Category: Performance Marketing

Brilliant Ideas to Pump Up your Business with Visual Marketing!

Did you know, the human mind perceives images way faster than text? Well, enough of our textbook definition, let’s talk realistically about it! 

People these days have become more conscious about the products they see online. No sooner have they come across a product visual than they made the purchase. This is the magic of Virtual Marketing. Well, It’s high time you make use of Visual marketing to its full potential. Let’s get started!

“From complementing the boring text to narrating a story, Visual Marketing is all you need to boost your sales.”

complementing

Here are some tips to use Visual marketing efficiently, leveraging great results, and making the best use of your content in innovative ways! 

1. Employ GIFs and other creative visuals into the branded content

To create fun and humor into your content, GIFs are considered to be one of the best options. Every marketer has a goal to be one step ahead of the competitors and GIFs are making that happen as they catch the attention of people quickly. Be it blogs, emails, or landing pages, social media channels, they work like magic to grab your customer’s attention.

2. Take on User Generated Content

These days authenticity and engagement are the priority for every brand. To meet these objectives, brands should indulge in User Generated Content. UGC, as the name suggests, is the content curated by the customers, employees, etc. via photos, videos, audios on online and social media platforms. For instance, if your customer is happy with your brand, they won’t mind advocating your business on their social media channels with pictures, videos, telling people how good your offerings are. 

Also, for a direct-to-consumer brand – that deals directly with the customers without the intermediary distribution channels – UGC turns out to be the best strategy. Include both the branded and user-generated content in the ratio of 8:2 respectively and experience the results yourself.

3. Go live frequently on social media channels

media

If you have an e-commerce business, this is one of the best social media features you can employ in your brand strategy. From showcasing collections, to live demonstrations, you can make the most out of Live features. And the best part is, it is less populated and an incredibly low effort way to interact with your customers!

4. Use a visual call to action

“A call to action button acts as a virtual handshake, inviting people to your website.“

A visual call to action is gaining more significance these days. Generally, marketers use CTA in content where they insert the link of the product page. But you can use a graphic/ creative/ image to draw attention immediately. 

For instance, a customer sees a complete video on your website, giving you an impression that they liked the video. Now it’s your responsibility to make a call-to-action and ask them further with a visual, inserting the link of the website you want them to visit.

5. Incorporate Memes into your strategy

strategy

What is the latest trend of a meme going on these days? There would be hardly anyone who could not answer this question. Memes have become a part of our daily lives! Well, we can even use them in marketing. The amalgamation of laughter and entertainment builds an emotional connection between the brand and its customers. If your audience can’t relate to your meme, it’s of no use! Choosing memes for attracting customers could be an incredible decision for your brand if done right. 

Quick tip: You can also incorporate topical advertising in your strategy as customer engagement is at the peak when they are entertained. Topical memes are based on trending issues, letting your customers connect with you better.

6. Build a connection with your customers using visuals

visuals

To maintain your customer base, it is very important to get personal with them especially for brands where there is no physical interaction. Images or pictures have the highest audience engagement than any other type of media content. If your social media strategy has a lot of pictures related to brand promotion, chances are that even by those efforts customers do not feel a connection with you. Well, to create that sense of connectivity you can upload candid pictures or videos of your staff, warehouse, office, etc.

How can we help you?

Using visual content marketing is easy. But it’s a hard task to create visuals. Well, no worries we are here for you. From customizing ad content with our performance marketing solution to helping you create a brandstore with Kartify – our brand store tech, we have everything to help you with. Request your free DEMO now!

Visual marketing can pump up your communication level while boosting web traffic. These were some of the brilliant ideas of Visual marketing that will help to grow your online brand. So what are you waiting for? Start incorporating visual marketing strategy today and see the results yourself. 

5 Reasons Why Online Businesses Must Use Omni-channel Strategy!

Have you ever noticed that the product you were looking for on an online store appears right in front of your eyes when you start browsing your news feeds? Well, that’s not magic or a coincidence. The strategy behind this marketing technique is Omni-channel. We are sure you have heard about this word. You might be thinking Omni-channel is just “another buzzword”! Well, that’s not true. It’s a business model and will actually transform the future of your online business in an optimistic way.

What is Omni-channel?

Be it a social media platform – Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. or a marketplace – Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon, etc, or a traditional brick & mortar store, people are present everywhere.

“Omni-channel approach integrates all channels with each other to create a seamless shopping experience for customers.”

Omni-channel is all about engaging the people who are already interacting with your brand while creating a consistent and improved customer experience regardless of what channel they are using. With omni-channel, users can switch various channels effortlessly.

