns, you can minimize your budget and convert more sales than ever before.
By making some small tweaks in your current processes and choosing investments wisely, you can cut your operating costs and increase profit in your e-commerce business.
As e-commerce involves majorly on the consumer, the relationship between the two should be well-built. It is one of the critical building blocks that you will have to add in your online business 2020. You have to understand how crucial a customer’s feedback can turn out to be. They help you shape up your business flaws, which works like constructive criticism. A simple thing like highlighting your loyal customers monthly on the company’s social media can be a big win.
Areas to Involve the Consumer
One of the areas that are still a challenge for online businesses is safety. As the opportunities to go global arises, assuring consumer’s safety while paying with their credit card is an issue that needs solving. Only then can you take its full advantage. Know the tools that you can use to protect your website. Luckily, you can find a WordPress website design company to have anti-spam tools added to your site.
Now the internet is way easier to access. People can find and hack your information online. Help your customers to transact through the electronic marketplace comfortably.
Build Partnership
It is an important area, although overlooked. Usually, it costs nothing to offer excellent service to your customers but earns you big. When you delight them, they refer others to your company. Whenever you have an oncoming sale, let them know ahead of time. They feel valued.
Give them coupon vouchers that they can redeem in your store. For your existing customers, you can offer them loyalty cards that will earn them points that can later accumulate into substantial cash, which they can use and save money.
Based on the aggregate of referrals they have brought to your store, you can offer them some discount to encourage them to do so. The whole essence of saving your client’s acquisition is what will retain them. Transparency also plays a significant role in involving clients in your business in 2020.
Make Use of Common Platforms
When you are operating in e-commerce, it is paramount to find out where your clients spend more time for you to reach out. It is so apparent that you will find most of them on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Use them to interact with your clients. If there are questions that need answers, don’t take long to answer them. Clarify when required, and create a meaningful personal connection.
By taking full advantage of the platforms, you can create a community and start a conversation by seeking customer’s insights. Weigh in some exciting trends that will engage as many people as possible. To keep the fire burning, have an open dialogue.
Customers’ Reviews
What kind of analysis are your customers giving? If you offer commendable service to your clients, then you don’t need to worry about the reports that you will find on your site. New customers will take a view of what previous ones had to say regarding their purchases and overall experience in your brand.
Remember, testimonies can give more weight to your brand, and the majority of people will only buy from you after watching videos of customer testimonials. To emphasize this, you can offer small incentives to your clients to participate in it.
Offer Exclusive Deals
Everyone loves deals. Especially when you mention that it is exclusive. Show a sneak peek of some unique content that you will release at a later date in your blog, to have your clients hooked. You can keep updating it on your site, or even send an email reminder, so your customers don’t miss out.
If you get a WordPress website design company to work on your site, these are things that can get sorted. Provide your email subscribers and those who have a premium membership a 5 to 10% coupon so that they can use it to purchase your products and probably spend more.
Be an Inspiration
We understand you are in business, but a little inspiration goes well with it. Develop a marketing initiative that draws people closer to your brand because it shows that you care for them. Some companies will advertise, “for every purchase, a dollar goes to help the needy.” While those in fashion will say something similar, “buying a pair of shoes from them will warrant one to a poor child.”
Your brand shows that you care and play a significant role in helping the marginalized.
Sharing your vision to the world also can inspire many customers out there. Assuming it carries a relevant message that depicts your care.
Do a Follow-up
Most people do a fantastic job of bringing in a customer, and finally converting leads. Little do they realize that one of the other essential business deals of closing the loop is doing a client follow up. Call and check if your customers’ merchandise was according to their needs.
How was the service experience? Not only will this grow your clientele base, but it will bring back the customer for more. Orange Mud CEO Josh Sprague, suggests; “Remember to organize tasks of customer’s follow-up with an intent of executing.”
Since not everyone will appreciate a follow-up call, learn your customer’s behavior. When you do so, it will be way easier to understand their preferred means of communication. Most importantly, the right time to give them a call. If a customer says a call is a bother, it’s good to respect their request unless there is an urgent situation.
Take Them for a Tour
Since you cannot invite everyone to your company, select only the loyal ones. Take them on a tour guide as you explain more about your products. You should be more knowledgeable about your company, and everything that you have there. It is an efficient way of reaching out and involving clients about a brand that they love.
For the sake of those who did not make it, you can record the tour on video and place it on YouTube and all your active social media avenues. These are places that you are likely to attract a lot of views. Remember, there are companies like Animoto that have enabled you to turn your amateur video into a more professional type.
In conclusion, when you develop a strong business relationship with your customers, you are headed to the top. Customers love to be treated special and appreciated. They value responsiveness. Ensure to have a mobile integration to nail this effectively. There are varieties of tools that you can get from the WordPress website design company that can be added to your site to involve customer interaction.
Are you wondering what quick Halloween marketing ideas will boost your sales up this Holiday month? Don’t worry at all as you have just come to the right place for all your answers. Instead of jumping directly onto Marketing ideas for Halloween 2019, let us first take a quick look at last year’s marketing trends and predicted present trends.
In this article, you will find various solutions to all your queries about ecommerce marketing strategies and how to boost your sales during holiday seasons using social media marketing and current business trends.
