Insights into the marketing technology 2020 and beyond is an online survey conducted by WARC in association with BDO and the University of Bristol on more than 750 brands and agencies to understand their current and future marketing plans for martech tool use, budgets and barriers to growth. This research was conducted on brands and agencies located in North America, the UK, Europe, and APAC.
Moving on, let’s take a more in-depth look at what this 2020 Martech Insights? what are the marketing trends ? and what the future of Matech 2020 is?
You must be familiar with the concept that marketing usually focuses on developing a healthy relationship with customers and satisfying their needs.
Then you must also be knowing that this could not have been possible without technology.
Indeed, these marketing technology tools and needs in marketing are directly proportional to each other. The more the tools, the more their need.
However, due to the modernization of people’s language with time and this marketing technology word clubbed to form a portmanteau, MarTech.
Well, in simpler terms, MarTech is basically a short version of marketing technology. This mixed name concept can be witnessed in various other sectors, such as AdTech (Advertising Technology), a term used in the world of advertisement field.
Well, well, wait! Before hitting the numbers and data, let’s first try to understand the basic concepts of Martech.
What is MarTech?
Source: Chiefmatec
Like any other term used in the Software world, this Martech is also a term used by the software techies and marketers who plan, execute, and measure their business campaigns.
The planning, execution, and measurements are usually carried out with the help of Martech tools.
These tools help you in streamlining and analyzing your data and provide you with various methods or options to reach out to your target audience and keep them engaged.
What are the MarTech Tools?
Martech Tools ranges from content strategy tools designed for different media to data management tools, analytics, and attribution tools.
Some examples of tools are Photoshop, WordPress, MS- Excel, etc.. To sum up, there are about 7040 Marketing tools readily available for you on a global scale, according to Chief Market Technologies. And these vendors vary from start-up specialists to established providers.
Well, speaking of tools while browsing about this vast topic, did you ever come across the term Martech 5000 and wondered what it stands for?
Like, you and I know what I love you 3000 stands for but Martech 5000?
Well, in 2017, there were around 5000 solutions available globally for commercial purposes are these were nicknamed as “MartTech 5000”.
According to Growth, the top 10 market technology tools are:
Source: Growth
Getting back to the basics, let’s understand what a stack is in the retail world.
What is meant by Martech Stack?
A marketing technology stack is an archive of all the technology tools that companies or marketers leverage for improving their retail activities or processes.
In simpler terms, this stack is a collection of the software used by the company for retailing purpose.
I guess you have brushed up your basics, let’s now get into details about insights into the marketing technology aka Martech.
In this article, you will find the current trend, state, use, and future expectations of the marketing technology industry.
Ages of Marketing technology
Source: Chiefmartec
Our tech market’s first era began in the early 21st century and was in existence until 2012.
As you can see, 2012 saw the upleap in the tech market, and the era was called the early age of martech. This early age of martech saw the introduction of new marketing tools into the lives of businesses and companies.
Later till 2017, the graphs of software and tools usage hit an excellent steep, and that age was called the first golden age of martech.
But from the 2018 year, you can observe a bend in the graphs of tech usage.
2018 to 2020, a reckoning in the market is predicted. Therefore the era is called the reckoning age of martech.
However, past 2020, it is said that marketing technology will see a drastic change and will be higher than ever.
Martechs law:
Source: Chiefmartec
As you know, marketing is bizarrely complex and is evolving at a breakneck pace. Martec’s Law is a genuine dilemma for everyone in the corporate industry.
Hold on… Before I talk about how bizarre the market is. Let me tell you what the Law is.
What is Martech Law?
Martech’s Law is a graphical representation of the change in the market and change in the organizations.
Source: chiefmartec
According to this Law,” Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically.”
That means the rate at which the technology is updating is faster when compared to the rate at which organizations are adopting the technology.
In other words, the rate at which the organizations are adapting to the new technology is slower than the rate of updation in technology.
Insight of MarTech 2020:
Technical software is developing over time. According to Marketing Technology 2020 Landscape Supergraphic reports by Chiefmartec, the number of solutions in 2011 was 150; from there, it boosted to 7,040 solutions according to Landscape Supergraphic 2019.
