According to Forbes, on average during 2015 businesses with less than $5 million in annual revenue experienced 7.8% annual sales growth. Is your small business feeling that growth? Odds are if you are a small business retailer, the answer is not so much.
There are a number of strategies small retailers can employ to stoke online sales growth. Here are few ideas to get you going. Try them out and see which of these best help you to reach your ideal customer.
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If you have a habit of following people on Twitter, waiting till they follow you back, then promptly unfollowing them… YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
Two days ago, I was followed by two different digital marketing “experts.” I checked out their profiles, and they each seemed interesting, so I followed them back. The very next day I was unfollowed by both of them.
I hadn’t tweeted anything “controversial” in the 24 hours they were following me, so I knew that wasn’t the reason for the unfollow.
Then it dawned on me – these people only followed me to get me to follow them back. LAME. That’s not how any of this works!
There are so many different words we can use to describe marketing in today’s business climate – collective, cooperative, collaborative, connected, social, relational, digital, immediate, on-demand, integrated, flexible, pull, measurable, inbound, visual, discussion-based, creative, transparent, organic, relevant, personal, humanized, credible, sophisticated, entertaining, influential, interactive… I’m sure you can think of at least 20 more.
I think there is one particular term that marketers need to pay special attention to: EXPERIENCE. And I’m not talking about the brand experience you may be thinking about, which I have addressed before that is focused on how the consumer experiences the brand across channels. I’m talking about the experience a consumer has when engaging with what the brand has to offer.
Have you ever had the number of your Twitter followers drop leaving you wondering which little bird flew off in another direction?
I’ll be the first to admit that I am curious about who decides to unfollow me. Ego? Maybe. But also I hope to be able to learn something from who decides to unfollow me and when.
Understanding who bails on me helps me evaluate my strategy. Is the content I am posting interesting? Does it provide value? Are my opinions too polarizing?
Understanding when they bail helps me assess my frequency. Am I posting too much? Do I need to spread posts out more?
PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) defines public relations as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Marketing, as defined by the American Marketing Association, is “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
As a MarCom professional, the goal on both fronts is to build a meaningful, valuable, and mutually-beneficial relationships. In order to do that, you need to gain a deep understanding about each audience with which you are trying to connect. You need to understand what each segment cares about, what motivates them, and what inhibits them. This relationship building, when done correctly, requires a reversion back to the very basics – communication that is rooted in trust and cooperation.
Recently I was perusing some psychology articles in my feed, and two disciplines jumped out at me: Anthropology and Sociology. They got my MarCom wheels turning…
A MarCom Brainstorm 