What is Halloween?
Halloween is an annual ghostly holiday celebrated on October 31st every year. This 2019 it falls on Thursday, October 31. It came into observation along with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. On this day, people light bonfires and wear scary costumes to stall away ghosts.
Celebrating Halloween is an ancient practice, but with time it has become trending. According to a research in 2018 by the National Retail Federation (NRF), 175 Million American’s celebrated this scary time of the calendar. They, on average, spent 9 Million Dollars for celebration.
What They Buy for Halloween?
This quarter the estimated Trick or Treat holiday shopping trends are
68 percent of Americans plan to celebrate Halloween this year. Top spending categories for 31st October 2019 are:
$3.2 billion on Halloween costumes,
$2.6 billion on Halloween candies
$2.7 billion on Halloween decorations, and
$390 million on Halloween greeting cards
What They Buy for Halloween:
This 2019 October edition holiday has gained popularity because it is an affordable holiday. Right from kids to adults, each and every person loves to celebrate this spookiest day of the year. Shoppers look forward to Spooky items that are bang for a buck.
90 percent of Americans buy candies for trick or treats, spending about $2.6 Billion. Around 75 percent buy decor, and not more than 70 percent spend on costumes.
Top five trending costumes for adults were:
A witch, vampire, zombie, pirate, and Avengers character.
While for children, the costumes were Princess, Superhero, Batman, Star Wars character, and Witch.
In recent times shoppers even buy weird costumes for their pets. The five most popular pet costumes were Pumpkin, hot dog, bumblebee, devil, and cat (for dogs).
When Should You be Ready for Halloween?
6% of shoppers will start shopping before September.
28% of shoppers will start their shopping during September.
41% of shoppers are likely to get done with their shopping in the first week of October.
25% of the shoppers wait until the latter half of the October month in search of more profiting offers.
If you have not yet started with ecommerce marketing, it is never too late. You can begin with it even now.
What channels you should use to sell your products?
Social Media channels are considered to be the most effective channel for marketing during holiday seasons every year. Most of the traffic for your business flows in through these online channels like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest.
We have included an image below, which helps you analyse how online media has influenced purchases and increased sales over a few years.
Here are a few Halloween marketing ideas that would boost your sales this Scary season:
1. Customizing Your Website:
Customizing your Website is the best way to start your business strategy for this ghostly season. It is an excellent ecommerce strategy. You can customize your Website in various ways.
Here are the best customizing options for your Website:
It is the best way to attract customers, and be a part of this creepy Day celebrations. Even Google uses this method.
Source: Google
Use a Spooky Favicon:
Favicon is nothing but a tiny icon that appears on the top of your browser’s tab for your Website. Though customizing favicon seems to be a small change, it has a significant impact on attracting the audience.
Add a Scary theme:
Apart from the logo and favicon, what gives your Website festive feel is the theme. If you are willing to get into the holiday theme, you must revamp your Website by giving it the holiday edition touch. This themed Website modification is for providing your visitors holiday season spirit.
Source: Walmart
Apart from these few customization’s, what could really attract customers to your websites are the use of Chatbots. Chatbots are conversational agents on your site. With the help of chatbots, you get a chance to wish all your customers who visit your website and create an emotional bond with them.
2. Launch Limited Edition Products:
One Halloween business marketing idea used by many chocolate companies and other brands is they launch limited edition products. This practice of launching customized products keeps fans eager for your companies collections. This practice increasing brand value and trade.
There is an added advantage when the product also targets Christmas. Starbucks, in 2003, launched Pumpkin Spice Latte flavor. This product might not have been wholly linked with this scary day.
Source: Starbucks Coffee Company
However, this flavor is available only during the months of September to December. Along with many other limited-time products, it has become a trendy item. This product is selling more than 200 million units over the last 15 years.
Plan your limited edition products in such a way that they are unique and catchy.
3. Bring back fun with Halloween contests:
User-Generated Content (UGC) is a successful way to attract customers. Running a themed Halloween social media contest for your Company or business is the best way to get UGC.
This scavenger hunt time is all about Halloween outfits, pranks, fun, and entertainment. By launching such themed festival contests, you can bring in a lot of organic traffic.
Source: Mochi shoes
Social media algorithms are being modified over a period of time. The algorithms for Facebook are prioritised for posts with meaningful interactions i.e., post which has a greater people engagement (comments, likes, and shares) appears on top of your feed. For Instagram, the algorithm is set to feature new posts on the top.
Hence to avoid such risks of a failed campaign, promote the contest through paid media. This contest idea is to not only get UGC but also to generate brand awareness to a new audience.
For these spooky media campaigns, you can give corporate gifts to the top one to three entrants. Otherwise, you can have one main prize and provide coupons to all entrants to redeem at the store or online.
4. Offer Spooky Deals or Discounts:
This creepy day is the time where 40 percent of the buyers start their holiday shopping.
When you club coupons, deals, or discounts with holidays, your customers, it encourages them to take up these luring offers. This 2019 Halloween is one that will not ‘trick your customer but will only ‘treat’ them.