The growth of the solutions from the past eight years can be seen in the image below
Source Chiefmartec
The estimated market size of the Marketing Industry in North America and the United Kingdom’s (UK) is as follows:
Source: Martech 2020: and Beyond
From the above image, you can see How the market spending has doubled from $34.3 billion in 2017 up to $65.9 billion in 2019 just in a span of two years. The data is combined spending of North America and the UK exclusively.
However, you can observe a massive difference between the increased amount of spending for each individual annum. The increase in marketing size in 2018 is 18.1 BN, and for the current year, it is 13.5 BN.
This means the corporate spending on marketing software has decreased by 4.6 BN in comparison to 2017.
The percentage of overall retail budget spending on marketing technology:
Source: Martech 2020: and Beyond
The data, in the above image, is split by the proportion of companies spending on in-house and outsourced marketing technology.
As you can see, the results show a rapid growth rate in the spendings in North America
region while the UK has remained steady.
On average, all the brands in North America and the UK are spending approximately 26% of their budgets on software when compared to 23% last year.
That means there is a 13% increase in martech budgets since last year. However, in comparison to 2017 Martech values, there is slight evidence of a decline in the future of the market.
When coming to in-house sourcing and outsourcing by these companies, there has been substantial discussion in the industry regarding the usage of in-housing of tech and optimized utilization of services by brands from their agency partners over the years.
However, what the results suggest is, in the North America region, there has been an increase in both in-sourcing and outsourcing by the brands.
However, when you look at the data of the UK, there has been an evident drop in the outsourcing of resources but a 1% increase in the in-sourcing.
Marketing Technology budget change over 12 months:
The martech budget change of clients by 2020:
The 750 brands and agencies on who the research is done have two opinions on the client’s budget. On analyzing the combined results of these 750 brands, 43% of the brands feel there would be an increase in the client’s budget over 12 months by 2020, 53% of the brands feel there wouldn’t be any change as the clients will still keep their budgets fixed for the annum. However, only 4% of the brands feel there would be a slight drop in the set budgets of the clients.
Source: Martech 2020 and Beyond
When you try to look at the results of the analysis for individual regions, each region has its perspective.
Before moving on with the further analysis of the data, you should remember that the analysis reports of Europe excluding the UK while the others are of the whole region.
All other regions except for Europe strongly believe that most of the client’s budget would remain constant while in Europe, 53% of the brands believe there would be a significant increase in the budgets of the clients.
The martech budget increase of brands by 2020:
When the brands were questioned about their budget increase over the next 12 months, the results were somewhat like this:
Source: Martech 2020: and beyond
As you can see, each percentage of brands has its proposals for the budget increase.
On average marketing technology, 2020 budgets by brands are:
22% believe that their budgets might increase by 0-5%.
26% estimate their budget increase between 6-10%.
21% calculate their brand budget increase to range in between 11-15%.
15% of the brands feel theirs might increase between 16-20%.
9% of the brands say their budget will increase between 21-25%
6% of all brands estimated their budgets to increase by more than 25%.
However, from the results, you can analyze that Europe, including the UK, has the highest percentage of brands, on average, 9.5%, which predicts their budgets to be more than 25% of the current budgets.
While North America has no companies which estimate to spend more than 25%, however, it has the highest number of brands calculating to increase in between 0-5% on their budgets.
How has increased investment in marketing technology affected the companies’ Media Spend?
With the development of Chatbots, Artificial Intelligence, SEO tools, and other corporate tools, it has become easier for marketers which media is most effective for their use and promotions.
In the last year’s survey, it was found that the marketers had decreased their market spend when they invested in software tools. But for 2019, marketing technology, the market trends have changed.
Source: Martech 2020 and beyond
From the above data, you can understand how the market trends have changed in comparison to 2018.
Though for about 44% of the brands, their media spend has not been affected, for 32%, it has decreased whereas there was a 57% decrease in 2018.
That means there is a difference of 25% when compared. However, a significant increase of 8% is visible on the media spend from 2018 to 2019.
What do the marketing trends, marketing technology budgets and marketing sizes for 2020 suggest to…..
Brands?
On a global basis for brands the marketing technology, market trends and sizes suggest for the development of in-sourcing resources as well as to maintain good relations with outsourcers too.
Thought the budgets of companies by 2020 are predicted to increase, you can see how more than half of the budget is spent on resourcing.
Hence the companies should focus more on developing their in-source resources or train the pre-existing staff to integrate and upskill their methods and ideas of resourcing.