Omni-channel VS Multi-channel

It has always been believed that these above two terms can be interchangeably used. Do you also think that? Well, you are wrong here. Let’s find out why!

Multi-channel means when a brand uses multiple sales channels to communicate with the customers. But are these channels integrated with each other? Here’s when you observe the differences between Omni-channel and Multi-channel. While the latter focuses on building multiple sales channels, the former integrates all of them together to give a seamless experience. 

Another big difference is, Omni-channel is a customer-focused approach whereas Multi-channel is channel-centric. It focuses on removing the friction of touchpoints between various channels and making the customer’s journey easier, while the multi-channel focuses on increasing and maximizing the channels available to customers.

5 Reasons Why Online Businesses should use Omni-Channel Strategy!

1. Offering seamless online and offline channels of sales

With the rapid expansion of digital technology, retailers have divided themselves into two teams: Online and Offline. Well, this is not about debating which one is better but bridging the gap between the two and meeting customers’ expectations. Imagine this; You visit an offline store to purchase a pair of white shoes. After reaching the location, you realize that your size is not available. To fulfill your wants even in these situations, brands have developed an in-built store on the website, giving clarity to the customers whether their desired products are available at their nearest stores or not. Order online and pick-up from the nearest outlet is yet another example of how omni-channel has integrated both online and offline channels of shopping.

2. Improving customer support services 

“Success is impossible without treating your customers well, as the future of your brand revolves around them!”

Omni-channel improves the quality of customer support service. Suppose, you want to buy a pair of shoes from an online brand, but unfortunately, the transaction gets failed. Now you are trying to reach out to customer care, but no one is helping you with the issue. Obviously, as a customer, you were expecting better service. 

Let’s grab omni-channel into the picture. Not only had you gotten an SMS after the transaction got failed – given the fact everything is integrated – but also a reassurance that you will get your money back. Moreover, you could have reached out to customer support via chat/phone or social media. 

Do you want your customers to develop full trust in your brand? But the question is how? Well, the only answer is Conversational Commerce! 

Quick tip: These days customers want instant solutions as they prefer to engage with brands on social media platforms. So maybe you can start reducing your social media response time and start interacting quickly with potential customers! 

3. Gathering insights to target the right set of audiences

Checking your customers’ desires and wants can be challenging while running a business. Well, omni-channel keeps a track of everything from the kind of products customers like, to their actual purchasing power. Be it tracking the buying journey of customers, or scrutinizing the number of people who have abandoned the cart, omni-channel helps you gather customers’ insights, giving you a better understanding of your target market. You can also keep an eye on who buys what & when. For instance, you have an online store dealing in personal & beauty care. According to data, your sales last year in the fragrance category increased amid the Diwali season and majorly from tier 1 cities. After analyzing the numbers, you will strategize more on the fragrance category with aggressive marketing collaterals, specifically targeting the people residing in the metropolitan cities. 

4. Increasing brand visibility

Omni-channel involves interacting with your customers across all channels including SMS, phone, social media, interactive live chats, etc. This way, it places your marketing campaign on more than one channel, increasing the brand visibility. For example, you are expanding your product portfolio. To communicate the message, Omni-channel will help you spread the word across all the platforms including traditional out-of-home (OOH) advertising media such as banners, travel transit, etc. 

Quick tip: Using trigger marketing messages effectively can help your brand increase customer engagement, building sustainable brand value. 

5. Getting feedbacks easily

Feedbacks are valuable information that can be used to transform your business into something better. While the positive feedback motivates you, the negative ones help you to overcome your weaknesses. But the question arises of how to get this valuable feedback. Well, omni-channel has made it very easy as it connects with the customer from different channels, making it easier for customers to provide feedback in no time.

Quick tip: Do you want to create a social proof but don’t know how to? Associate with ANS Commerce, India’s #1 full-stack e-commerce enablers helping you scale your business online. Our brandstore tech solutions are specifically made to boost your online business while creating an incredible online presence. Request your free DEMO now!

How can we help you?

Do you want to give seamless experience to your buyers without increasing the cost? Here’s why we are here for you. Our brandstore tech – Kartify – helps you so that you give omni-friendly experience to your customers by: 

  • Enabling order fulfilment from offline shop for online orders  
  • Integrating with leading partners such as Fynd, Arvind, Unicommerce etc.
  • Conducting offline surveys, cash return 

Waste no time and request your free DEMO now! 

A proactive omni-channel strategy is imperative to exercise. So, if you want to build and sustain a meaningful yet long-term relationship with your customers, go Omni-friendly today!

Delight your Customers: 6 Attractive Valentine’s Day Marketing & Branding Tips!