Source: Canva
You can give discount vouchers, coupons, or deals on the themed products of your Company. Else you could do the same for all commodities depending on your companies retail strategy.
Offering discounts or coupons just around the holiday season can lure customers into shopping for more than they would have.
5. Customize your Social Media Pages:
You can create your vouchers, images, and other similar products in the same manner.
Just like your Website, try customizing your online pages into creepy themes. This ecommerce trick attracts customer’s attention to your establishment. Customizing social media sites is an essential ecommerce methodology. On the other hand, it is a great Halloween marketing idea 2019.
Customizing is necessary as the current trend is all about web networking. Most of the traffic flows through your online channels. When you add a little pinch of holiday touch to your social accounts is always welcomed by the customers.
You can customize your online pages using Dot Template.
6. Launch theme-based Media Marketing Campaigns:
Source: Dominos
After customizing your online channels, you should tailor your social media posts too.
As trick or treat occasion is not as huge as Christmas, you need not have to customize all your online posts. Yet, you should have at least two Halloween posts a week during October and September.
Your themed campaign shouldn’t be only about these one or two themed posts. If any other thematic promotions of your organization are running, promoted them too. Use regular web posts and standard online advertising for promotions.
Online advertising can be done using Google, Amazon or other social media.
Generating Social media campaign templates is very easy.
Choose professionally created templates from their library.
Upload your personalized photos or you can select from their images.
Add filter and text.
Save the template and share it with others.
7. Run a Themed Email Marketing Campaign:
Source: media tumblr
Adding a small theme to your email campaign can boost sales, or bring in brand awareness for your firm. When you link festivals to industries such as health, security, or other services, it adds benefits.
Dentists and doctors can share emails about the risks of overeating candy, or the type of candy children should avoid.
A company selling security services could share tips on how to stay safe during trick-or-treating.
A restaurant can share details of exclusive food items and discounts at their place.
One email marketing tip is to include a sized image for sharing on social media. This image can feature one or two tips that allow people to share among their family or friends.
An essential point for you to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t change the frequency of your email marketing. Changing the frequency rate can turn the mails into Spam.
This holiday season can boost up sales for Realtors, Restaurants, and Real estate.
#1. Halloween marketing ideas for REAL ESTATES:
Like other ecommerce businesses, Real Estates can also use a few strategies.
You can run a themed email campaign sharing details of your market history, ongoing projects, and why you are unique.
Launch deals and special offers for 31st October.
Run online creepy home decor contests in the neighborhood.
Attach a business card to your trick or treat candies and pumpkins.
Send corporate gifts to both old and new clients and make them feel special.
You can use Edit to create your business card designs or flyers.
Top 10 Halloween corporate gift ideas are:
Mini Ghost candles
Carved Pumpkins stickers
Ghostly molded chocolates
Horror shot glass sets
Customized goody bags
Flickering fright lights
Personalized cards
Flavored box of ghost Cookies
Party flavored candies
Customized witch survival kits
.
#2. Halloween marketing ideas for Realtors:
Customize cards and send them to the whole neighborhood.
Send wishes via email to all your potential customers as well as prospective customers.
Write blog posts linked to the ghostly theme Like How to decorate your home this Halloween?, How to celebrate Halloween? Or What to wear this Halloween?
Source: Passion For Savings
Top 10 Halloween party themes for decoration are:
Haunted House
Willy Wonka
Scary Carnival
Superhero
Graveyard
Scavenger Hunt
Vampires
Pumpkin blast
Monster gang
#3. Halloween Marketing Ideas for Restaurants:
The food industry is an evergreen business during all holiday seasons. For this Scavenger hunt time, here is what you can do.
Design a tasty menu using scary names or combinations.
Launch limited edition food items using Pumpkin as the main ingredient.
Decorate your whole restaurant in a scary theme.
Launch special offers, discounts, coupons, combo offers over food items.
Burger King, during this trick or treat season, launches a spooky campaign every year called, “Halloween Horror Nights.”
Source: Burger King
9. Host an Event
“What should we do for Halloween?” is the question everyone would have on their minds. Answer their call by hosting an event under your banner. Your event could be a simple Halloween theme contest or a blockbuster show.
One best idea of an event is the Pumpkin Carving Contest. The Carving can be about themes for your Company or Name of your firm. Hosting an event is an impactful ecommerce idea for small businesses.
But whatever you plan for, propagate the event as early as possible so people can block their dates for it.
Promote your event via emails, web channels, or any other media according to your budget.
If you feel that hosting an event is not a cup of your tea, you can always take the help of event managing companies. Top Event Management companies in the USA are Sensis Agency, Bigfish Communications, Blanc and Otus.
“It’s not Halloween unless you go to @horrornights at Universal! Thank you #UniversalHHN for the tricks & treats with some of my favorite people 🎃🖤👻 always a blast.”
Writing a Halloween theme content is an attractive way to grab customers’ attention. You can write about various topics like History behind this Spookiest year? What to wear, How to Celebrate and other related season topics.
Writing about the small articles, and publishing them online increases organic traffic. Along with the post, you can add about the ongoing Halloween 2019 ecommerce campaign or deals you are offering for 31st October. Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tools for optimizing your blog.