This doesn’t mean you tend to lose your relations with outsourcers. Incase if the insource resources crash, the only option you have to get your job done is through outsourcing. Hence it is equally important to maintain a balance between insourcing and outsourcing.
Agencies?
From the observations of inhouse and outsourcing future marketing trends, you can see that there is a little momentum in In-housing resources among the respondents.
Hence there is an excellent opportunity for you to grab. You can use this opportunity as an advantage and win back most of your clients, who are about to consider in-housing or have recently shifted to in-housing.
However, winning back is not as easy as you think.
It rarely happens that you go to your client, explain to him difficulties of in-housing, and boom he is impressed and gets back to you.
To impress your client and win him back, you should sell your values according to “COW.”
Now wondering what this COW is?
Well, COW stands for Creativity, Objectivity, and Wider perspective.
Hence, when you are explaining your resources to the client, always try to be creative, objective, and try to have a wider perspective of branding and culture.
Technology vendors?
As you can see, the possibility of an increase in budget spending, there is always a scope of improvement for your tech vendors.
All you have to do is to ensure that your goods and services can facilitate creativity, are easy to operate, and solve the concerns of both brands as well as agencies.
Media Owners?
If you are a media owner and are looking at the data analysis, I bet you must be feeling happy.
Compared to last year, data this year has a piece of positive news for all media owners because there last year had a great decrease in media spent while this year’s research says there is an increase.
For you, the key to making money out of this is by focusing on the importance of data of the brands and agencies as well as keeping yourself transparent.
Now, if you step ahead and prove your effectiveness and relevance to brands concerning the context of increasing usage of technology platforms, that’s it you get clicked just like that.
Now, let’s look at the current usage and capabilities of marketing tools.
Current Use and Capabilities of Marketing technology:
Marketing tools provided by established organizations are where the brands and agencies find their use.
The following are the marketing tools currently in use by most of the brands on a global level.
Source: Martech 2020 and beyond
From the above data, you can analyze various categories of tools used by companies for marketing.
By comparing both 2018 and 2019 data, you can see that for some tools, there is a drop in their usage while some have picked up the graphs.
Though you can observe a negligible difference between the rise of Analytics, Measurements and Insights, Mobile, Data management, and Ad tech’s graph, you can find a significant rise of 3% among Market automation and SEO. A 5% rise in usage of experience optimization can also be seen. But, in the case of collaborations with other software, there is an increase of 9% in comparison to that of 2018.
However, you can see that, and there is a 3% downfall in the usage of Commerce, lead generation and sales, and Customer relationship management (CRM). While coming to Emails, there is a significant drop of 6% in the usage in 2019.
However, the future market trends also suggest that there might be a huge fall in the usage of Emails as only 14% of the population among the 750 brands plan to use it in the next 12 months. Comparatively collaboration usage can be seen to fall as 38% of the crowd have no plans in using the tools.
How can you develop the best MarTech Strategy?
When the Brand respondents of the Survey conducted by WARC in association with BDO, and University of Bristol were asked about the skills they look into while hiring the marketing function for their company the top priorities were somewhat like this:
Source: Martech 2020 and beyond
As you can see, the most important criteria for the brands is creativity. On average, 49% of the brands prefer their marketing software to be creative. Later they look at the brand strategy and then the customer experience.
So similarly, even you should have a clear picture of what you need for your brand. Hence planning a martech strategy is very essential.
Here are some great tips for you to develop the best marketing strategy for the future market trends:
Analyze what you need:
Along with the growing market, new tools are launched every day. It is always tempting to get the best tool or a high-end tool. Every organization, just like yours, wants to have the best.
But what will you do with a tool which is of no use to you? It is just like a person with hearing aid buying a high-end version of headsets.
Hence, always sit with your team and analyze which tool is easy for them to work on and to give fantastic results.
Check for Upgradations of the tool:
Now, you know what you want and started to use it. It is giving the best results. But, with the change of time, tools also need to be upgraded for more optimization.
Hence, keep looking for up-gradation of the tool or alternative sources for tools that are easier to adapt and give optimized results for your brand.
You can save your time of research about new tools and use product hunt for the same.
Understand the role of the tool:
Why do you need a tool? Why can’t you do everything manually?
I know the answers, I was just playing around.
You usually need a tool because it serves several purposes that are important to your business team.
First, they help you in understanding your customers through data and analytics.
