08 Jul Your Revenue Life Raft: Digital Strategy

No matter how robust your marketing plan, or how well-established your brick-and-mortar location, a company will flounder in today’s digital world without a solid e-commerce plan. This goes beyond simply having an attractive, user-friendly website. Brand identity and digital strategy are critical to selling successfully online.

Part One: Brand Identity

Story
Online shoppers want to buy from brands that they know, trust, and recognize. Before you even start worrying about marketing or advertising, set yourself apart by establishing your unique story. Tell us who you are and why we should care, making sure to keep it simple and authentic. Always include an “About Us” page on your website. Your story is the foundation of your brand.
The website we built for Derby City Pools conveys their story right away.

Design
Reinforce your brand’s personality with an excellent and thorough design package. Logos and logo treatments, fonts, color palettes, and iconography are just the beginning. Your design standards should permeate your website, social media marketing, video content, email marketing, advertising, printed collateral – even invoices and receipts. Consistency is key for making your brand impactful and recognizable.

Highland Cleaners_Outdoor+Print Campaigns from QTheAgency on Vimeo.

Don’t stop at visual designs; brand standards should include written and verbal components. Does your brand have a tagline? What’s your elevator pitch? Get even more granular: how do you spell certain words or abbreviations (pm, PM, P.M., or p.m.?) What hashtags and emojis will you use? How will you respond to customer inquiries or complaints?

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to establishing your brand identity, so take your time and do it right.

Part Two: Digital Marketing Strategy

With your brand identity complete, it’s time to reach your customers. Marketing isn’t just about clever advertising copy or striking designs. More and more, marketing strategy is driven by analytics. From optimizing your website’s SEO to building effective online advertising campaigns, a comprehensive digital marketing strategy will ensure that your message reaches the right people.

SEO
The term “Search Engine Optimization (perhaps better known by its acronym “SEO”) has become ubiquitous in recent years. While everyone seems to have a website, having a website that is beautiful, functional, AND shows up on the first page of Google is more of a challenge. Keywords, content, and backlinks are all pieces of the SEO puzzle, but an optimized website is a moving target. Don’t expect to set and forget your e-commerce website.

Social Media
Social media marketing is quite different from a personal social media account. Just like search engines, social media platforms are constantly updated. From algorithms to optimal image size, it’s vital to keep up to date on changes made by the social media platforms that you use. Additionally, monitor your business page analytics often to see how your posts are performing. Learning from your posts’ stats can help you maximize engagement with your followers.

Paid Digital Ads
From Google Ads to geotargeting, smart digital marketing can show your products to the right customers at the right time. Eye-catching creative and concise copy may get your ad clicks, but long-term analytics monitoring, and campaign optimization will help your advertising dollars go even further.

Eye-catching digital ads for Cardinal Carryor help get clicks.

So as you can see, online sales can boost your business, but it isn’t as simple as putting your products on a website. To learn more about how a tailored e-commerce strategy can help your retail business, contact Linda Schuster at Linda@QtheAgency.com or Stephanie Rickert at Stephanie@QtheAgency.com.