Valentine’s day is globally recognized as a day of love and affection. While some of us consider it a day to charm our romantic partner, many acknowledge it as a day to strengthen the bonds with family and friends. No matter what your idea behind this day, one thing is sure, you definitely need to revamp your digital attire to entice the people. 

“In the 1300s, Valentine’s Day officially became a holiday associated with love.”

If your business offerings do not revolve around traditional love gifts such as chocolates, jewelry, cards, and flowers, worry not, as your business can still ace the day with a few charming marketing tips. Let’s have a look at the Valentine’s Day Marketing and Branding Tips!

Valentine’s Day Attractive Ideas to Delight your Customers!

1. Improvise your product packaging

People love the idea of customization, especially during occasions like these. Offer custom packaging to your customers. Instead of using plain plastic packaging, improvise it a bit with heart-shaped transparent plastic sheets. You can also include love quotes inside the box.

Quick tip: You can offer free gift wrapping on Valentine’s Day. Include an option at the checkout time asking customers for the name of the recipient. You can also communicate this idea over emails, or on the homepage of your brandstore. 

2. Market the idea behind E-Gift Cards

Last year, amid the Diwali season, the idea of giving e-gift cards or online tickets to loved ones became a big hit! E-gift cards are an amazing option at times when you are in a complete dilemma and can’t think of a thing to gift. Around the love week, start your promotional campaigns by introducing your digital gift cards.

3. Generate time-sensitive offers to create a sense of urgency

Time plays an important role during special occasions. People don’t want to lose a hold on discounted prices and amazing deals, and you can take the advantage of this. Create deals and promotions on your landing page with countdown timers that you can easily customize with ad customizers. After you have started a time-sensitive campaign, go ahead with persuasive marketing copies that say “HURRY only 2 left”. This not only boosts your sales with a sense of urgency but also viral your campaign for a specific point of time.

Quick tip: Tailor your campaign ideas with love-themed coupon codes such as LOVEU20!

4. Send Valentine’s Day themed emails

The whole idea behind email marketing is to remind your customers about the upcoming trend/season, thereby dropping them in the sales funnel. Around this day, make a Valentine’s Day-themed email with a short crisp copy. Here are a bunch of ideas you can formulate your email content around: 

  • Announce upcoming offers and discounts 
  • Curate a ‘gift guide’ blog, including your offerings with images redirecting to the product page
  • Include competitions and contests around love week

5. Support a local cause by showering love

Club with a local charity, organizing Valentine’s day fundraiser. To communicate the idea, add an option of the donation on your website, making it easier for customers to support it. You can also communicate it via different social media channels. Though this won’t boost your sales immediately, it’s an incredible idea to show how you care for society. This will make your business more credible and will give a reason to people to choose you over others. 

“Corporate social responsibility campaigns are a great way to manage your brand’s reputation. Moreover, you get support from social activists and philanthropists.” 

Quick tip: While communicating, don’t forget to highlight the details such as the name of the non-profit-organization you will be collaborating with and the cause you are supporting through this action. It gives people a reason to believe your brand. 

6. Put on a romantic dash on your website

Colors play a major role to reflect your corporate identity. Add a hint of romance to your website while playing with colors. You can also tailor the logo of your brand to make it valentine’s day ready. A logo is the voice of the brand and playing with it is not an easy thing to do. You can’t change your logo altogether for a temporary festive season. But adding a few festive elements will build a connection with your audience. 

“Keeping harmony between bright hues and minimal design is the key to steal your customer’s heart.”

How to do it?

Don’t know how to do that? From checking your brand logo to creating account progress reports to optimizing the load time of the website, ANS Commerce provides you with performance marketing solutions across various channels with a special focus on sales and ROAS. Request your free DEMO now!

What can you expect from us?

  1. Account Hygiene: Be it checking your brand’s logo, getting ad copies approved, or creating account progress reports, we keep our eyes open to assist you anytime.
  2. Tech & Product: We help you in everything from building XML feed for fetching product info to auto sorting of products basis CTR.
  3. Business & Analytics: We have in-house tools for driving market automation and insight mining.

7 Constructive Tips To Design A Persuasive E-commerce Newsletter!

With the rise in online shopping, the influence of email marketing has also emerged. Gone are the times when the exchange of emails was used for mere transactional purposes. Today, almost all brands are employing content marketers to strategize and curate persuasive email copies. 

When a new offer rolls out, or a new collection comes in, retailers pop their users with emails. But it isn’t enough just to send those emails. They need to be inspiring and motivating so the users actually end up making the purchase. Otherwise, your offers will be sent to spam or avoided completely. Let’s study what actually influences the effectiveness of email marketing.

