DIGITAL MARKETING FOR YOUR BOUTIQUE: A COMPLETE GUIDE

Posted 3 August 2023 in Uncategorized by wholawholesale

Ready to create a robust digital marketing strategy for your retail e-commerce store? Learn how to increase sales and engagement to grow your business.

Alice Fitch

A robust digital marketing strategy can increase sales and engagement for your e-commerce store.

But without the right approach, digital marketing can have mixed results. It can be incredibly frustrating when you don’t see the results you expect from your efforts.

For example:

Your social media presence doesn’t translate into sales
Paid ads aren’t bringing enough ROI
Your emails end up in SPAM or get ignored
There’s not much traffic coming to your website

These are all common problems for e-commerce store owners.

But, by refreshing your approach to digital marketing, you’ll see a massive improvement, fast.

In this post, we’ll explain how to get better at digital marketing for your e-commerce store, including where to start, approaches to try and how to track the results to learn and grow your business.

Are you ready to triple your turnover? Sign up for CONVERSION ACADEMY – the step-by-step course that’ll turn you into a digital marketing expert in just three months.

CREATE A DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN FOR E-COMMERCE

Many business owners frantically try various digital marketing tactics across all channels in the hope that something will stick.

Unfortunately, this is often a waste of time because you aren’t taking a strategic approach and don’t learn from your mistakes.

So, instead of jumping in, start by creating a digital marketing plan to clarify what you want to achieve and how to get there.

EVALUATE YOUR PERFORMANCE

First, look at what you’re currently doing and how well that’s working for you.

Take into consideration:

Your website’s performance — Look at website traffic, click-through rate, conversion rate and sales figures.
The customer journey — How do customers discover your site and go on to make a purchase? Think about what the journey should look like.
SEO performance — Is your website ranking for any keywords? Find out what they are, and if your site isn’t optimised, that’s something to work on.
Paid ads performance — If you’ve invested in paid ads, calculate their ROI.
Email open rates — Check how many people are opening your emails and clicking on links.

Lastly, calculate your total digital marketing spend and decide on your budget.

SET YOUR GOALS

After analysing your performance, you can set some goals to achieve through digital marketing for your e-commerce store.

Goals should always be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Your goals could look like this:

1000 new TikTok followers by the end of Q1
500 customers signed up to your email list this month
Increase revenue by 25% by the end of the year

DEFINE YOUR CUSTOMER

Next, review your customer avatar and remind yourself who you are catering for. Update and refine your customer persona to ensure your digital marketing targets them.

You can FOLLOW OUR GUIDE if you haven’t created one at all.

While thinking about your customer, consider where your brand fits in the 4 Ps of marketing: Place, Product, Promotion and Price. These concepts help you define your brand’s unique value and selling point.

DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR E-COMMERCE FASHION BRANDS

Now, it’s time to experiment with marketing strategies to help you achieve your goals.

So, let’s talk about the best digital marketing strategies for e-commerce stores.

EMAIL MARKETING: AUTOMATED EMAILS

EMAIL MARKETING is one of the most important digital marketing channels, so prioritise building your email list by collecting the email addresses of all your customers. You can also use competitions or discounts as incentives to collect email addresses.

Here are some examples of the types of emails you can send to your growing list:

Welcome emails — Thank customers for purchasing or subscribing.
Promotional — Talk about an upcoming sale or email an exclusive discount code.
New collection — Notify customers about new collections or products. If customers want to buy a product, but it’s currently out of stock, send an email when it is available again.
Abandoned cart — Follow up with customers who left your site without completing their purchase.
Tips and advice — Provide styling tips and suggestions that will be interesting for customers and relevant to your product.

An email automation tool such as KLAVIYO will let you segment your email list and create automated emails triggered by different actions. Not only does this save time, but it helps you personalise emails according to recent actions or preferences of your customer, which is one of the most important aspects of email marketing.

With everyone’s inboxes swamped with emails daily, getting customers to open your emails is challenging. Irresistible subject lines that evoke scarcity and urgency can grab the reader’s attention.

You may have to experiment with different subject lines to find out what gets the most clicks. The CONVERSION ACADEMY takes you through how to use Klayvio to your full advantage.

SMS MESSAGING

With SMS marketing, you can reach customers wherever they are through their mobile phones and keep your brand top of mind.

Incentivise customers to provide their phone numbers – remember you need explicit consent before adding them to an SMS marketing list.

You can use KLAVIYO for SMS marketing automation and send welcome messages, abandoned cart notifications, delivery updates, discounts and more.

SMS has a 160-character limit, so you have to craft short, punchy messages that convey information and encourage recipients to click.

Read our complete GUIDE TO SMS MARKETING to learn more.

CHOOSE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS AND CONTENT TYPE

In social media marketing, choosing the proper channels that align with your customer avatar is vital.

For example, we know that TikTok and Snapchat attract younger audiences compared to Instagram and Facebook. But there are many other lifestyle factors to consider. If you’re still unsure which channels are best, experiment with a few different ones and focus on the 1 or 2 which bring you the most engagement.

