We’re always keen to pick up on any digital marketing tips so we jumped at the chance to go to the E-commerce Show North yesterday, with lots of exhibitors to speak to and talks to attend.

Nothing like a day out of the office to meet new people and to pick up some digital marketing tips!

I tried hard to be in three seminars at the same time, but it didn’t work. But here’s what I took away from the ones I did get to:

Influencer marketing (panel session)

There were lots of great digital marketing tips in this session, particularly for brands considering using influencer marketing to reach new audiences.

• Be clear on what you want to achieve. Influencers are good for targeting people who are interested in what you sell but not aware of your brand. Campaign objectives should be centred on sales, but also encompass brand awareness via exposure to new audiences as the sale may come later.
• People like to see products used by real-life people, not models. People can relate to influencers.
• Choose an influencer who is aligned to your target audience; who has a good level of engaged followers.
• If you have a message – you’re eco-friendly, for example – use influencers who share your passion.
• Don’t always go for the big influencers who have tens of thousands of followers, sometimes the micro influencers with just a few thousand followers will make the biggest effort to expose your brand.
• The best campaigns work if they’re carried out over a period of weeks and involve a number of different elements like blog, photography and video content.
• Use voucher codes, discounts or special offers to enable your influencer to maximise their reach.
• Instagram is one of the best channels, posts are prioritised according to engagement, so you need followers to post comments. Emojis don’t count so won’t help the post’s visibility.

Maximising the impact of your marketing – Chloe Thomas

Chloe’s talk was full of good digital marketing tips, she’s even written a book on the subject!

• Diversity is key – you need to do a range of activities to drive traffic to your site. Do work to:
  Get found (search engine optimisation, for example)
  Target customers (Google Shopping, for example)
  Shine a light (brand awareness, PR)
  Try to do at least one activity in each of the three areas each week.
• Shine a light activity is important as research has shown that 94% of e-commerce has nothing to do with search. Shoppers were already aware of the brand they were interested in before they got to the search engine. Shine a light activity may be an untargeted Facebook ad which gives you data to enable you to create targeted ads.
• The ideal journey of an e-commerce customers would be visitor, enquirer, first purchase, repeat purchase, regular purchase.
• The best way to get people to become returning customers is via email.
• Make sure you ask your site visitors for permission to email them!
• Pay attention to your welcome email – make sure it reminds people of the benefits of using your products/services. It should help people to decide to buy from you.
• Consider using push notifications to help you get better messages in front of the right people.
• If a customer is happy they will spend more, so spend time making your customers happy.
• As consumers we act like sheep so provide ‘trust marks’ like customer reviews to help people see that other people have bought and enjoyed your products/services.
• Understand homophily, the tendency we have to like other people who are like ourselves. This is why personal stories about the people behind a brand or case studies by people who use the brand can work so well. It allows potential customers to relate to your company.

How data shapes completely unique shopping experiences by James White of Nosto

We have had a good experience with Nosto in recent years, so were very interested in any digital marketing tips the company could share.

• 75% of the watched content on Amazon is based on personal recommendation. It’s so important there are 5,500 people in the business focused on it.
• Retailers need to focus on personalisation – research has shown that many consumers are underwhelmed by their online shopping experience. Personalised onsite product recommendations have a 15% average increase in conversion.
• Use personalisation to improve the experience when a consumer comes back to your site. Give them a new, personalised experience second time round, showing products which are likely to suit their preference based on what they viewed/bought on the first visit.
• You can use personalisation to show products you know an individual will be interested in. Commonly used for brand preferences, but you can show related brands which customer data has proven work together. You can show products with a higher margin to increase potential order value.
• Average online shopping cart abandon rate is 69% so use incentives via pop-ups if a shopper looks like they are going to leave.
• Use pop-ups to incentivise people to increase the value of their order with free delivery when you spend £x.
• Email customers when they have abandoned the cart, this has proven to improve conversion by 20%.
• Artificial intelligence will drive profitability for online retailers but it will be a gradual process of adoption.
• Transactional data will tell you so much about what someone bought and how much they spent etc but behavioural data is the most important – what categories they viewed, what they bought on their second visit etc.

Do you need help with your online shop?

We work with a range of e-commerce clients, helping them to reach new audiences and to build ongoing relationships with existing buyers. If you have an e-commerce store which could do better, please call us on 01606 610808 to discuss how we may be able to help you.