Call to action is a necessary step when you are providing customers with such content. Most of the customers tend to look for a call to action once they feel the blog interesting. Hence you should always guide such leads to your merchandise page.
Blogging is an essential SEO (Search Engine Optimization) recommendation. When your SEO ranking improves, it makes your site rank higher. If you have no idea about how to do SEO or other digital marketing technical works, you need not worry; you can follow the easy SEO guidelines.
11. Use Hashtags:
Hashtags are the basics of all social media platforms. Hashtags organize similar events, ideas, and trends together. When you check for that particular hashtag, you can view all related posts at a single platform. Adding hashtags like linked with this creepy night like #happyHalloween, #trickortreat, #HalloweenCostume, add an advantage.
Social media channels are full of videos and photos for these specific hashtags.
A hashtag contest is the simplest way to gather user-generated content (UGC). It increases brand awareness and reaches a new target audience.
If you are facing a problem in creating hashtags or want to cut some time in creating hashtags you can generate trendy hashtags using: Seek metrix for Instagram and Facebook and Hashtagify for Twitter.
12. Plan for Giveaways:
Free Giveaways are the best way to gather UGC. It is the human tendency to get anything that is FREE. Free Giveaways help in exposing your brand to other customers. When you implement such marketing ideas, people are most likely to participate.
When you plan for giveaways, include aspects such as share, tag, or like our social media pages. This helps in free promotions and increases organic traffic.
Source: Modcloth
Never do a bogus giveaway. When you announce a giveaway, there should always be some or the other item which would reach the winners. When false campaigns are run, customers lose trust in you and would not recommend buying from you in the future.
Giveaways gifts need not be costly. They can be anything related to that particular holiday and promote your brand. For giveaway ideas, you can refer to Give away monkey site.
Here are some of the easiest and effective Halloween social media contest ideas for giveaways:
#1. Run a photo contest:
Photo contests are among mostly loved contests on the web. These contests get your entrants involved in the contest themselves. Running a photo contest helps you in collecting user-generated content (UGC). This content you can use in your future for retail purposes.
Apart from these outfit photos, another vital aspect of this ghostly day is weird makeup photo updates.
A social media referral contest helps you generate social engagement. A referral is where your giveaway or company page is shared. When participants refer your Company with others, they help in promoting your brand. This is a fantastic way to build a social following and spread the word about your brand to others.
#3. Share entries
Source: Pepsi Nepal
Sharing Entries on Facebook and Instagram has been a best practice for giveaway campaigns. These share entries contests firstly involve the purchase of your Company’s goods. Secondly, they help in the free promotion of your brand on social media. It increases sales of your brand as well as brand awareness.
13. Team Up with Similar Campaigns:
Teaming up with similar 2019 Halloween social media campaigns is a wonderful ecommerce idea for small organizations. You can create promotional materials that highlight what each Company is offering. This extends the target audience to large portions targeting both organizations. This idea can come to implementation at any point during the year. Yet, it works very well during significant promotional periods.
Conclusion:
So, these are a few tricks which you could put in place this quarter. Remember, these marketing strategies are not limited only to E-commerce. They can also be used for realtors, real estates, apartments, and restaurants. Also, the only mantra to boost your business sales is by planning it accurately.
We hope that these marketing ideas are of great help to you this holiday season. If you have other ideas of marketing, do share it with us.
We also would love listening to your stories about how this holiday season marketing. So, do write to us in the comment section below or contact us.
Best wishes to you and your Company this Spookiest day of October, Happy Halloween!!!
We all are aware of the First Purchase we made if we compare the first purchase and now then you see a lot of changes. The perpetual advancement in the technology and changing phase in the Politics made e-commerce an analysis aspect for the customer as well as the seller. E-commerce came immediately and omnipresent. It can be shopped anywhere and everywhere. We can say that our digital shelves have become longer and larger, welcoming more e-commerce strategies for holidays.
What is E-commerce Strategies?
E-commerce Strategies is a buzzword, mostly the wholesale or the retail business that is traditional have faced this and depending on e-commerce. To many people, it is a simple process of establishing the offline business into the online platform.
Engaging people into your fancy Websites and creatively build e-commerce pages, that will allow the business person to sell all over the internet.
If we follow the recent Global Shopper Story that takes into account the opinion of 10,000 shoppers there are many key points found:
Omnishoppers are very crucial for the market that includes
Showrooming: here you see in the store and then buy from the online retailer
Webrooming: here usually, people searching the online and buy in the showroom.
Click and collect: people here buy online and go to the showroom to pick it up
Scan and Scram: Check the product in-store but buy it online from another retailer
Click and Ship: You check the product in the store but buy it on your mobile phone for your personal convenience
In today’s busy life both digital and retail world’s play a very vital role, while the omnishoppers may like to shop online in most of the time, but people also like to shop offline only when they have enough time. It is usually, about the experience and the discovery they can in the offline stores.
There is no less competition for the online sellers, because if we check the records then it is estimated that, 24 million e-commerce websites are there in the whole world. It seems like yesterday when the concept of e-commerce strategies blossomed in the business people’s mind.
As there are 24 million e-commerce website, out of which 650,000 stores are generating more than $1000 sales annually.