Second, they help you in automating processes so you can use that data to work more efficiently.
And third, they help you in making the customer experience even more personal and meaningful.
Hence when you are using tools, make sure that it serves at least one of the purposes. If your tool is not serving any of the purposes, I say ditch it and shift it to a useful tool.
Know what your clients look for:
Having a tool, analyzing the numbers or data will not fetch you anything until the client is satisfied. Hence when you are choosing a tool or planning a strategy, always keep clients persona in mind.
To know what your clients need to look for leads from the customer experience department and choose strategies accordingly.
Keep your data up to date:
Always remember, no matter whichever product services your companies provide, you must have your database. The database helps you understand more about the market; it’s functioning and customers’ persona, which helps you and your company develop to the next level.
How are marketing technology and customer experience related?
When the brands were asked about how important is customer experience optimization for their company? The results are:
Source Martech 2020 and beyond
As you can see, 57% of the population feel customer experience is very important, and 39% feel it is important. Hence on average, 76.5% of the brands and agencies feel customer experience is somewhat important for them.
What is the customer experience?
Customer experience is nothing but the feedback from the customer. The feedback can be in any manner. It can be the impression on your brand, product, or your services.
For most customer-based companies, the customer is the king.
Technologies used by the brands to learn about customer experience:
According to the research, as you can see, Most of the brands use Customer relationship management and social media management the most to get customer experience.
It’s not always necessary that you should also use what the top brands use. Here are some customer experience tools you can use for your company for better results.
Customer experience tools are:
1. Customer review suggestion box:
No one knows what is working and what is not better than your employees. So, first, start from your own office. You know, like charity begins at home, feedback also should start from your own office.
There might be a possibility that if you, the boss, is asking about a review, no one would dare tell negatives.
So drop a suggestion box where the employee’s name can be anonymous, and you get the genuine review.
2. Customer surveys:
Well, well, yes, customer surveys. From your database, you can find out your brand loyals easily, and also you can find brand switchers.
Pick them up and send surveys via online mails, or if you are in the same area, try to meet them up. You can have a little chat about their experience with the brand and then conduct a survey.
3. Social media listening tools:
If you feel that surveys, the suggestion box is too much, and you don’t wanna do it, then you can always turn to technology for help.
Social media listening tools help you monitor what your customers are looking for. It includes the top searched keywords, your brand products, their reviews or comments, your competitors, and many more.
Now you must be wondering where to get these tools? Don’t worry; we have a solution to every problem of yours.
There are an unlimited number of tools out there based on your preferences, for reference Hubspot, Hootsuite, Sprout Social are few tools from where you can start.
There are other Customer experience tools available in the market that fulfill your preferences, and they are IBM Tealeaf, Satmetrix, WalkMe, Khoros, Podium, Whatfix, and on and on.
By reading the above information about marketing technology and trends, I bet you must have understood what it is about and how are the current market trends.
Well, now let’s look at the future.
With 2019 almost coming to an end, it’s time we take our experiences from it and prepare for the future 2020.
Future of Marketing Technology 2020 :
The most used technology in the current marketing strategy these days is IOT- Internet of Things, 38% of the population among the brands use IOT as their technology in marketing strategy. 26% of them plan to use it in the next 12 months too.
Next, catching up technology is Virtual Reality, aka VR, 26% currently use it, and 24% plan to use in the coming 12 months.
The other analysis you can find in the figure below.
Source: Martech 2020 and beyond.
As you might be aware of the fact that along with changing times, technology is also evolving.
So, What will happen in 2020?
This is probably going to be the future of Marketing technologies, aka martech:
Brands will look for alternative communication channels.
Businesses will no longer be built on one channel
Personalization will be the new market trend
#Voice Search Optimization:
Though the research states that the voice search usage in the next 12 months will not be more than 25%, another search, according to ComScore states, over 50% of the future searches in 2020 will be in the from voice search.
Hence, companies to rank on top have to optimize to voice search.
Here we are not just talking about Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa. We are talking about voice searches beyond these.
One such personal best is Jetson.ai. Never heard about it?
Well, Jetson.ai is a voice assistant, which helps in voice shopping.
You don’t have to buy a device; all you need to do is simply connect it to your Amazon’s Alexa or Google Mini.
Then upload the menu and shop.