Here’s How to Create a Persuasive Newsletter to Drive Customer’s Attention!

1. Keep the design elements minimal

Making your design too flashy would only result in the unsubscription. With minimal, we don’t mean boring colors and monotonous themes. Keep a balance between text and images. It’s essential to leave some negative space (white space) here and there, for the design to settle in the mind of the readers. Without that, you’ll end up creating clutter and confusion. Harmony and balance of the design elements is the key to a successful newsletter. 

2. Draft short-crisp copy

 Email newsletters are generally sent at the time when people are waiting to board a metro, or traveling in a cab. Optimize the content of your newsletter so that it’s easy to consume in a short time. People don’t respond to the text the way they do to the visuals and graphics. But if you keep your text rather crisp with quirky words and informal expressions, you have a chance to win the attention.

3. Insert product unboxing video play button

Videos are best to engage the users, especially if they talk about the pros and cons of a product. To attach a video to your newsletter, add an image with a video play button, redirecting your user to the YouTube video. Since these videos are more about product feedback, they enhance your brand reputation and create social proofs. 

Quick tip: User testimonial videos should be original. To create such videos, you can request your customers to send in their video opening the product with complete details.

4. Write process tutorials with step by step images

Another way to entice customers is by curating tutorial content of your offerings. For example: If your business is all about leather bags, sending a tutorial on “How to clean your leather bag?” will grab attention easily. You can add CTA to the images, linking the leather bag page of your website. Also, highlight the features of your product wisely while writing the tutorial to convert the readers.

5. Add animated GIF Images

To drop your customers in the sales funnel, it’s important to formulate a narrative. Animate promotional messages have an advantage over mundane text messages as they can tell a tale, fascinating the reader to hit the button. Now the question comes; ‘how to create them?’ There are plenty of GIFs generators, helping you create a GIF. Also, don’t use more than one GIF image to avoid any clutter. To convert the readers and generate leads, make sure the image is clickable and redirects to the page. 

Quick tip: Keep your GIF size to 1 MB as a heavy newsletter can get cropped, damaging its aesthetics.

6. Include countdowns in your newsletter

To add the sense of urgency and convert your customer quickly, include a clock with countdowns of your most exciting offers. Limited offers have one advantage over the normal offers, it stimulates user interests in a jiffy. They work the best at the times of spring and autumn season sales.

7. Announce contests and giveaways

Community outreach ideas such as running contests and competitions work best on social media. But newsletters are also an incredible platform to convey the message. You need to be more creative and unique to run contests over email. Scratch cards or win wheels are some of the elaborative ideas to make the most out of email marketing. 

Quick tip: You can also include a simple creative, asking readers to tag your brand on social media with their videos and follow your page to win exciting prizes. This way your engagement on other social media platforms increases. 

If your e-commerce store is not gaining brand visibility, then fret not and invest in our performance marketing solutions. From checking your brand logo to creating account progress reports to optimizing the load time of the website, ANS Commerce provides you with performance marketing solutions across various channels with a special focus on sales and ROAS. Request your free DEMO now!

A well-curated emailer can help you drop your customers in the sales funnel. Don’t forget to add CTA to your content with optimized HTML URLs. Also, keep the tone of your content the same for all the newsletters as it’s the voice of your brand. Follow these tips and promote your brand efficiently.

7 Customer Retention Strategies to Boost your Sales More than Ever!

Customers are one of the biggest assets of any business. In a nutshell, any entrepreneur’s strategic planning starts and ends with building long-term relationships with customers. 

There are two facets to bond with your customers – lead generation and customer retention. While the former welcomes new customers, the latter takes care of the existing ones. Now the question is, would you rather welcome only new customers and avoid the older ones, or would like to keep a balance between the two? 

“Marketers around the world put so much emphasis on nurturing new leads, they sometimes fail to entice the existing users.” 

It’s important to invite new faces, but at what cost? Also, it has always been easier to hold on to the existing customers because they are aware of your services and offerings. Approaching them takes less time than it takes to attract new ones. But how can you keep your existing users engaged? 

To help you maintain your loyal assets, we have come up with 7 customer retention strategies So let’s start, shall we?

7 Proven Customer Retention Strategies

1. Surprise your customers with great service

People love it when you take a step forward and value them. You can get creative in your customer support services and offer them valuable services without their knowledge, pulling off their attention. You can add thoughtful quotes with personalized messages, thanking them to buy from you. Additionally, you can give them special offers and discounts occasionally, conveying they are important for your business. 