What is the current state of e-commerce?
The e-commerce state has shown an incredible growth curve if we check the last few years, the CAGR is even expected to grow to 11.1% from 2018 to 2025. One of the most popular activities in the whole worldwide includes Online Shopping. While the popularity may vary from region to region.
You can clearly see, the tremendous growth in the e-commerce marketing strategy that intensifies the competition in the business. If the competition intensifies this means that people are going to get more options to chose. It gives customers a chance to chose from even the niche categories and this can involve even both high and low level of purchase.
Increasing competition in e-commerce has led Brands attention predominantly towards user acquisition. Usually, innovative user acquisition strategies attract a number of people, however, this also requires a lot of sizeable investment. You may think, that once a customer comes up the battle is won. However, it is not, it involves post-acquisition work that has a different insight.
Once a customer comes on board, there is a high chance to drop off. Normally 70 percent of people drop off after a week and 96 percent of the users churn within 90 days.
We can surely say that if user acquisition is not coupled with successful user engagement and a perfect strategy, then there will be no results.
How can e-commerce attract new customers?
Nowadays, attracting customers is a huge task, and every e-commerce strategies involve these steps as every e-commerce business requires it. The first step to this is the having E-commerce automation checklist. Follow the below steps to have the best E-commerce strategies experience to your customers.
Trigger: For the beginning of the workflow, select a trigger, like Order Creation
condition: To keep the workflow going, set a condition, like Spend $500
action: Set an action that needs to be taken place, like Tag the Customer
This includes a few checklists that the marketers should consider for automating the e-commerce store.
Increase the customer worth
It includes having a marketing strategy in communication with your targeted customer. Reward the customer if they make more sales, gives discounts occasionally, set geo-specific promotions.
The first segment the audience according to their interest, and include personalized marketing communication. Segment the customer with the items they buy or add in the cart.
Send small handwritten notes who spend the most time on your website
Send a customized email, based on purchase history or when the items are in the cart are abandoned.
For every individual customer calculate the average spend on order.
Try to set threshold time, the time more than the average time they spend on the website. Offer the customers some gifts to add products to the cart and achieve the targeted time.
Target the incentive to drive conversions
Occasional offers to the customers, mainly target the customer birthdays
source: milled
Send the customized Birthday mails, earn the customer loyalty that helps to make the customer stay with you longer.
Geo-specific gift, filter the customer by region, place, and interest.
Decrease the cost of customer Acquisition
If you do e-commerce automation you will see a decrease in advertising spends, and reduce the customer churn, that will gradually increase the ROI of the campaigns
Keep a check on the campaigns, and pause those which are not giving any results, order more inventory before you run out of it, pause the campaigns until you are restocked.
Always keep in contact with your team, regarding every issue through channels such as Slack, Milanote, Trello, to avoid any miscommunication.
Deducing customer churning
Have criteria to pull out the customer, like time each customer spends, and the time is taken since the last session, last login, last purchase.
When a customer doesn’t show any action for some days, then start a win-back campaign for them.
Increase Conversions
You can boost your Conversions rates using this e-commerce strategies automation, make your site customized for your viewers, improve the search functionality of your website, add push notification to increase multiple purchases.
Increasing searching and merchandise the store
Give your customers a continuous merchandise shopping experience and make the shopping process easy and smooth
Show the options which are of the same color, fit, brand to continue the continuous product discovery
Add all those SKUs that have a similar description in the appropriate collection.
Add the collections tags in your site search solution, as it will be easy for the customers to filter
Push Notifications to increase the purchase
Browser push notifications are the best if you want to increase the customer’s flow and encourage them to buy.
Segment the customers according to their choices and purchase history.
Target those, customer who is always looking for new products.
Easy Payment options
Check the currency your customer prefers and tailor it accordingly for them.
Segment the customers according to their currency preference, based on their last purchase
Add promotions while they checkout, and while coming to currency add currency based on the countries.
What is Customer Experience?
It is a long journey that we are experiencing, and no journey is the same. Some people like to shop online, while others like to take advice from their family, friends, peers and then act. It is like a big puzzle that has different channels, that has both online and offline shops. However, it is up to the brands how they will create the best brand experience that is frictionless, customized and provide the customer best experience as possible.
New channels keep on adding so that the older ones could be replaced and give a better experience to the people. The higher the consumers are more the interaction is, and more the competition for the brands. Ideal customer experience should contain:
Customization
Quality Content
Omnichannel Experience
Streamlines checkout
Post-purchase experience
source: fico
How can e-commerce strategies build a strong Customer Relationship?
According to some Consumer Survey’s, 48% of the consumers left the site and made a purchase in the competitor’s site just because consumers experience a poorly customized site.
The key for a personalized experience is segmentation, it helps to create distinct journeys for the customers based on their shopping behavior. Whether the customer is a visiting the site for the first time or is a frequent buyer, there are few data points upon which a person and choices can be assessed. All these things will help create a custom persona for the customer.
66.7% of the top brands have a visually attractive homepage.
Suppose you have 3 categories of people coming to your site,
Let’s say the first category of customer to be “Type- A”, in this category, people are usually very busy and want to find the items quickly.