Voice Shopping in the U.S.is estimated to reach $40 Billion in and $5 Billion in the UK by 2022.” -OC&C STRATEGY CONSULTANTS
Another wonderful thing about jetson.ai learns from the customers and customize it accordingly.
That means, If you are ordering a particular item from the same store over and over, it understands it, and for the next purchase, it makes it easy for you to order.
# Why will dependency on Google Analytics to decrease?
I am sure that every company at one point or the other must have used Google Analytics or is currently using it.
If you have used Google Analytics, you must be aware of how it functions.
If not, here is a brief intro to it. Google Analytics is basically a web analytics service. Google offers it. It helps you to track and report website traffic as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand.
If you ask me if this Google Analytics is not accurate for research? I would say No.
Now, if you ask m if there is something wrong? Still, it’s no.
I bet your next question will be, do people, not like it? Of Course, no, who wouldn’t like a free tool to check Website traffic.
Then why will it be replaced? Let me give you a living example of smartphones.
Nokia phones were considered the best. Even you must have used it at some point. But with time, smartphones came in and replaced it.
People like you and me preferred smartphones cause work got easy and optimized.
Similarly, with Google Analytics. Over time new updated tools and software are emerging, and Analytics has become the conventional method of data analysis.
Nowadays, there are things like repeat purchases, upsells, down sells, and checkout bumps are seen. On top of that, there are various ways in which you can generate revenue for your online business, like partnerships, or webinars.
As a result, it has caused companies to start using analytics solutions that match their database better, for example, Amplitude. Or something more convenient than that.
In the end, all you are seeing is a big push into business intelligence.
In 2020, you will get to see more and more companies adopting these business intelligence solutions. Due to budgets, they might as well shift from paid ones to free ones like Google Data Studio.
If you have no idea about Data Studio, then I suggest you start getting an idea now.
It is easy for you to pass in all of your business and corporate data into one place.
For example, you can pass in more complicated data from your Facebook ad campaigns into Data Studio with ease as it would be a bit difficult task to perform with Google Analytics.
#How IoT will top the businesses?
As mentioned earlier, 38% of the population among the brands use IOT as their technology in marketing strategy. 26% of them plan to use it in the next 12 months too.
According to a report by Statista, the Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices installed worldwide in 2020 will be 30.73 billion. Currently, in 2019, it is 26.66 Billion.
Which means there would be a rise of 4.07 billion in IoT.
If you have no idea about what IoT is then, The internet of things (IoT) is nothing but the data you share over an internet connection.
In technical terms, IoT is a growing set of technologies based on devices that could share data via an internet connection.
Hence, companies will have to look into this for better optimization, and it is estimated according to a report by Statista that by 2015, this IoT would reach 75.44 billion.
That means 48.78 billion rises from the current use.
#Why will brands look for alternative communication channels?
The most conventional communication channel used by corporates is Email. You and I also use it for our marketing purposes.
In fact, email marketing is one of the E-Commerce business ideas and SEO ideas.
The only problem with emails is conversion rates are low. Buyers, most of the time, do not check inboxes or only look for important ones and skip promotions. Hence it is becoming challenging for companies to only stick to emails.
Hence, companies are looking forward to alternative business channels for better conversion rates, which are effective in turning their leads into customers.
Some alternative communication channels are Chatbots, Customer call centers, toll-free centers, and push up notifications.
# Why will business no longer be built on one channel?
In previous years, a lot have companies have been built on a single channel, like facebook, quora, etc.
Facebook uses the email address book as its channel. Whenever you log in for the first time, you must have seen a pop up suggested friends or import email addresses from facebook.
Similarly, Quora is built on SEO channels. It helps companies ranking on search engines.
But, marketing these days is not unidirectional. It is heading fast towards marginal gains.
If you want to win the market, then you must use all the channels possible for business. Hence marketers will shift to use multiple channels to build their businesses or rank number one.
#Why personalization is important in the future?
Personalization is an SEO trick to grab the attention of your customers. There are two types of personalization to a website:
Themed personalization
User personalization
Themed personalization:
This is what you do to customize your website according to a festival. Like recently, we celebrated Halloween. So you must have customized your website to a Halloween theme.
Google always personalizes itself to such events. It makes the users happy and attracts them.
Well, if you do not know how to customize your website, you can use organized themes for helping you with customization.
User Personalization:
This is an important point, especially in the field of online marketing. Let it be your ads or products you sell. You should always know your demographics.