Quick tip: You can come up with creative discount codes specially made for an existing customer base, grabbing their attention. For example, coupon codes such as JUST4YOU, WELCOME_BACK, can grab their attention immediately. 


2. Get your customer’s feedback 

The market forces are no more driven by your products, but they rather revolve around customers’ needs and preferences. In simpler words, it’s not about your products and their features. It’s about the people you cater to. Their likes and dislikes play a major role especially when you roll out a new product in the market. And it’s impossible to satisfy every customer without knowing their taste. With customer feedback, not only do you get to know your strengths and weaknesses but you also make them feel noticeable and valuable. 

Quick tip: There are many ways to gather customer feedback. One such way is to do customer surveys. Come up with short, simple, and open-ended questions.

3. Send regular updates via email automation 

Newsletters are the best way to engage your customers in your brand. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to retain customers. You can start with drip campaigns to nurture your customers with occasional updates. From time-sensitive offers to the new collection, to seasonal sales, cover each and every occasion to hit mail! To make it persuasive and attractive, use quirky content marketing strategies, grabbing the attention. 

4. Start with cause marketing programs

Consumers love to engage with those brands that support a social cause. By launching corporate social responsibility campaigns, you can grab the attention of your users. It’s the best way to retain your customers as cause marketing makes your organization look more credible and reliable. Check your brand’s mission statement and find what you as an organization genuinely care about. Share it with your community. It creates a sense of trust in the minds of the user, persuading them to swear by your products.

5. Use the strategy of gamification

Focused on the mechanism of gaming, this strategy is not your regular game. It’s more of a marketing tool to pull off the customer’s attention. Rewarding your customers when they refer your app to their friends, is one of the examples of gamification. You can even create customer-oriented campaigns using gamification. For example, create a contest asking your users to refer your business to ten friends. If five of their friends purchase using their code, they will get a free product. 

Quick tip: With more than 50+ third-party integrations, Kartify – our tech brandstore is pre-integrated with various loyalty programs. Get your hands on it and explore what’s best for your customer. Request your free DEMO now! 


6. Organize live educational webinars to motivate your customers

Webinars are a great way to educate your customers. You can organize a webinar, revolving around an area of your business. This way you can educate your customers and ask them to purchase from you. For example: If you are an e-commerce fashion brand. You can organize a webinar, highlighting fashion branding tips. This way you can introduce your new offers and products while giving them a glimpse of how you market your brand.

Want To Drive Traffic to your e-commerce website? Click here to read 10 concrete ways to boost your website’s traffic! 

7. Prepare a communication calendar

By creating a communication calendar, you get an idea of how often you interact with your customers. Even when you don’t get the answer to the feedback form, it’s your responsibility to reach out to them time and again. A communication calendar is similar to your editorial calendar. The only difference is, it tells the last time you communicated with your customers. 

Quick tip: By using a communication calendar, you can check if a customer’s subscription is about to get expired. You can reach out to them before it gets expired. This helps in retaining the existing customers. 

How to do it all?

From maintaining your brandstore with our in-house tech “Kartify” to assisting you with our performance marketing services, ANS Commerce is a full-stack e-commerce enabler. We strive at strategies that help you tackle all the obstacles including e-commerce marketing and brandstore hygiene. You can reduce your cart abandonment rate with our exclusive services. Request a demo for our e-commerce solutions now! Request your free DEMO now! 

Customer retaining campaigns cost 10X less than lead generation campaigns. These strategies are indeed very important to be included in your marketing efforts. Start with the above 7 strategies to enjoy long-lasting benefits.  

A Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Persona Driven Content Marketing For Your E-Commerce Brandstore!

In the age of digital technology, one of the most sought-after strategies – that marketers have been exercising – is content marketing. You might be considering content as the king, till today, but little do you understand that your audience is the one which rules. 

Your aim might be to create a great quantity of key-word stuffed content. But note that, audience-friendly content – that’s rather engaging than persuasive – is equally important, if not more.

Imagine this, you love to solve puzzles over social media and have a thing for luxurious fragrances. You come across a blog post that includes a quiz, and solving it might give you a chance to win a perfume. Would you not get attracted and engaged with the idea behind the post? You might even end up checking the brand’s website and their other offerings. 

What is a Persona, and what’s the need for it?

Content-driven by persona is absolutely essential to hook your audiences with your e-commerce brand. The personas are the fictional figures that you make to represent your audience. They generally are the reflection of your target audiences and help you to keep them glued to your brand. 

“Personas are not just made to catch your audience’s attention; they guide your overall content strategy including deciding the right tone, content format, and topics to explore.”