The content you create will vary according to the channel as well. If you’re using YouTube, you’ll need to create high-quality videos. To maximise TikTok engagement, you’ll use trending effects and sounds.

For Instagram, you’ll need to upload high-quality images and also create Reels and Stories to get a boost from the algorithm.

Check out our TOP 5 SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES for your fashion brand if you need inspiration.

PARTNER WITH INFLUENCERS

Part of your social media strategy could include creating content with influencers.

You don’t need to partner up with the most famous influencers who charge a lot for collaborations. INFLUENCER MARKETING can be more effective when you collaborate with smaller creators who are just starting to grow their following.

When considering whether to partner with an influencer, make sure their style and personality align with your brand. Collaborate with influencers who share your values and whose audience matches your customer avatar.

It’s also essential that they are reliable and genuine and have built trust with their audience.

OPTIMISE YOUR WEBSITE

You can create a beautiful website, but you won’t get much traffic if you haven’t optimised for clicks, conversions and sales.

Here are a few ways to improve your website’s SEO:

Research relevant keywords — Choose keywords that customers can use to find your store. Include these throughout your site in page titles, PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS, image alt text and blog posts.
Add your domain to Google Search Console — This allows Google to crawl and index your site.
Create content relevant to your product — Relevant content (including keywords) helps potential customers find you through Google searches.
Make your site easy to navigate and mobile-friendly — Design your website to make it easy for customers to find what they want.
Include great images of your products — This is easier when you use Whola. You can download high-quality pictures of products you purchase from us and use them on your site.

CREATE CONTENT

Content marketing can include any content you create for your users, including social media content.

The goal of content is to provide value for customers to increase their interest in your brand, build trust, and encourage them to buy. Using relevant keywords in your content can also increase your chances of being discovered through organic search.

Content can be anything – TikTok videos, Instagram photos, blog posts, downloadable PDFs (in exchange for an email address) and more.

If you don’t know what kind of content to create, here are some examples to inspire you:

A style guide explaining how to wear and style products in your store
Advice on choosing the right clothes for your body type or taste
Best-of lists, like the best jean styles, summer dresses or occasion-wear trends
Seasonal content like the must-have jumpers for winter or holiday essentials

There’s no limit to what you can create; this is the fun part of content creation. Just make sure to listen to your customers and audience and how they react to different topics.

LIST ON GOOGLE SHOPPING

The Google Shopping platform makes it easy for people to search for an item they want. People can find what they’re looking for fast, and getting your products on Google Shopping will boost your visibility and get you more clicks.

Create an account on the Google Merchant Centre to get your products on Google Shopping. Upload your product data, including prices, descriptions, photos, and more. You can also create an ad campaign to promote your products on Google Shopping. Then link your Merchant Center, and AdWords accounts to track the performance of your ads and optimize them for better results.

USE FACEBOOK BUSINESS MANAGER

Facebook Business Manager is a tool to help you manage your Facebook presence. If Facebook is a channel you’ve decided to focus on, you can use this to create and manage your Facebook page and ad campaigns and also track your performance.

You can collaborate on your campaigns by adding other team members to your account.

Create a Facebook Business account here: BUSINESS.FACEBOOK.COM/OVERVIEW. You can also add your Instagram account and manage both from the same place.

CHATBOTS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

Customer service can form part of your marketing strategy because giving customers a great experience means they’ll be more likely to purchase from you again.

One way to improve customer service is to install a chatbot on your website. Chatbots can help you in several ways:

Be available 24/7 — You can’t be on call round the clock, but a chatbot can help your customers while you sleep.
Save time — Instead of repeatedly answering the same questions, a chatbot can provide answers to frequently asked questions.
Make it easier for customers to buy — When customers can get the help and support they need through a chatbot, there’s less friction preventing them from making a purchase.
Gather feedback and data — Your chatbot can ask customers survey questions and collect data, helping you improve your customer avatar and grow your marketing list.

If you are considering installing a chatbot on your e-commerce site, here are some tools you could use:

TRACK YOUR PROGRESS AS YOU IMPLEMENT EACH STRATEGY

In digital marketing, what works today may not work tomorrow. You won’t see excellent results unless you are willing to experiment, so successful digital marketing for your e-commerce store will involve constant experimentation with different tactics.

The only way you can guarantee improvement in the long term is by tracking your results and learning from everything you try. So, whenever you create a different type of content or try a new channel, document your process and take notes of what results you get during a set time.

Later you can measure whether your approach brought you closer to your goals or whether to try something else.

We know that digital marketing can be a struggle for e-commerce store owners, especially when you’re already managing every aspect of your business by yourself or with a small team.

That’s why we teamed up with digital experts King Pixel to create a course filled with all the insider information they use to optimise digital marketing for their clients.

If you’re ready to triple your turnover, sign up for CONVERSION ACADEMY – the step-by-step course that’ll turn you into a digital marketing expert in just three months.