User personalization is what you can find Amazon or Flipkart doing. They observe your shopping trends or recent searches. Later, when you use their services, they will show you related items.
Based on your recent searches, here are some suggested products. A message appears, and we find all our related items.
Now, what will happen if this is not there? If personalization was not there, then you or I can get suggestions for baby clothes or dog food.
Well, if you have a baby or a dog, it will be useful, but I don’t have a baby or a dog, so its a spam to me.
But if you give me some search related to footwear- oh, I love browsing footwear and keep on buying them even if I don’t need new pairs- I will browse and definitely buy at least one pair.
So, personalization helps in business growth and attracts customers.
Now, if you ask me, why is it important? In future people will get so busy that they will not have time to look into anything. If you personalize your products according to buyer persona and showcase them on top of the websites or ads, the chances are high that they will end up purchasing some goods or the other.
You might have definitely been hearing about some of the above points or might feel they are irrelevant to you, but this is the future of marketing technology 2020.
Martech is not a piece of cake. You also must have been facing barriers in technology for marketing. However, here are a few topmost barriers for Marketing technology 2020.
Barriers for MarTech:
According to the report, MarTech 2020 and beyond, the brands and agencies have different views on the barriers of marketing.
According to the brands, 50% of them feel budgets will be the top constraint in 2020 marketing. Still, agencies have a different view; among them, 56% feel understanding the technology will be a constraint for marketing technology 2020.
Here is the data analysis of barriers for both brands and agencies
Image:
Source: Martech 2020 and beyond
Conclusion:
On a whole account, Marketing technology 2020 is going to see a lot of ups and downs. But for you, if you have confusion or dilemma about what to do, where to start, how to start, you can always contact us.
Most things mentioned above are either things that you have been hearing for a long time or have never heard about. But whatever it is, it is in the future, and if you want to survive, you should be prepared.
We would always love to hear your views on the marketing trends 2020 and what you think about your future. Do give your opinions in the comments section below or contact us.
We hope that this article was of excellent help to you in understanding marketing technology and 2020 trends.
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!!!
Running an online business is an incredibly exciting and rewarding way to earn money and it
has literally never been easier to start a business online. The internet is so widespread and
technology is so simple to use that more and more people are realizing their full earning
potential, often in addition to holding down a day job. To get started you need only a
computer, a connection to the internet and, of course, a solid business idea. Here are just 6
online businesses you can start from home, so why not get started today?
1. Use your skills to freelance
For many years if someone referred to themselves as a freelancer they were someone who did not have a regular employer but would charge high hourly rates and fees for their work, either by the hour or the project. However, in recent years, freelancing, in addition to having a day job, has become common practice. People all over the world are freelancing from home to make extra money through their skills and talents.
From web design or coding to online marketing or writing, there are plenty of skills that businesses will pay for on a freelance basis rather than hiring a full-time employee. By becoming a freelancer you can take on as much or as little work as you need/want and, as long as you meet your deadline, you can complete the work on your own schedule. Freelance jobs may be standalone projects or you could end up with regular and consistent work.
To get started as a freelancer, it’s worth knowing that there are freelance work websites out there that give you a platform to market your service and connect with businesses that are looking for what you do. You could also publish your skills and availability on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
2. Create and sell products on Etsy
There’s an out of date assumption that creative artists or craftspeople stay away from modern technology, but this is no longer the case. Thanks to online marketplaces like Etsy, people can now sell their creations and crafts to customers all over the world, and it’s incredibly simple to get started.
From knitting and sewing, painting, sketching, pottery, papercrafts, welding and just about anything else you can think of if you can create high-quality and unique pieces you can sell them on Etsy. Some people have found enough success on Etsy to turn their craft into a full-time business rather than a side business. There are also plenty of starter templates and guides to get your Etsy shop set up and trading in no time.
3. Open a dropshipping store
Setting up and running an online e-commerce store can be a big commitment and can be expensive. You need to buy and store your stock, create and manage a website with product listings and images, market that website and package and ship any products which you sell. A simpler method is to start a dropshipping store which allows you to run an online store with far less work required. When running a dropshipping store you can sell products but you don’t need to keep an inventory or ship the products as a third party wholesaler takes care of this.
The customer buys an item from your website, and you then place the order with the wholesaler who packages and ships the product straight to the customer. This saves you a significant amount of time, effort, and money. There are even platforms like Oberlo with simple templates that guide you through the creation of your website so you can start selling on the web in a matter of days. They will work out just how much you need to sell your product for, in order to make a profit.
