A digital marketing plan outlines strategic online tactics that determine how you promote your products, services, and brand online. With Google often being furniture shoppers’ first stop in the customer journey, it’s imperative to have an effective digital marketing plan that drives sales online and to your front doors. There are a variety of tactics that make up a great digital marketing strategy. These can help you connect with more customers by improving your overall reach, outperforming your competitors, improving customer satisfaction, and increasing your return on investment (ROI). Here are six components of a great digital marketing plan: 1. WEBSITE MAINTENANCE 1. WEBSITE MAINTENANCE
Your website is akin to a secondary store location, and just like a physical store, it needs its strategy. This virtual store location is visited the most and works 24 hours a day! With this much visibility, it’s important to have a website that is capable of taking people through the sales process as if they were in person.
Pricing: Make sure all your products are priced appropriately and visible online. Although most furniture transactions are conducted in person, customers often want to explore products ahead of time, and lack of pricing can drive them to your competitor’s store instead. Payment Gateways: You know your in-store audience – but what about your online audience? A customer who values convenience over quality will likely buy products online rather than coming into the store. Make sure you are making yourself available to take transactions online to capture this audience. Catalog: Ensure you provide the brands and products your customers are looking for. Your online catalog allows you to display a wider array of products than on the floor, but it must also be maintained regularly. Promotion: At the end of the day, everyone likes a deal! Make sure your website reflects either your in-store promotions or online exclusives. Even if you don’t run traditional sales, you can sound more promotional by featuring phrases like “Prices starting at” or generic messaging like “Best Deals” that don’t feature a discount on your homepage. Pricing: Make sure all your products are priced appropriately and visible online. Although most furniture transactions are conducted in person, customers often want to explore products ahead of time, and lack of pricing can drive them to your competitor’s store instead. Payment Gateways: You know your in-store audience – but what about your online audience? A customer who values convenience over quality will likely buy products online rather than coming into the store. Make sure you are making yourself available to take transactions online to capture this audience. Catalog: Ensure you provide the brands and products your customers are looking for. Your online catalog allows you to display a wider array of products than on the floor, but it must also be maintained regularly. Promotion: At the end of the day, everyone likes a deal! Make sure your website reflects either your in-store promotions or online exclusives. Even if you don’t run traditional sales, you can sound more promotional by featuring phrases like “Prices starting at” or generic messaging like “Best Deals” that don’t feature a discount on your homepage. Pricing: Make sure all your products are priced appropriately and visible online. Although most furniture transactions are conducted in person, customers often want to explore products ahead of time, and lack of pricing can drive them to your competitor’s store instead. 2. PAID ADVERTISING Arguably, the most important component of your digital marketing strategy is the paid advertising you use to capture shoppers who are looking for your products and services. Digital paid advertising helps you capture customers actively exploring or shopping for the items you wish to sell. With better audience targeting capabilities, attribution, and pricing than traditional marketing tactics (like print or radio), digital marketing helps you get more for your marketing budget. Here are just some of the advertising options at your disposal. Google Search (SEM, PPC) Display Advertising Google Shopping Ads Performance Max Facebook Carousels Facebook Video Ads YouTube Advertising Pinterest Ads OTT Advertising (Streaming) 3. Content Marketing Content marketing refers to the content and creative you deploy online outside your paid marketing strategies. This includes posting to your social profiles (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest), blogging, email newsletters, or creating video content. This type of content is great for branding, connecting with your audience, and positioning yourself as an expert in the industry. It also helps your rankings in search engines and overall online presence. 4. Email and SMS Email and SMS (text messaging) are great for staying in mind, blasting out sales, or deploying other important information to a customer base. In addition, both of these tactics are also effective in closing the loop on your sales funnel! For example, you can set up drip campaigns that deploy based on website behavior to make sure customers don’t fall through the cracks! If a customer abandons their cart online, you can have a simple, automated text reminder come up to help them complete their order or to have them visit you in-store. 5. Maintaining Online Profiles Your online profiles, often called local listings, are places where your business information is displayed online apart from your website. This can include business aggregators like Yelp, Angie, Google Business Profile, Maps, and more. 6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Potential shoppers often click on the first handful of results that populate for their search in Google, making it important that your business ranks as high as possible for these results. There are a variety of ways to help improve your SEO and rankings within search engines like Google. Adding content to your site, ensuring you use the appropriate keywords and strategy in that site content, and maintaining the technical elements of SEO on the back end to help Google better read your site can all contribute to better rankings. SEO is an ongoing, lengthy process that can take months or years, but it will help with the exponential growth of your overall bottom line. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: While developing or running your digital marketing strategy, here are a few other things to remember: Optimizing Your Marketing Budget The goal is to get the best results for your budget. Not all tactics work the same for everyone, and certain times may call for budget reallocation to better-performing tactics. For example, TV advertising is great for branding but expensive and hard to track. Reallocating this budget to tactics lower in the sales funnel (like Google Search or Facebook Advertising) can lead to more sales for the same budget since you’re targeting active shoppers rather than disengaged ones. Evaluating Your Marketing Tactics Refraining from relying on gut feelings or opinions regarding performance often leads to a wasted budget. Ensure you receive concrete reporting and analysis on your marketing investments and get a second opinion on the results from other parties when possible. Digital marketing tactics often have rippling effects on overall performance that should be considered when evaluating success. Your paid campaigns will have clicks and conversions, but they also help with overall branding, foot traffic, your website performance, E-comm revenue, and Search Engine Optimization. For example, potential customers who see your YouTube ad may not click on the ad at the time but return to your store as a walk-in after seeing it. Working With Partners Time and resources are limited when running a furniture store. Working with a partner, agency, or group that can provide multiple marketing solutions for you under one roof frees you to focus on running the store operations, helps to create synergy between your marketing tactics, and allows them to be most effective since industry professionals run them. Another great benefit is that they can help you develop this digital marketing plan that is most effective for your budget and unique needs! Using the tactics outlined above, you can complement your in-store efforts by effectively promoting your products and services online – leading to an overall increase in sales, foot traffic, and your bottom line.
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