The “Step-by-Step” Guide to E-commerce DIY Advertising for the upcoming 2020 Holidays

The 2020 Shopping season is formally beginning soon, leading up to the slew of December holidays.

This year has been tough on all of us on all levels, especially on the economic front. Therefore, let us take advantage of the upcoming holiday season as it is the most profitable time of the year for businesses to redevelop the sales approach and work on new marketing campaigns to stay in concurrence and have amazing sales results.

In this post, we will look at important strategies you should be doing right now to end 2020 on a strong note by preparing your online store:

Note that MEM, our Ecommerce platform already has all these features built-in and ready to be deployed in a matter of seconds.​​​​​​​

Step #1: Gift cards – Growth of sales

Gift cards have been so popular, the most desired item on wish lists in the lasts holidays seasons and always the preferable and ultimate choice. It’s a win-win gift idea: For the buyer, it’s a hassle-free gifting experience; for the recipient, it’s a cash equivalent that can be used at any store or restaurant.

Your customers can buy an electronic gift card for any amount you specify and get it via email.

The customer gets a notification email with the gift card details and forwards this email to the gift recipient who can use the gift card to pay for products in your store until they spend the entire card balance.

This method could be one of the solutions to increase sales growth, especially in these circumstances.

Step #2: Retargeted Ad Campaigns

Google & Facebook Pixel let you track your store visitors, giving you key data about your customers’ behavior. Use that data to more effectively plan your ad campaigns to get even more customers. Installation takes a couple of minutes, with no technical skills required.

With MEM, all this can be done automatically from your Control Panel. Contact us to talk more about our solution.

Why ad campaigns are so important?

Marketing campaigns help you to reach your customers, clients, and leads in a perfect ways.

How?

1. Producing campaigns with a series of touch-points will grab someone’s attention better than a single advertisement. You need to break through the clutter when promoting yourself, and marketing campaigns with incentives can do that for you.
2. Adding an incentive (like a first purchase 10% discount) lets you follow up with customers. It lets you explain your services and promote your brand even further. This makes marketing campaigns an important piece of any B2B sales strategy.
3. It helps you to keep in contact with current clients, finding new leads and raise your brand awareness.

Step #3: Email Marketing

Email marketing is the most direct and effective way of connecting with your leads, nurturing them, and turning them into customers, consistently winning out over all other marketing channels.

Email marketing has distinct advantages over other modern media:

1. It’s highly customizable: You can create an email campaign on any subject, and add any bells and whistles that you need to get the job done.
2. Low costs: One of the most obvious advantages of email marketing is its lower cost compared to mainstream marketing channels. There are no print or postage costs and no fees paid in exchange for exposure on a certain billboard, magazine or television channel. Email marketers might consider investing in specialist software to automate, track and evaluate their emails.
3.  Reach an already engaged audience: Email marketing is one of the only channels that consumers ask to receive. The majority of businesses using the platform only send messages to those who have signed up to receive them. This can allow for much higher conversion rates as a business is only targeting those who already have an interest in their brand.
4. Easy to get started: Email marketing doesn’t necessarily require a huge team or reams of technical nous in order to be successful. It’s certainly possible to jazz up an email campaign with fancy templates, videos, images and logos. Yet, some of the most successful campaigns utilise simple plain text emails, suggesting that it’s the content of an email that is the most important thing.
5. Easy to share: Subscribers can forward brilliant deals and offers to their friends at the click of a button. There aren’t many other types of marketing that can be shared as easily as this. Before you know it, subscribers could become brand evangelists; focused on introducing your business to a new market.

Step #4: Local Delivery Mapping

If you’ve had to close up shop, there are ways you can sell your products and stay in touch with customers through an online store. The “Local Delivery mapping” will give you the chance of selling online and continue delivering products safely to your local customers.

How it works?

Local delivery refers to the delivery in cities where there is the location of your store or it includes the main city areas in which u decided to deliver to and excludes the cities that are not considered as local delivery. 

It allows customers to buy your products online and have you deliver them straight to their doorstep. An email lets them know you’re on your way, so you can drop their package at the door without any face-to-face contact. It’s safe, fast, and convenient.

Here are the steps:

1. Your customer places an order, selects “Local delivery” at checkout, and pays online through your new online store.
2. You receive the order via email and start preparing it.
3. You use the order’s local delivery page to view the customer’s address and plan your route.
4. Head out and tell your customer you’re on your way.
5. Safely drop the package at the customer’s door.
6. That’s it—you’re done!

Step #5: Facebook Chat

You probably already market to customers on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. But have you made “messenger Facebook’s standalone messaging app”  your top marketing priority?

If not, you’re already behind!

Messenger marketing is the art and science of reaching customers at scale using Facebook Messenger, much in the same way marketers have relied on email marketing and newsletters. Its often
involves using automation software or chatbot builders to send push notifications and targeted conversations to the over 1 billion people who use Messenger.

Here are some beginner’s tips for anyone who want to start it:

• Automate your customer service. Messenger bots can automatically respond to queries, and Facebook’s Smart Replies feature lets you create responses to common queries.
• Use Messenger marketing software. These are SaaS products similar to what Mailchimp and Exact Target were to email. They help you create bots, send messages, track click-throughs, automate responses, and more. Facebook has a list of preferred providers on its business section.
• Automatically recover abandoned carts. Messenger’s “Send to Messenger” plugin lets you get permission to send messages via an opt-in on your website. One of the best uses of this plugin is to send Facebook messages whenever someone abandons a cart on your ecommerce store. Many of Facebook’s preferred software providers offer this functionality.

Step #6: Add In-site Banners:

Banners are good for attracting customers’ attention. Use them to tell about special offers, hot deals, and other info that you want your store visitors to know.

You can simply add a banner as an image to the category description or attract more attention by adding a popup banner or a promo bar on top of your store.

How?

• Promo Bar: Type your message, customize the design of the bar, and choose where to display it in your store. Choose a fixed position if you want customers to see the bar even as they scroll a page.
• Easy Popup: Use one of the ready design templates for your popup, add a custom message, and choose how soon you want to show it after a customer comes to your store.
  

Why?

1. The banner ads save time for both publishers and advertisers. It just needs to insert a line code and the advertiser’s website or the required link.
2. The advertiser is allowed to select a list of websites to post the banner ads. It enables the advertiser to make more targeted potential customers.
3. Tracking is easy with banner ads. Putting the goals and analyzing after each campaign of those goals will give a clear idea as to how the campaign is going. banner ads, website traffic will be increased. If the ad is interesting to the visitors, they will look for more information by clicking the ad. Therefore, the advertiser needs to take the link directly to the information-contained page.
4. Tracking is easy with banner ads. Putting the goals and analyzing after each campaign of those goals will give a clear idea as to how the campaign is going.
5. If a publisher using an ad server can get monthly pay all at once instead of from each advertiser once.

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At Maze, as we always seek to offer the best solutions to our clients, we created MEM. A new fast & powerful eCommerce solution in which you can build your own store with a stunning user experience that reveals your unique brand.

So to all stores owners,

Start planning now, keep your customers in mind during every decision you make, establish a lifetime value and prepare your business for the next, hopefully, better year.

Good Luck! 🙂

If you need to know more, please do not hesitate to check our previous article that contains all the information needed about the "Tips that every Ecommerce manager needs to know this Christmas 2020 season."