4. Start an online consultancy
If you have knowledge or expertise in a particular topic which could be of use to others, why not start an online consultancy service? By starting a consultancy, you can pass on your experience and skills to people who need support or advice. For example, lots of businesses will seek out specialist consultants for particular projects when they don’t have the required skills in their existing team. Their staff may be competent in a number of ways but are lacking specific knowledge in IT, paid search advertising, website or literature design, social media, search engine optimization (SEO) or financial management to take the business to the next level.
Often we are too modest about our skills and experience and don’t realize that what we have learned in our careers could be of genuine value to others. If you’re struggling with confidence in your own skills, take a look at this article on 10 Ways to Build Your Confidence at Work.
5. Become an Amazon Affiliate
Amazon is a giant in the world of e-commerce and most people have used the website at one point or another. What you may not know is that you can tap into this international success by becoming an Amazon Affiliate. Essentially, you create your own website that encourages visitors to click through to Amazon and make a purchase. When one of your visitors makes a purchase on Amazon you earn a commission from Amazon. An affiliate website is usually focused on a single product type rather than selling lots of different products. This is because it is easier to rank in search engines like Bing and Google when the site is focused on a niche. It also provides a simpler shopping experience for customers when they are searching for a specific product. Building an Amazon Affiliate website can be time-intensive in the early stages, and you will need to buy a domain and set up the appropriate links, but once it is operational it can bring you income with very little upkeep or effort. You could even duplicate the website’s structure to cover a range of products.
6. Trade website domains
Trading website domains is a lot like trading in real estate, but with lower risk and capital required. You would buy low cost website domain names and sell it on for a profit. If you are clever about it, there is plenty of money to be made, but creativity is helpful. You need to invest in a number of website domains that are low in cost but could be valuable to a business in the future and keep a lookout for the right type of buyer. The more domains you have, the more diverse your portfolio will be, and you’ll maximize your chances of making a sale. You can buy domains with a credit card from domain auction websites or domain purchase websites, and that’s where you’re likely to find helpful advice and support to enable you to get started. It may take some time to find your feet and make a profit, but once you’re started it can be a lot of fun.
Start making money from home today
It’s so easy to start an online business that, arguably, there is very little stopping you from increasing your income by starting a side business. If it’s something you want to do, you absolutely can maximize your earning potential. Here we have mentioned just a few ideas, but there are literally hundreds of ways people have managed to make money from home. Could tomorrow be the day you start your own venture?
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.
Facebook hiding likes count on your post after psychological effects on Youngster. Yes! you hear that right, soon the Likes on your post will be hidden, the Like button behaves as a central part of Facebook since it is in the market. Facebook will not hide the Like button, however, it will not showcase or hide the number of likes you got.
According to this, the user would still be able to check how many times a particular post has been liked. Accept for him, no one else could be able to check the number of likes the post got. The company gave confirmed information regarding like hiding stating that Facebook is considering a test that will help remove like counts from the post, but not sure when this will be removed.
Facebook hiding likes mission has already started testing for some of the users. First, it started with Instagram, the photo-sharing app which is being owned by Facebook, started to hide the number of likes, it started with Canadian’s in the month of May then expanded to trial to some other countries in the month of July.
I observed that Facebook has recently begun to prototype this hidden like/reaction count for a few places in the world. The count that feature in the Android app is being reverse engineered and underneath playing with the code.
Source: Twitter (Jane Manchun Wong)
Presently, this feature is still not completely in the social media platform, when it gets into the market the likes or the reactions are hidden from all others, and will be visible to only the creator of the post or page. The same way how it works for Instagram. The list of the people will be still visible to everyone but the number or the count will not be visible.
You may find it interesting, as the number of likes and reactions on the post are hidden, however, the likes and reaction on the comments are not hidden. But, this can be due to the reason that the feature is still in the early stage of development. After some time it is expected to be polished and eventually with time.
Psychological Effect on Social Media Users
Social media platform these days has become like a lifeline to people without which as if people can’t survive. Mostly, for the youngsters, it like the day starts with Social Media and ends at Social media. The number of people using social media sites has just increased and will increase.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, for an average time spent on a lifetime, a person spends 6 years and 8 months being engaged in Social Media.