Construction of personas with a marketing angle is not everybody’s cup of tea. The term per se articulates different challenges of research related to your brand’s vision and mission. Not to mention the fact that the content piece must be informative, entertaining, and useful.

To craft the content basis persona, you can’t afford to avoid the following mentioned steps. Read on to take your content on the right track!

5 Steps To Craft Persona Driven Content Marketing!

1. Construct your ideal buyer’s persona with the help of data

The foremost step is constructing the sketch of the customer you want to target. Some marketers often make mistakes by imagining and visualizing the persona without going deeper into their company’s data. But, your data has all the answers to build a 360-degree factual character sketch and will become the foundation of the persona. Look for the answers including – what does s/he does, her/his job title, what does s/he loves to eat (if you’re a food brand). 

Quick tip: Don’t hesitate to use your customer database including social media analytic tools such as Facebook and Twitter analytics. This will give you an in-depth understanding of your customer’s behavior and preferences.

2.  Examine the specific challenges, and obstacles your character witnesses

In this step, you have to put on the shoes of a salesman and put an emphasis to articulate the type of content that can convert. For that, you must look for the problems and challenges your fictional persona might encounter on a day-to-day basis. While making your content plan, tick all the troubles you think – from your data – your character sketch encounters. By doing that, you are actually making a list of struggles that your actual customer base witnesses. This will brief you about their expectations and assist you to incorporate your product into the content at the right time!

“This can help you create the problem-solution type of marketing content – where you create a fear appeal by showcasing a problem. Then you immediately incorporate your product and give them a solution to the problem.”

3. Sense the niche topics and content pieces you want your audience to consume

Now that you have made your fictional character basis your audience, don’t take a halt as your work has just begun to get started. In this step, content takes the front seat. You can start by checking up the stories and posts you want your customers to feed on. You can also design the industry-related topics in which you can incorporate your offerings. The aim is to associate your story with the buyer’s persona’s interests and hobbies.

“Numbers don’t count to shape your content strategy, but the quality and relevance do.”

4. Check the communication patterns and the media form they use

Keep a check on the form and type of media your personas swear by! If they love to binge upon OTT platforms, then curate content strategy basis that type. Create a media mix that’ll help you produce a variety of content for your audiences.

Click here to know about how to gain social proof and get customer reviews & ratings on your e-commerce brandstore!

Quick tip: Get your hands on Kartify – handcrafted to deliver an exceptional e-commerce experience. Having come with 60+ integrations, Kartify offers your fully customizable UI/UX. Request your free demo now!

5.  Map your content at the right time

Time is one of the most crucial aspects when it comes to delivering content to your audiences. Checking upon the facts such as, when your buyer persona comes on social media, or when he/she is available to check e-mails often helps you define a successful content marketing strategy. So don’t throw your content without planning strategically. Decide the time and occasion and then make your delivery to increase the traffic.

If your e-commerce store is not gaining brand visibility, then fret not and invest in our performance marketing solutions. From checking your brand logo to creating account progress reports to optimizing the load time of the website, ANS Commerce provides you with performance marketing solutions across various channels with a special focus on sales and ROAS. Request your demo now!

Always remember that there’s a lot of content online that people don’t pay attention to. But with the advancement of technology, consumption has also increased. So, keep an eye on the delivery of the right content at the right time to the right people.

E-commerce Marketing: Boost Your Online Sales With 9 Unconventional Tips For This Festive Season!

With the cool breeze starting to ring bells, it’s hard not to feel the festive vibes. Diwali is the time when your sales increase at a 5X speed than at any time of the year. By now, you might have observed that stores have started sneaking Diwali decoration with their offerings in the displays. Fairy lights might be the lead of the season for now, but before you get to know it, combo packs and other gifting options will take their spot to start the annual celebration. To get the most out of the festive season, initiate your marketing strategy before it gets too late.

The festive season brings fierce competition but a plethora of opportunities to seize new customers. To help you have your most successful season, we have curated 9 marketing ideas for you. And absolute you can’t afford to miss.

9 unconventional marketing tips to boost your online sales for this year’s festive season!

1. Showcase your festive collection with catalog linked ads

If you are struggling to bring relevant traffic to your website, Facebook catalog sales campaigns can be your savior. A catalog ad contains your product range and holds the information of your offerings that you want to advertise. Link your entire catalog showcasing your product offerings to your prospective audience.

Quick tip: Experiment with different ad formats such as dynamic ads, carousel ads, collection ads, and choose what suits your brand the best! Not only does it improve CTR (click-through rate) but also helps you in getting a 5-10X return on your ad spend.

