Any retail news report worth its salt over the pandemic will undoubtedly discuss the rise of e-Commerce. Retail e-Commerce saw a huge rise, understandably because people couldn’t leave their homes and the vast majority of shops were closed. 2020 saw e-Commerce account for more than a third of all retail sales. eMarketer predicts that this change in buying behaviour will continue and believes that by 2023, the numbers will be well in excess of anything pre-pandemic, at £143.51 billion.

In the UK during 2020 there were 45.4 million digital buyers, 81.1% of the population. There are now, of course, a number of e-Commerce brands as well as traditional bricks and mortar companies that are wondering how they can get a slice of that pie.

 

Awareness of your brand

The overwhelming majority of marketing and advertising models e.g. AIDA, but awareness of the brand is the first step or at the heart of the marketing communications plan. Your customers need to know who you are, where you are and why they should purchase your products.

There are many different ways that you can increase awareness for your brand/products and the Digital Marketing experts at Sierra Six Media have compiled this list of the 4 key areas to focus your efforts on to maximise results.

 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is a huge area that will help with awareness as well as encouraging those aware customers to go on to make a purchase. Successful and strategic SEO will get your company ranking highly on Google (still the industry stronghold), Google Maps, social media and more. There are numerous ways to improve the SEO of your website but the crux of it is having a relevant, useful, functioning and aesthetically pleasing website. It is important that you show the Google algorithms that your content is relevant and industry-leading, so it is worth spending the time (and money) on creating a website full of content, rich with keywords that your customers are using to find these products and that your website has the user experience at the forefront of all actions.

This is not a quick fix. SEO takes time to develop, and you need to keep up with trends and make small changes all the time, keeping your website current, fresh and relevant.

 

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising can provide that quick fix and can start creating awareness for your brand straight away. There are numerous ways of paying for advertising online including Google ads (Pay per Click PPC) which get you appearing on the first page of Google whilst working on your organic search (SEO). Facebook and other social media adverts are increasingly popular platforms for digital adverts because you can use their data to target your ads to your target market. This means that your brand is getting cost-effective exposure at a relatively low cost if done right. It can become costly if not managed correctly, support from an agency such as Sierra Six for all your PPC campaigns can mitigate that issue.

 

Micro-influencers

Many brands are starting to see the benefits of sourcing influencers on social media to help boost awareness and sales of their products. This is a modern approach to marketing that can see brands experiencing rapid growth for little effort. That’s the dream right?! If executed successfully this can be an incredibly successful method for brands to implement. However, it must be done carefully and strategically. The influencer must be aligned with your brand’s values and intentions, their actions and opinions could lead to negative PR for your brand by association. The key to finding an influencer is finding one that suits your niche, someone that is followed and respected by your target market, someone with a decent number of human followers (as opposed to bot followers).

Influencer marketing can also depend on which platform you want to use and which your potential audience engages with. E.g. TikTok is seeing an increase in product demos, so if your potential audience is active on TikTok then this will lead to greater exposure. If your target market is older, Facebook might be more successful for you.

The younger audience is, however, unsurprisingly, the most likely to engage in social media and also do more shopping online. Gen Z and millennials do half of their shopping online and are inspired by social media browsing.

 

Email Marketing

The final key area is email marketing. This may seem a little outdated now as we receive more and more emails every day, we are becoming more tuned out to the marketing emails we receive. However, for a business, they still have their worth. Whilst many emails are not opened or never make it past the spam filter, those that do are landing in the inboxes of previous customers or interested potential customers that have given their details to the business.

It is therefore a more direct message to your target market and the rule of e-Commerce sales is that the more targeted the offering, the easier the conversion. This means that if we are reminding our previous customers that we are there and that it might be time to make another purchase, they are more likely to return to us rather than starting their research all over again. Even the most recognisable brands need to keep up their brand exposure since awareness decays and the business needs to keep their brand at the top of their customers’ minds for when they are ready to make a purchase.

 

Take Command of Your Brand

Nielsen research found that a 1-point gain in brand metrics (e.g, awareness, which the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute argues is the best way to attract new customers, and consideration) drives a 1% increase in sales. In short, more awareness and consideration mean more potential customers, and ideally, more sales. 85% of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase online and you need to make sure that your potential audience knows you are there.

 

Sierra Six Media can help you build that awareness and see that increase in conversions.
Contact our SEO and PPC experts today for a free consultation.