Redefine the approach to advertising campaigns

Today, an entrepreneur has many paid tools for online promotion:

• targeted advertising on social networks;
• contextual media advertising in search engines and on websites: displaying advertisements that correspond to specific search queries of the user, his behavior or interests;
• remarketing; partner integrations;
• promotion through bloggers;
• video advertising;
• promo in mobile applications.
• Create a Flyer and post on social media.

There are several factors that determine the effectiveness of an advertisement:

• hype, creativity, dialogue with the target audience in a language that they understand;
• listing the benefits that the consumer will receive;
• constant testing of advertising results: without analyzing this data, it will not work to identify the message that gives the maximum conversion.
• The advertising channel also matters. For example, leaflets advertising expensive electronics casually thrown into mailboxes in a residential area are unlikely to cause a wave of consumer interest in the store’s products.

How to choose the right advertising channel

• Determine the goal of promotion: for example, increase brand awareness, build a base of potential customers, stimulate repeat purchases, return customers who almost made an order.
• Analyze already launched campaigns: look at the most effective promotion channels and the audience to which the advertisement was shown. Launch new campaigns based on this data.
• Examine what competitors are choosing who are selling similar products in a similar area.
• Choose 2-3 promotion channels at once in order to weed out non-working ones. Advertising channels are learned by comparison. At the same time, it is necessary to clearly define in advance the criteria by which the promotion options will be compared.
• Test: not only advertising tools, but also the messages themselves, because even such nuances as the background color in the picture can influence the decision to purchase.

Work on your online reputation

Testimonials are a very important part of building a reputation and an effective sales management tool. After all, the number of purchases largely depends on the reputation. Reviews allow:

• understand the real needs of customers and improve the quality of the product or service in accordance with the requests;
• show your target audience that their opinion matters, and the brand listens to customers and appreciates them;
• Improve search engine rankings by hiring an SEO company through natural brand mentions in consumer reviews;
• provide additional advertising that does not need to be paid for, but which is highly appreciated by the audience.
• According to statistics, 91% of people aged 18-34 have the same trust in online reviews that personal recommendations from their friends, acquaintances, relatives cause. 93% of users claim that they made a decision to buy a product thanks to a high-quality review on the Internet.

Therefore, a well-thought-out strategy for working with reviews will definitely be beneficial and help to increase sales in the online store.

How to get feedback

The easiest way to get feedback is to ask customers who have already bought something. They need to be told where they can evaluate the product, comment on its use. The effectiveness of collecting feedback depends on this.

You can convey your request in the following ways:

• sending by email some time after purchase;
• a pop-up window or block with a request to evaluate the service immediately after the client has made an order on the website / in the application;
• Advertising on social networks – for example, in a group or company community;
• phone calls to clients.

How to track reviews

If there are not so many mentions of your company on the Internet yet, you can use a manual search. To do this, you need to specify the search region and the time for which references are needed (hour, day, week, month). And then enter a query in the search bar, for example, “your store + reviews”. In social networks, you can also search for posts by keywords.

If you want to automate the process, you can use the free tools. For example, Google Alerts. In this service, you can set up alerts that will be sent to your email when new mentions of your brand appear on the network.

Another useful product for dealing with reviews is Babkee. This service even knows how to determine how high the authority of the author of the publication about you is and how the review will affect the reputation. In a separate article, you can learn more about services for monitoring brand mentions .

How to work with reviews

In addition to working out the algorithm for tracking reviews, you need to develop a strategy for responding to them.

The worst case scenario is no reaction. This will show your target audience that you are not interested in dialogue with the buyer. Typically, brand indifference causes negative reactions and markedly diminishes customer loyalty.

The best option is to create a map of responses to a review. A map is a document that details different types of reviews: negative, neutral, interrogative, positive, and so on.

Such a document, of course, takes a long time to complete. But it fully justifies the efforts, because as a result you have ready-made instructions and prepared phrases for almost any occasion.

When working with any reviews, there are communication rules:

• do not get personal;
• not to allow too familiar addressing clients;
• do not use obscene language.

Sometimes in reviews, questions are asked to the seller or manufacturer. You should not ignore them, on the contrary, show the potential buyer the benefits that he will receive after purchasing the product. If you yourself used it – great: tell us how the product manifests itself in action, what are its advantages, distinctive sides, non-standard characteristics and non-obvious advantages.

If you do not know how to answer a buyer’s question in a review or comment, in no case give false information. Tell them that you need to get correct data and only then can you inform the person. You can even take contact information such as a number, phone number, or email address. Promise that, as soon as you receive information, immediately contact the person concerned through this channel.

If you realize that you made a mistake in something, immediately apologize to the client and provide the correct information. 

Important! In wholesale, reviews matter too. This marketing technique is actively used even by large corporations.

Develop a customer retention strategy

In pursuit of attracting more and more new customers, the company sometimes forgets about the people who are already bringing them money. And in vain.

Working with a base of existing customers is one of the most effective ways to increase the number of sales. Thus, customer retention is 7 times cheaper than attracting new ones, while loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones, says statistics. Here are some retention tools that can improve your customer retention. 

How to distribute the budget between acquisition and retention depending on the volume of sales.

If the company does not have the opportunity to build a whole strategy, then its individual methods can be introduced. Some of the easiest but most effective ways to retain:

• Cashback. Refunding part of the funds from the purchase amount is an effective method to find regular customers. Especially if the refund is credited in real currency, not in bonus points.
• Personalized discounts, promotions and sales with early access for registered users. Such methods increase the clients’ sense of self-worth. This is a fairly old, but still effective way of attracting, creating emotional and psychological attachment to the company.
• Loyalty program. This system resembles cashback and assumes the availability of discounts and bonuses for regular customers. There are simple and complex loyalty programs. Simple – these are points for a purchase, complex – dynamic, the size of the discount is constantly increasing, and the client has access to exclusive offers.
• Bonus for the next purchase, which will “burn out” if the client does not have time to use it within a certain period. It helps to stimulate the client to make further purchases, moreover, in this case, it is not even necessary to develop a loyalty program. The bonus can be submitted electronically or in paper form (for example, to be able to show it to the cashier). An example of such an incentive is Domino’s Pizza. The company calculates bonuses that can be used to pay part of the order value. Bonuses are active for 30 days, and then “burn out”.