2. Choose the correct approach for your product segment

Putting sun-loving plants in the sunshine and keeping the shade-loving plants indoors is the right treatment. Just like that, every segment demands a different strategy. If you deal with shopping goods including apparel and footwear, online catalogs and gift cards have to be your best friend. Similarly, if you’re into FMCG, gift packs with vibrant yet unique packaging work best for you. COMBO packs can be your buddies to reach sales targets!

“Entice potential customers with exciting offers and sales promotions in the form of a catalog sales campaign.”

3. Generate time-sensitive offers with a sense of urgency

Time plays an important role during the festive season. People don’t want to lose a hold on discounted prices and amazing deals, and you can take the advantage of this. Create deals and promotions on your landing page with countdown timers that you can easily customize with ad customizers. After you have started a time-sensitive campaign, go ahead with persuasive marketing copies that say “HURRY only 2 left”. This not only boosts your sales with a sense of urgency but also viral your campaign for a specific point of time. 

Quick tip: If you’re struggling with your brandstore, then you can get your hands on Kartify- handcrafted to deliver an exceptional e-commerce experience. Having come with 60+ integrations, Kartify offers your fully customizable UI/UX. 

4. Pay attention to your creative visuals

Now is the time to pay attention to the aesthetics of your online presence. Colorful creatives showcasing your offerings and offers is a great way to steal that attention. The idea is to lure people with attractive visuals. Use festive related color tones in your ad creatives to excite the attention of people. You can also hire an additional staff of graphic designers and social media strategists to do the job.

Quick tip: From maintaining your account hygiene to brainstorming ideas with persuasive ad copies and fascinating visuals, ANS Commerce is your one-stop solution. We strive to help you get maximum ROAS with sales focused campaigns. Request your free demo today!

5. Focus on festive-oriented google smart shopping campaigns 

Imagine, you’re searching for home furniture and you come across an ad showcasing the exact leather lounge chair you want. You would either click on the ad or search that chair on the marketplace. That’s what Google’s smart shopping campaign is capable of. You can easily bring relevant traffic to your website. Initially, the user might not be aware of the brand presence. In that case, your persuasive ad copy and eye-pleasing visuals come in handy.

“Google smart shopping campaign also lets you re-target your potential buyers on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.”

6. Indulge in re-marketing to engage with cart-abandoners 

Cart abandonment campaign can let you swing into your potential buyer’s mind. You can track down the people who have products in their carts but haven’t made a purchase. Efficient re-target ads can give them a boost to buy your products by showing them the same time to time.

Quick tip: Email marketing also plays an important role here. You can make the inception of your drip campaign while popping their mailbox with the particular products

7. Use different marketing strategies to persuade different types of customers

Marketing strategies for existing customers don’t go along with strategies made for new customers. Segment your audience into different buckets basis their interaction with your website and catalog, and then create marketing campaigns for them. Push strategies including SMS marketing, email marketing, and app push notification help to generate sales while targeting existing customers.

“To blow the minds of your new customers, you can start by strategizing marketing ideas that include exciting festive offers with exclusive gift packs.”

8. Reach your followers with community outreach strategies

Engagement is the key to increased profits. You can only get one if your community is fed daily with unique yet informative content. To master that, you can vouch to festive-oriented contests by arranging your most popular offering as a give-away. The idea is to create word-of-mouth where your audiences can tag their friends in their stories and posts. Blogging is yet another interesting way to reach your community of followers. You can create engaging content to promote your products. To inform and aware people of your offerings, you can write blogs on your website with CTA (call-to-action) buttons that redirect them to your brandstore. For example, if a person is looking for ethnic wear, then curate a blog about your store’s ethnic collection. Cover all the relevant information including your upcoming offers, the fabric of your ethnic wear, prices, etc.  

“Community engagement ideas wouldn’t just increase your brand’s reach but also strengthen the relationship with your customers, turning them into brand advocates.”

9. Take the advantage of Instagram’s new feature

Due to a tremendous increase in online shopping, Instagram has come up with a new option to sell. It has launched a global expansion of its shopping services across IGTV. You can sell and merchandise your products by showcasing your range of products via IGTV. In the future, they might come up with the shopping feature on Instagram’s reels as well. So gear up and try it out before it gets captured by others in the market. 

How to do it?

If you want your customers to get taken by your marketing campaigns with 5X more ROI then you must think of investing in performance marketing. It enables you to measure everything from the reach of your products to the conversion rate. This new age of advertising is completely transparent and lets you pay for successful transactions.

Don’t know how to do that? From checking your brand logo to creating account progress reports to optimizing load time of the website, ANS Commerce provides you with performance marketing solutions across various channels with a special focus on sales and ROAS. Request your demo for the performance marketing solutions.