Source: GlobalWebIndex
When the time is divided on a daily basis, on an average daily time spent on Facebook is 58 minutes. Facebook still tops the list with the most number of people spending the most time on Facebook. In this, 59 percent of the people are between the age of 18-34 years. With 1.4 billion users are active daily on Facebook and daily 300 million photos are being uploaded on Facebook.
All these, things indicate one thing, Social Media has become a part of major portion of life. It can even be said that the photos, videos, posts on Facebook are very important for the users, so the Likes, Comments, Share mean a lot to the user.
On the other way, we can say that this social media addiction is not completely because of you, this also has some involvement of the two chemicals: Dopamine and Oxytocin.
Dopamine
According to the scientist, Dopamine is a pleasure chemical, that actually creates “Want” in our mind. In simple words it makes us seek, desire and search.
Source: Harvard
Dopamine is actually secreted by unpredictability, with small pieces of information and reward cues that create a situation to utilize social media. The Dopamine pull is very strong, that leads to a situation where it will easy for you to resist alcohol than resisting Tweeting or posting.
Oxytocin
This chemical which may otherwise call as “Cuddle Chemical” it is a hormonal spike usually, released when people get intimate or start socializing. It can even be said that it just requires you to stay 10 minutes online to increase your Oxytocin level to 13%.
This symbolical to love brings- lowered stress levels, feeling of love, trust, and loyalty, generosity with the addition of love for Social Media to an individual.
If we compare normal Internet users and Social media users, then social media users have showcased more trust. A person using Facebook is 43% more likely to trust the social media platform than internet users.
These two chemicals make the social media platform “a hard to stop wanting” place.
Effects of Social Media
A lot of studies prove a connection that states that more Social Media presence increased the negative impact on the brain. That includes increased depression, anxiety, loneliness, narcissism, compulsive behavior.
In early, 2012 Rosen, Chever, and Carrier coined a term “iDisorder” a bad relationship between technology or internet usage and psychological health of a human being
Social Media Depression
The studies revealed that the amount of time spent on Social Media site increases the level of depression in an individual. On the other hand, intense Facebook usage will lead to major loneliness.
According to researcher Kalpidou, Facebook users who are having a lot of friends on Facebook are the loneliest ones. Further, the people who spend more time on Facebook have very low self-esteem
Narcissism Personality Disorder
In some special cases, it was found that people with a higher level of narcissism, and a higher number of social activity are less depressed. Whereas, if we excluded this special case, rest all are showcasing the negative impact.
Usually, Narcissism disorder is due to, grandiose sense of importance, fantasies of ultimate power, self-promoting and superficial relationships. This means, suppose a person has uploaded images and desires to get 10,000 and if that person doesn’t achieve to get it, then he gets a Narcissist Personality Disorder.
How to hide likes on Facebook
These days you can find several types of likes on Facebook. Do you know that you can even control your likes on Facebook or keep the likes count private! This means you can decide to showcase or hide your likes. While, it is very easy to keep your thoughts to yourself, you just have to follow the below steps:
For Desktop Version
Log in to your Facebook account
Select your profile image in the top bar of the page
Just under your Cover Pic select the More option.
Then in the drop-down list select Manage Selection option.
You will get a list of options, select Likes in that and check the box present on the left side.
Click on Save option.
Now, the likes in your posts are hidden, so no one will be able to click on it and access it.
For Mobile Version
Open the Facebook app and Log in to Facebook, go to your profile
Below your profile picture, you will find a More option to select it.
Tap on the Activity Log Option
On top, there is a Category option select it.
Select the Likes and Reaction option
Select the post that you want to be unliked, click the arrow button beside it.
Select unlike option
This is a Manual way in which your Facebook hides like count. While you can also use an automatic way or a tool that came up in 2012, known as Facebook Demetricator to hide your like counts.
It is not a new thing in the market, back in 2012 the bias by metric was first introduced by Ben Gross a Professor of University of Illinois who created a tool called to be Facebook Demetricator a Google Chrome Extension that removes the visibility to the Like Counts in your Facebook account.
Conclusion
It might take time to develop, research and experiment on people, these type of experiments have come in a lot of times. But, this is can be one of the beneficial factors for the wellbeing of future and present days, youth who are more conscious about the number and assess themselves based upon it.
If you any related queries, with this topic, do write to us or comment below, we will be glad to answer you!
