Fulfillment Marketing and E-Commerce Sales
The ongoing global coronavirus pandemic is has pushed many firms to offer e-commerce or alternate types of services to deliver products to customers and maintain company operations.
What should marketing teams do to support the switch to e-commerce or curbside services and help to build clear communications that resonate with your audience?
- Communicate clearly through all channels
- Be Upfront about return Policies
- Incorporate Shipping costs into your marketing plan
- Video content is more important than ever
- Local search optimization is key
- Use as many channels as you can!
Let’s take a deeper look below:
Omni Channel E commerce marketing
It should be obvious, but clear communication around new e-commerce or fulfillment options should be very clearly communicated through all your marketing channels even including broadcast. You want to make it as easy as possible for consumers to buy from you, and being clear about how curbside pickup works or your new shipping pricing is really important to set expectations correctly. Nothing is worse than a bad review from a customer that didn’t get the memo that your shipping prices increased or that delays were going to be common before Christmas.
Social media and email, of course, are both great tools for any type of direct communication with prior or current customers and regular weekly updates at a minimum should be a focus for even smaller businesses.
Return Policies
Return policies might be something your marketing team thinks about first, but it should be clearly thought through and communicated well. Amazon has set the bar very high when it comes to shipping speeds and the ease of no-question returns in a way that is hard for smaller companies to match.
Consumers now basically expect an easy return policy and often want the option of no-cost returns. While no-cost returns can be expensive for a company, it can be a great source of a long-term customer relationship and positive reviews.
Work with your supply chain department to think through the costs involved with your return process, then clearly document and educate all customer-facing team members on the return policy.
Build communications on your online store, through email and social media, or even a FAQ section of your website to explain your return policy.
A well thought through and easy return policy can be the reason a potential customer picks you over a competitor!
Shipping Costs and Marketing
You might be thinking why does the marketing team need to think even more about shipping costs, but customer expectations in light of Amazon are quite high when it comes to shipping!
Use shipping costs as a way to encourage customers to buy more by offering free shipping past a certain dollar amount per order!
Free shipping is a great limited-time promotion that can function as a great sales tool as well.
In short, shipping costs are just another marketing tool that can be effectively used to convert would-be customers to actual customers and encourage repeat sales and higher volume sales with previous customers.
Video Content is really important
Customers want to see your products in ways other than perfectly staged product photography and using videos to show off different products or unbox products, setup videos, etc are all great content that can increase conversions on your store pages.
It’s a powerful way to put more information in consumers’ hands and make them feel more empowered for a purchase.
Beyond that, the video will help your SEO ranking quite a bit, and certainly, any email marketing, social media posts you make, etc will all perform much better when using video content vs static content with text and photos.
Local Search Optimization
For local businesses, you absolutely need to make a point of learning local search best practices. You need to have reviewed and show up on yelp, trip advisor, Facebook, google maps, etc. This can be a strong source of inbound traffic and customers.
An abundance and great reviews will make potential customers less worried when buying from you online or searching for curbside options.
Don’t forget about voice search either, more and more people are using voice search on their mobile devices, so as you are planning for keywords, think how a person might speak a search instead of just typing it.
Think through your general keyword strategy, make sure to include phrases like “ take out … in…”, we’d recommend making a list of e-commerce and curbside related keywords then start building them into your SEO strategy.
Omni Channel Marketing for E Commerce Businesses
Most businesses over time will find certain marketing channels that seem to work better than others for one reason or another, but this doesn’t mean to not continue pushing content or experimenting with other channels outside the few that have driven the most results. While you certainly want to maximize the budgets into channels that have been the most profitable, you will want to continue maintaining a presence on the other channels as it will keep you in front of audience segments you’d otherwise lose touch with.
Work with marketing partners to clearly communicate e-commerce, curbside, or other fulfillment options across your marketing channels. Over time vary deals, specials on shipping beyond certain dollar amounts and keep communicating regularly with your audience!
In short, e-commerce and fulfillment are here to stay, so plan to have that be an advantage for your business over competitors instead of a limitation. Get in front of competitors by integrating curbside, e-commerce fulfillment, and any other new offerings into your greater marketing communications and content. Stay in front of your customers and audience often with updates and always provide the best customer service possible for any e-commerce fulfillment or curbside customers.
Want help with marketing your e commerce business or want local search engine optimization help?
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Volan Media is a top Knoxville B2B video production company, having worked with dozens of small and large brands to help them craft B2B content marketing strategies and build content that is engaging and generates results. Let’s talk about how we can energize your brand and sales growth with fresh video content. Get in Touch