What can you expect from us?

  1. Account Hygiene: Be it checking your brand’s logo, getting ad copies approved, or creating account progress reports, we keep our eyes open to assist you anytime.
  2. Tech & Product: We help you in everything from building XML feed for fetching product info to auto sorting of products basis CTR.
  3. Business & Analytics: We have in-house tools for driving market automation and insight mining.

With high traffic on sites and tough competition from other retailers, the festive season is undoubtedly the most crucial yet stressful time of the year. From generating new leads to satisfying existing customers, it might be quite complex but the return you would be enjoying will go beyond this year. If you haven’t already started prepping for the Diwali season, NOW is the time to start. And it goes without saying that time is running out. So grab the opportunity and get a head start on the completion.

How COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted Marketing Efforts

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us face-to-face with unprecedented times, where businesses struggle to keep the damage to the minimum. Since most countries have been under lockdown for the last few months, the impact of the restrictions on daily activities can be seen on almost all businesses and markets.

While the crisis has changed the business landscape, all is not lost. With these disruptions come opportunities for growth and overcoming challenges. With the right mindset and resources, you can navigate your way through these times in order to identify your customers’ needs, wants and expectations.

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Should I continue my marketing efforts?

In times like these, the most impacted business is that of non essentials such as apparels, tech, beauty, etc. The greatest challenge is foreseeing how customer wants, needs, expectations and purchasing decisions will evolve. 

Keeping this in mind, businesses often have the question whether or not they should continue with their marketing methods at all. This question is only obvious since they want to optimize their costs of running the business to sustain during this period. And while making the cuts in the costs, the first thing to be sacrificed is more often than not, the marketing efforts. The thought process behind this is simple – If the buying capacity of the consumer has decreased then why burn money on advertising the goods?

Well, that approach here isn’t right. 

Abruptly stopping all your marketing efforts will cut off your relations and conversations with your customers. The longer the pandemic goes on, the more out of touch you will be with your brand followers. This will lead them to forget about your brand amidst all the engaging content provided by other brands. 

When things finally do get back on track, you will have to start from scratch.

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So How Did The Pandemic Affect Brands?

As soon as the lockdown came into effect, offline stores were shut and deliveries from online stores had also come to a halt. This ultimately led to brands stopping most, if not all, of their marketing efforts since they could not deliver the products. Although this did affect sales, this also meant that the competition had lowered. Certain brands saw this as an opportunity and decided to run some of their marketing messages, just to ensure that they did not lose touch with their customers.

One more key takeaway from this sudden shift was that traffic clicks were cheaper since there wasn’t much competition in the market. Hence, for those who were continuing their advertising campaigns, this time couldn’t have been more fruitful.

Who Was At Advantage?

The lockdown had a huge impact on all traditional methods of sales and marketing but there were also certain businesses that benefited from it.

  • Brands that were delivering even during the lockdown period had an advantage by default since people had the ideology that it’s better to have products of any brand rather than not have any products at all.
  • Due to the social distancing mandate, people preferred buying online rather than going to offline stores, even if they were open for business. Thus the offline rush had found its way online. This played to the advantage of those who had established an online presence.
  • Another observation was that brands which had a prominent offline presence ultimately also had a prominent advantage online. This is due to the fact that customers trust a brand that they had been using, so that even while buying online, they do not have to worry about the product quality.
  • Brands which continued their marketing could leverage the customers of their competitors who weren’t aggressively marketing and promoting their products.

What were the downsides?

Although there were certain advantages, there were also some downsides that were seen by businesses and brands. One of the biggest adverse effects was seen in servicing after purchase since personnel movement was restricted. Not only that but deliveries also took a hit due to the limited movement of vehicles throughout the country which resulted in products being delivered within 2 weeks’ period or so instead of the previous 3-4 days period.

How do I sustain my brand in these times?

An article covered by The Economic Times outlines the concept of revenge shopping, taking the example of a luxury brand and how it recorded the biggest single-day shopping in China. Revenge shopping is the overindulgence in retail therapy by people who missed shopping during the lockdown period.

In India this trend might be witnessed in the upper middle class who have sustained their incomes and standard of living during the lockdown. Another way to recover the lost sales during the lockdown is carrying out promotional activities and sales or discount offers, which will attract customers loyal to your brand and also potential customers since everyone is looking for economical goods these days.

To summarize, the pandemic isn’t over yet. There might be a few more blind turns ahead but brands have already started planning for contingencies. Although this new economic climate has added challenges for brands, it has also opened up new avenues for growth.

If you are looking for performance marketing partner to grow your business in these uncertain times, please drop your query at [email protected]