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Are you building your Retail Marketing Strategy from the ground up?

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Many businesses continue to run with existing marketing strategies that they have had in play for many years. However, retail marketing has changed dramatically in a short period of time. Gone are the days of allocating 90% of your budget to above the line media and the remaining splashed around in PR and Digital, now a more fluid and dynamic approach is needed.

I believe, when building your marketing strategy, you need to ask yourself the following:

  • How successful were your promotions/events over the last few years?
  • What did or didn’t work for your business and why?
  • Are your campaigns positioned to give you the greatest results? Look at the timing of your events and competitors events. Bring into the mix promotional opportunities like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter and public holidays.
  • Are you making the most of new product? Review your seasonal product mix; new products and categories are important strategies that require focus. You will want to highlight new releases – Use some of your tight marketing budget to draw attention to these areas.
  • Review your budget and return on investment – What have you been spending funds on? What delivered the best result? You may need to adjust and spend more or less in certain areas (Example: Reducing a 16-page brochure to 12 pages and passing those savings onto an online sales driving campaign).

Answering the above questions will certainly help you gain a positive viewpoint on how you should build your marketing strategy for the next financial year.

Here are a few tips, which may help the process:

  • Break down your annual marketing planner per week, and align your budget accordingly. Track your budget on a weekly basis; adjust accordingly if you’re not achieving business sales targets.
  • When compiling your strategy, determine your expenditure breakdown per event and promotion. What media will work best for each event or promotion? Make sure your content suits your media!
  • Allocate and breakdown the percentage of your total budget wisely; your mix should include allocation of monies towards a variety of campaigns with goals in mind. Goals may include: Driving sales, increasing your brand name in the market, building online sales, acquiring new customers, visual merchandising, loyalty programs and social media. For the best results filter these into the most suitable and relevant media type.
  • Don’t be afraid to try new things. However, always report, analyse and adjust accordingly.

For further information please contact My Robot Monkey, Marketing and Digital Agency.

www.myrobotmonkey.com.au

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3 ESSENTIAL MARKETING TIPS

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1. Understand your customer.

Getting to know your customers is the most important stage of the marketing process. The more accurate your information and knowledge, the more effective you will be at promoting your brand, product or service. Use all the information at your disposal to understand customer’s behavior, demographics, and needs. This information should steer your major business decisions and allow you to create an effective marketing plan. 

2. Create your marketing plan.

Develop your strategy in the form of a written marketing plan, as this will ensure all members of your business understand the company direction. The plan is a comprehensive and well-researched document, which covers all essential aspects of taking your products/ services to the customer. When developing the plan, ask yourself the following questions.

  • Where are we now?
  • Where do we want to be?
  • What opportunities exist in the environment?
  • What media channels can I promote within and achieve a strong ROI (return on investment).
  • Make sure you constantly analyse your results and adjust your marketing strategy and plan accordingly.

3. Design your product and service around your customer.

Once you have a marketing plan in place, you need to make sure your product or service is tailored to your customer – from the packaging, the way it is promoted, to the way you display it. Businesses often fall into the trap of making the product they want to sell, rather than designing and presenting things in the way the customer wants.

For more information on Marketing, Website Design, Graphic Design, Social Media Marketing or PPC / Google AdWords contact us today!

Marketing & Digital

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Key questions to ask about your content marketing.

Firstly what is content marketing?

In its most simplified form content marketing is the writing and/or sharing of relevant pieces of information that you think will be of value and/or interest to your target market (this may be writing, videos, blogs, graphics or anything else that you may use to creatively attract customers).

…Much like this blog post you are reading right now…

When creating your content marketing you want to keep these key questions in mind:

  • Will this topic appeal to my target audience? Ensure that your content is covering information that will be important, interesting and significant to your particular customer.
  • Is it relevant to my purpose? Your content must be relevant and helpful to your business or you are wasting your time.
  • Does your content link in well with search engines? It is important to use relevant, high traffic tags and specific wording so that your work will be picked up well by search engines. You want to drive as much traffic to your site as possible.

The main take home message on content marketing is to create or share something that is of real interest and value to your consumer. People are bombarded all day everyday by masses of different types of marketing telling them what they need and want. Content marketing allows the consumer to take a breath and encourages them to come to you without feeling harassed.