Then, the second category of customer to be “Type- B”, in this type, people are limited to a budget and use the navigation to find the right product that fits their budget.
The third and last category of customer, as “Type- C”, in this type, people are completely new and require a lot of information and content that will make them stick.
For Type-A category, you can add the “Add to Cart” button to all the products in the product listing page. Then for the second category “Type-B” have streamlined navigation and include more categories to the homepage. For the third category “Type- C” adding the user-generated content on the website, including all the how-to tutorials on the homepage.
You can for sure gain a good result, the conversion rate will increase to 10% and the revenue per visitor will increase to 14%
Strategy 1- Increase Loyalty by Personalized Promotions
The surveys say that 77% of consumers love discounts and encourage them to shop more. 48% of the people that discounts make them buy much faster and can take decision quicker.
source: pinterest
Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Experience
Write Bewitching Content
Do’s: Always have a variety of content, such as video, blogs, user-generated content, images, and infographics to make the people understand in details about your brand and the products that you are selling. There are a lot of infographic tools such as Visme are available which provide the best templates and tools to design amazing infographics.
Don’t: Remove all the irrelevant content, because it is one of the biggest reason, where 41% of the consumer’s back out from your website.
Engage using emails
Do’s: Post-purchasing sends the delivery updates and useful information related to the Purchase.
Don’t: Never, attack the customer with a lot of promotional emails, before they buy their first product.
Have promotions
Do’s: Place your promotions on the major locations on the homepage.
Don’ts: Avoid having inconsistent, promotions over social media sites, marketing page, and e-commerce sites.
Add “Finder” to find the store
Do’s: Include the detailed information such as the store hours, exact location, contact number, directions to store, in house services on the Store finder page.
Don’t: never add the Store Finder in the footer
Make returns easy
Do’s: Always have the return option in the product details page, so that it gives confidence that after buying a product, it turned out to be bad or wrong, they can return it anytime.
Don’t: Never add the return policy in the footer of the page.
Path Navigation to purchase
Do’s: The Purchasing path should be clear and easy for the customers to use, this encourages them to come back and buy again.
Don’t: Never launch a new website without proper A/B testing of various designs.
Strategy 2- User Generated Content (UGC)
Engage your customer with high-quality images, videos and Infographics, in addition to this have engaging content. It is the best way to nurture and educate customers.
Usually, there are two types of content that help in brand leveraging: User Generated Content and Branded Content.
User Generated content are usually customer reviews, photos, videos, that allows the brands to share genuine and authentic content from the customers after they use the product.
Branded Content normally keeps the brands on the top when the brand is going through the down cycle, it tells about the lifestyle and story of the brand.
Not just the content, we can say an image speaks a thousand words than the content. If you have checked minutely then you must have noticed that the fashion-related people who are selling their products online, use a lot of images, in different angles, with some closeup image that showcases the type of stitches, color, type of fabric. The video included provides how to use the items, and how it is made.
21.4% of the consumers say that an appealing e-commerce strategies experience motivates them to come back again and again. While 85% of the customers said that Visual UGC that include images and videos are more influential than the branded content. As 95% of people believe in other consumers and their reviews who have already used it.
Leveraging a mixture of high-quality content that has images, videos, and user-generated on the homepage will let the people know about your brand and its products.
Strategy 3- Have the Right offer at the right time
These days people have stopped differentiating between online and offline shopping. The only thing that matters is the customer experience.
To avoid the channel conflicts, co-ordinate with all channels so that it doesn’t impact your physical location, be it with your retailers, or a seller or the brand stores those who are trying to sell at full price. In other words, you can say don’t cut down the brand store, by having a lesser price in the online store.
Check how the customer buys, track down his journey and identify at which point he is getting inspired. By using that inspiration deliver the same inspiration through the consumer-preferred channel.
source: milled
According to one latest report, 74% of the people said they are more likely to make a purchase online if they can have easy returns and exchange in store.
Below you can find an optimal checklist if implemented will give customers the best experience:
High-Quality Product Images
A product description that is informative
Informative Videos
How to do- videos, tips
Add to cart button
Return Policies
Clear Pricing and Promotions
Customer Reviews
Complementary or recommended products, while buying products
Provide an easy return option, never forget to include return instruction in the order. On the e-commerce site of the brand, mention clearly all the return policies. This will remove the need of the call to action or any further customer support.
Strategy 4- Provide a smooth checkout experience
How many times have you seen that people come to your site, and add items in carts and leave abruptly? I guess too many. This clearly states that your website lacks in providing flexible payment options.
75% of customers complain about the lack of flexible payment options. Usually, brands fall as a victim investing heavily on the website videos and images, but lack in providing a smooth functionality or checkout process.
When you are planning to have an e-commerce site, both website outlook and functionality are very important. Always keep in mind, once the consumer adds an item in the cart, then have a clear checkout button both above and below the order summary. It encourages people to complete the action and also makes it easy to have the next process.
Source: Behance
Using Chatbots for conversation is also a good alternative, as using these will make the consumers feel someone is there listening. However, only 25% of the brands are only this Chats and Chatbot service on the checkout page.
