Semalt: What Are The Most Common Branding Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

23.05.2018

Semalt: What Are The Most Common Branding Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Most companies believe that e-commerce is a breakneck industry where you should innovate or die, however, there are many successful brands running online sales in the same way they were conducting business since in 90s.

Normally, the problem lies in the basics of the approach that they adopt when it comes to online retail.

In fact, a lot of have established a digital presence using the waiter mentality. They rely only on a website and seeing it as the only way to deliver products to customers. Rather than using this approach, e-commerce should be seen as a salesperson or a workhorse that increases the value of current consumers while seeking out new customers.

So, how do you know if your digital presence is a workhorse or a waiter? Alexander Peresunko, the expert of Semalt Digital Services explains what you should consider when de ning your digital strategy.

1. Your website does not sell itself With online sales, there is no showroom, no catalog and no staff to supplement your site. As a result, it is not enough to have a website that sells to existing customers. To take your digital footprint to the next level, the e-commerce site has to convince new prospects to buy product.

To begin with, your product detail pages have to convince the customer to buy the product. If these pages fail to sell the product, the customer simply exits on the site. The about page, homepage and even your policy page must instill

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trust in a new user. To achieve that, you must have a compelling copy, a place for customer reviews, professional photography and an updated shipping/return policy.

2. Your digital marketing requires more efforts One of the most common challenges that businesses face is that they do not have digital marketing at heart. While they have direct-to-customer website because it is fashionable, most of these businesses are devoted to the brickand-mortar techniques.

3. Your offers are not good enough If you intend to succeed at acquiring new business, you must engage in aggressive promotions that prospects can hardly turn down. By giving out good offers, you make the rest of your marketing efforts easy.

4. You do not value follow up At the end of a meal, a typical waiter will say "Hope you come back!", however, a good salesperson will go an extra mile and get details including phone numbers and in recent years, email addresses from customers. Why? For the sole purpose of following up the customer.

Successful brands know that even when they drive a ton of new prospects to their site, they get orders from very few visitors. On average, conversion rates stand at 2-3 percent. The secret lies in convincing the remaining 97 percent of visitors to return.

If your team believes in making the website a salesperson rather than a waiter, you must start playing in the digital league. How can you do that?

Paid search Waiter like brands use paid search to protect existing customers. Though they dabble in shopping or non-brand campaigns, the bread and butter of their approach is a campaign established on branded keywords. Since the volume of their brand is mostly out of their hands, they capitalize on existing volume ef ciently and effectively.

Brands, which act like a salesperson, treat their site as a salesperson use paid search as a primary means of getting new business. They use it to convert prospective customers into paying customers. In the process, they cut down on wasteful ads using targeted negative keywords. These businesses protect their brands with the necessary campaigns but most of their budget goes to non-brand keywords and shopping campaigns aimed at acquiring new business.

Comparison-shopping engines https://rankexperience.com/backuparticles/article838.html

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Waiter-like businesses are incapable of sustaining themselves on comparison-shopping engines. Ordinarily, this has nothing to do with the actual channel management itself. Rather, it is sign of the unwillingness of the organization to compete with other online merchants. These brands are the victims of high prices, product detail pages that fail to impress, high shipping costs and unfavorable return policies.

"Salesperson" brand is highly competitive and can support multiple comparison-shopping engines such as Nextag, eBay shopping network and Google Shopping. The only way businesses can sustain these engines is when they have products that are highly competitive, their marketing team seeks out new consumers aggressively and their site sells popular products effectively.

Non-brand SEO Waiter-like companies should track SEO traf c effectively. The only problem with this approach is that you will be powerless to drive up the traf c. Why? Because your current traf c lands on your site using branded terms. To nd out if you are a waiter, look at the landing page's report for natural search. You will be surprised to realize that most users land primarily on your homepage but there is very little activity on the interior pages.

"Salesperson" website uses SEO to get new prospects focusing on driving new business using non-branded keywords. They have their branded terms locked down and optimized, but they spend more time focusing on driving new traf c using key search terms. Most of this activity takes place on product and category pages unlike the waiter's homepage.

Social media "Waiter" brands' media activity is similar to a town hall meeting.

Though there are a few customers complaining on the platform, the person in charge of running the social media account is mostly talking to himself.

Salesperson approach uses the platform media to enhance consumer interactions, create an engaging environment linked with the brand and drive traf c which leads to higher sales.

Basically, if you intend to use digital marketing channels as customer acquisition channels, you have to start with looking at the right metrics. To begin with, nd out how many prospects you are acquiring with each channel. Once you identify your primary performance metric, you can start tinkering with each channel.

Ultimately, many brands will continue to use direct-to-consumer sites as the most common road of digital marketing. However, any brand that intends to break the glass ceiling must understand its online presence to attract new customers.

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