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It’s time to go mobile

With a quarter of global web searches carried out on mobile devices, having a mobile friendly website is no longer a choice – not doing so is business suicide. Studies show that within 3 years the number of people accessing the Internet via their mobiles will overtake those accessing it via PC.

The reality is, if your website isn’t optimised for mobile you’re losing sales and brand respect.

Levels of Mobile Friendliness:

  1. Completely incompatible: sites that are entirely Flash-based cannot be accessed from a mobile device.
  1. Pinch-&-zoom: these sites work on touch-based devices but users have to “pinch-&-zoom”. When the site comes up nothing can be seen without zooming in. This takes a lot more effort and customers easily lose track of where they are on the site.
  1. Mobile friendly: the page layouts are device appropriate, fonts can be read without zooming in and it’s easy to navigate around the site.

Check-up: Pick up your mobile, and go to your site. Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Is the content easy to read without zooming in?
  2. Is it easy to navigate around the site?
  3. Are you able to identify and activate the call to action?
  4. Would you want to spend time on the website (if it wasn’t yours)?
  5. Do you think it provides a good user experience?

If you mainly answered “no”, then contact us today to find out how we can help you get your site mobile-friendly.

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eCommerce trends for 2015

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We posted a blog earlier on “Online stores are changing the way we shop”. To follow on from that, we now explore how trends are changing within the online space. In our previous blog we explained how online shopping and online pre buy research are increasing significantly, leaving some traditional bricks and mortar retailers in the dust. Now we discover the biggest trends to be aware of for optimising your eCommerce business in 2015. Overwhelmingly customers are shopping on the go from mobile phones and are using social media to inform and facilitate these purchases.

  • 1/3 of online purchases are now made from a mobile device.
  • Social media has become a big player in the eCommerce sphere with an overwhelming growth in conversions from social media of 202% in 2014 alone!
  • 24/7 shopping: In traditional retail the store is closed for around 16 hours in every 24. But an online retailer is always open! Customers are responding to this, they shop at work, before they go to sleep at night and on those lazy Sunday afternoons.

So what does this mean for your eCommerce business?

It means that mobile friendly websites are no longer an option but a necessity, it also means that “mobile friendly” may not cut it, it is now time for “mobile optimised”.

If you haven’t already then 2015 is absolutely the year to embrace social media! Social media (SM) has become a serious player and SM marketing is equally, if not more important in some industries than more traditional forms of marketing. Social media platforms are becoming so much more than a place for people to gather and chat online, they are the places where decisions are made and social recommendations count for a lot.

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Online is changing the way we shop

Online stores are changing the way we shop; increasingly people are opting to research and buy the things they want and need online instead of in traditional storefronts. This is resulting in an array of changes, numerous new retailers are opting for online only, and some businesses are creating a mixture where online store and retail outlets work together incorporating practices such as returns and size changing. You can guarantee the number of retailers without an online presence is dropping drastically and some storefronts are disappearing altogether as peoples buying habits change.

The statistics are staggering:

  • More than 80% of people on the Internet have made an online purchase, 50% purchase online regularly.
  • Ecommerce sales have grown by more than 19% a year since 2011, and will be nearing $1.4 trillion by the end of 2015.
  • 81% of consumers go online to research before heading out to make a purchase; this is up 20% on last year.
  • 70% of people search online to find services and information i.e. builders, cleaners, informative websites.

The overwhelming trend is one of movement away from traditional shopping and towards online, on the go, socially informed shopping from a range of different devices.

For further information to assist in improving or creating your online platform, contact My Robot Monkey.

www.myrobotmonkey.com.au

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eCommerce in the 21st century! A quality digital presence is essential.

In the 21st century, if you don’t have a quality digital presence, you’re not in the game! The world has moved on, your website, logo and design work has to be of a high standard and is your number one priority from a marketing stand point. A great digital presence is extremely important as in most cases the customers first point of call is your website and what they see and experience there will make all the difference.

The great thing about eCommerce is you can analyse everything; customer behaviour, viewed pages, drop off rates and more, in order to understand what is and isn’t working for you. You can then adjust live on the run 24/7 to improve your out come.

 

 

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