Connecting the chat functionality to your website, most importantly to the Checkout Page, it provides the consumers an easy way to get clear their last-minute queries, before abandoning the cart page.
Strategy 5- Most Brands fail past checkout
The first action which most of the brands incorporate immediately after completing the check out process is sending the automated confirmation emails. Consumers read the confirmation emails, with outmost attention than that of the normal emails. It is a kind of habitual, as the email serves as a proof or a receipt.
On average, the consumers spend 4 seconds looking at a banner ad, then 7 seconds looking at a display ad, 14 seconds watching a commercial ad. While major time people spend watching unpacking their box which is estimated to be 45 seconds, in which people spend 22 seconds just removing the product from the box.
Strategy 6- Unboxing
If we follow the analysis of top e-commerce strategies of any website, then it has been seen that people get excited about the order delivery, unboxing experience, returning the item, and receiving refunds.
People are these days are too much interested in unboxing and check a lot of unboxing videos before they go to buy something. Before an item is bought, people go to the video and check the unboxing videos. So a well-designed unboxing video from the brand will increase the best unboxing experience creating an impact.
Make the packaging attractive, so that people get excited while opening it. The excitement in people will increase, and the engagement will increase to 64%, and the chances of more positive customers increases.
Always keep in mind, the size of the product you are sending, people usually complain that small products get big packaging. Due, to this one-fourth of the customers, think that the retailer is careless.
Usually, people think that packaging showcase, how much interested and careful the retailer is about the product he is selling. If it is good, then people use the product for their unboxing video experience.
Never do extensive packing, this frustrates the user. normally people want to reuse the packaging for future use. 95% of the people like to reuse the packaging if packing is good people tend to come back more.
How E-commerce Holiday Marketing Boost your sales?
Optimize your e-commerce website, at least 7 days before the D day. Start sending promotional emails, messages for the holiday. Have the influencers to promote it in social media channels. Holidays are the best time to
Get the top ranking
Increase your CTR
Improve your position in Search Engine Page Ranking
Reset your whole Website and every detail page, with a holiday mood, that attracts consumers to buy from you. It is good to run some tests on the schema that will apply to the on-page SEO with good traffic.
As the holiday becomes a ritual for shopping, increasing sales during these times become important and bring a lot of loyal customers also. Take advantage of the holiday and attract new consumers, boost sales and increase brand visibility.
If you avoid having a holiday marketing campaign, then for sure you will be overshadowed by your competitors, who will, of course, promote during holidays. Gradually, you will vanish in the huge crowd.
The major, upcoming holidays this year, if targeted then it will help you in increasing your sales:
31st October 2019- Halloween
11th November 2019- Veteran’s day
11th November 2019- Remembrance Day
28th November 2019- Thanksgiving Day
29th November 2019- Black Friday Day
2nd December 2019- Cyber Monday
24th and 25th December 2019- Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
26th December 2019- Boxing day
31st December 2019- New Year’s Eve
Below you can read in details about some useful e-commerce holiday strategies that will help increase your sales.
Facebook Messenger Marketing
Up your holiday marketing strategy with Facebook messenger marketing. It’s currently one of the untapped channels that are truly a gem.
You can think of Messenger marketing as similar to email marketing.
But Messenger marketing’s engagement rate is 80% within the first hours, there are a lot of tools like Mobile Monkey, is available which will make your work easy.
The real benefits you can get from messenger marketing comes when you use Messenger chatbots, that allows you to send messages to your Facebook page fans.
Other than that, you can also:
Build a contact list
Nurture leads
Send drip campaigns
Segment your audience
Schedule appointments
Transition to a live operator on demand
Remarket to contacts
Perform e-commerce transactions
To create messenger chatbots, you’d need to build using an easy-to-use chatbot builder like MobileMonkey
Holidize your website
Converting your whole website to holiday mode triggers people’s holiday emotion that essential for that point of time. This makes visitors stay longer and spend more time with shopping enthusiasm.
It should be memorable, not just an ad in the product detail section or special offer sections. Bring the emotional context to your website and to the elements present in it like the header, footer, CTAs, and even in the payment page.
Discounts and Sales
People expect a lot of discounts and sales on every product they are going to buy. Make sure that it is the first thing you have on your website. As you can see Black Friday is just a few days away, it is best to start promoting for the black Friday eCommerce sales.
Showcase the shoppers what they really require, as soon as they log in to your e-commerce site. This keeps them engaged and stops them from going to a competitors site.
Email Campaigns
As Black Friday is on the door, start doing Black Friday Campaigning. Promote your brand, call out for your loyal customers, increase the customer experience by providing the best customer service.
Have emails for the early birds, encourage people to buy, provide amazing discounts for the limited time.
Send some exclusive discount codes, to avail the coupon.
Provide a discount code, after a purchase is made, so that people keep on coming.
Final email, send a greeting email for the Holiday.
Social Media Engaging
Use all the Social Media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest to promote your Holiday Offers and deals in the social media platform. However, it is important to connect or communicate with the people in social media, because when a person watches it he becomes curious and has questions to ask.
Use the special Holiday Hashtags and encourages the Holiday atmosphere. Ask people to use the hashtags and gift them some giveaways, discount coupons or holiday offer.
Pinterest and Instagram work wonders for visual interactions. People mostly looking in both of there sites for gift inspiration, reviews, new ideas, best place to buy, greeting cards and entertainment.
If you want to keep following with the two channels then follow this:
Instagram Planner: It gives your complete year, holiday list, date and time, including the hashtags that you use.
Usually, in all these implementations and improving the brand visibility somewhere, the Customer Experience Lags behind. While a lot of e-commerce companies have understood the importance of Consumer Experience and are looking for various options in which they can implement to increase the Customer Experience.
This is a complete guide for E-commerce Websites and the strategies that the companies can implement. Including the customer experience that most of the people forget, but is the key to keep your business going.
We hope that you like all these strategies and implement in your e-commerce site to increase the sales as well as the consumer experience.
If you want us to write, more about these different kinds of strategies to improves sales and experience, do write to us.
Setting up an e-commerce business is often not as easy a task as it is made out to be. Expenses on running production lines, buying supplies, staff salaries, sales, and distribution, as well as advertising and marketing, have to be met even though there are no physical stores to be set up.
Typically, the cash flows of e-commerce business in its early days are not sufficient. So, they require entrepreneurs sometimes to borrow heavily as well as to use credit cards to nurture the business.
It is not uncommon for business revenue projections to go awry in any industry as dynamic and competitive as e-commerce leaving business owners to grapple with large amounts of debt that can cause the businesses to fail unless proper action is taken to get them back to a secure financial standing.
Some useful tips for getting out of the clutches of debt:
Evaluate the Prevailing Financial Situation and Recast the Budget
Even before, you set out to tackle the accumulated business debt; it is essential first to assess the current financial situation of the business. This will entail a detailed analysis of the business environment, the cash flows, and profitability.
From the information gathered, you should make out an operating budget that will override the existing budget that has failed. The budget will need to identify all sources of income of the e-commerce business as well as the various costs incurred on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
If you are not competent in casting a workable budget, you should ideally ask your accountant or even a professional financial consultant to help you. Some resources offer free counseling and online workshops on budgeting techniques. According to Forbes, only half of the businesses survive beyond the fifth year; among other reasons, the shortage of cash is a big reason for failure.
Eliminate or Reduce Expenses
When you need to pay back debt urgently but are not able to spare the cash, you should take a very close look to find out where all the money is going. You should try to identify expenses that are eliminated straight away. If you are having any effect on the company’s revenues or profits and try to reduce unnecessary costs.
Typically, you can make significant savings by eliminating unnecessary business travel to have meetings by using modern techniques like video conferencing. Subscriptions to magazines, professional bodies, as well as taxi rentals and entertainment are some of the expenses that can be usually eliminated to generate more surplus cash.
Even utility expenses can be slashed by keeping lights, fans, air conditioning, etc. switched off when not required. Also though staff expenses are a sensitive subject, it may be possible to tighten your belt to save on unwarranted costs.
Consolidate Your Debts
If you have loads of credit card debt, it can be a good idea to hunt out a new credit card. As it offers an extended zero-percent balance transfer facility preferably with no transfer fees.
You can also approach one of the many private lenders like National Debt Relief for a debt consolidation loan. This you can pay off all your existing debt.
You gain not only because you have only one obligation to monitor and repay. However, it can be because you can save substantially on the interest expense. As these loans are far cheaper than the average credit card APR if you have a decent credit score.
The success of your negotiations depends on several factors. That is not just you should be able to convince them that your financial difficulties are real but also that they are temporary and you are serious about repaying the debt. If you find the number of debts too large to handle, focus on tackling the ones with the highest rate of interest first.
Stop Using Credit Cards or Lines of Credit
When you are struggling to pay off debts to survive, it can often be an excellent ploy to stop using your credit cards. However, you can line the credit that has been taken out with banks and private lenders. By trying to pay for business expenses only with cash, you will be less likely to incur the costs. This may not need as having you to reach for your wallet every time will remind you of how little money there is to run the business.
By stowing away your credit cards, you are less likely to take on additional debt even as you are trying to figure out how to get out the present mess. However, in some instances, it may be better to conserve as much cash as possible. While, when you are trying to settle with lenders and using the cash reserves to prove your intent.
Communicate Regarding Your Cash Crunch to Lenders and Vendors
It is essential not to alarm lenders and suppliers of materials and services by stopping or delaying their payments. Since you will require their support continuingly, it is better to communicate clearly. Regarding your financial difficulties so that they are not tempted to pull the rug under your feet by getting to know of it from someone else.
Explain the reason why your e-commerce business is having a difficult time and try to negotiate with your lenders better terms, including a lower rate of interest and a more extended repayment period. Even banks can see as non-tractable can be arranged with for lowering the rate of interest at least until such time the e-commerce business bounces back.
Conclusion
E-commerce startups do require to access debt funds until such time they can go in for an IPO or get venture capitalist interested.
However, easy access to credit card debt and personal loans mustn’t create a situation. As the business inside a mountain of debt and its very existence comes under threat due to the inability of service debt. Strict financial prudence from day one and corrective steps to tackle debt before it gets out of hand are crucial to the long-term survival of the business.
