Accessories have been used to bring outfits together since ancient times. A lot of clothing retail stores have found success in selling accessories to customers. With the rise of eCommerce, we now see many small businesses shift their focus to selling online.
If you have an accessory business online and you’re looking for help with digital marketing, you’ve come to the right place. This guide will show you the steps to take to create a solid digital marketing plan that will help increase the awareness and profitability of your business.
Define Mission Statement
A mission statement is a statement that declares the purpose of an organization to its audience. You’re explaining what you do, and why you do it. A mission statement shouldn’t be too long (usually one sentence) and should be clear and concise. An example of a mission statement could be:
“To provide accessories with a luxury feel, that bring out an individual’s flair and style at an affordable cost.”
Your mission statement should be easily found within your website, so customers can quickly decide if your mission statement aligns with their personal values.
USP: After you created your mission statement, try to pinpoint what your USP is. A USP, or unique selling proposition, is what makes your business different from everyone else’s. It will be the main message on your website and advertisements.
Define Target Audience
You may already have an idea of who your business may target, but it doesn’t hurt to get as specific as possible. A well-defined target audience will increase efficiency when advertising, which will save you money.
Let’s say your target audience is women between the ages of 25-40. This is a decent start but is pretty vague. Not all women in this age range have the same lifestyle and interests. A woman who lives in a rural area may not care about luxury necklaces and earrings as much as a woman who lives downtown in a big city.
One great method to help define a target audience is to create a target customer profile. Create a person that would be the perfect customer for the business to target. Write as many details about this person as possible. This will help you determine the ideal lifestyles, locations and behaviours that your business wants to go after. Here is an example of one:
“Nicole is a 28-year-old woman living in Toronto, On. She currently works an office job downtown. She enjoys nightlife and dresses to impress. She currently lives with her boyfriend and has no children. While she enjoys fashion, she doesn’t like to spend money on luxury brands because of her budget. She has a yearly income of around $50k. Nicole is looking for affordable accessories that can meet her fashion needs”
Once you have a profile in mind, you now can communicate your USP to customers who fit the profile. The target customer will now be more receptive to your messaging.
Define Media Channels
Once you have your target audience, you can now decide what media channels to use to convey your message. The best way to go about this is to do some research on the media channels that your target audience uses. Some common media channels include:
- Mobile apps
- Youtube
- Specific websites (for banner and display ads)
If for example your target audience uses Instagram a lot, create an account on there and regularly post content to engage with your audience. If you find that they use their emails a lot, maybe add a subscription service where they can sign up with their email to receive content.
Knowing which channels your target audience uses will increase the chances of the right people seeing your message at the right time. It’s important to note that whichever channel they use, most people consume content through mobile devices, so optimization is key.
Create your goals
Now it’s time to create goals for your business. This is key in order to track and achieve success. To create goals for your business, it helps to follow the SMART rule. Make sure your goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable by some metric
- Attainable
- Relevant to your business
- Time-Bound
For example, a goal for your business could be “ To gain 400 new followers on the business’s Instagram account by the end of October 2021. This goal follows all the elements of the SMART rule. Other examples of goals could include:
- “To increase website traffic by 30% by the end of the month”
- “Increase average basket size to $30 by the end of the year”
- To increase sales by 50% by the end of 2021
You may also find it helpful to use both short-term and long term goals for your business.
Track Goals and Review
Now that you have your goals created, it’s time to track them. There are many analytics tools available to you as a business. For example, some social media networks such as Instagram have analytics tools built in them, where you can easily measure things such as growth and traffic.
You can also opt for third-party analytics tools such as Hootsuite, which have the ability to track and analyze data across all your social media networks. For your website, create a Google Analytics account so you can see very specific data that will help you make better decisions.
A common mistake small businesses make is to track data only when they reach the end date of their goal. Data should be tracked constantly to identify strong and weak points. Let’s say you noticed that people from the U.K seem to have a high click-through rate. It would be profitable to focus your advertising efforts on that location. If you have been checking your analytics regularly, you would be able to make this call early on.
Additional
Now that you have the fundamentals of what is needed to create a digital marketing plan, here are some additional tips to help you get started.
Research competition: Check out what some of your competitors in the market are doing. See what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong and apply this knowledge to your business.
Search engine optimization and marketing: It’s not enough to just create a website, your website needs to be available to see for all. In order to do this, your website needs to be optimized for search engines.
Do this by researching keywords that are relevant to your business and add them to your website. When people search those same words on Google or Bing, your website will have a better chance of showing up on their results. Add links, images and tags to rank higher as well. Make sure your website is smooth and is optimized for all devices.
In addition to search engine optimization, there is also search engine marketing where you can bid on keywords that are relevant to your business. Once a potential customer searches for the keywords, your ad will be displayed at the top of the results page as a display ad.
Create your content: Once you have a marketing plan, it’s time to start creating your content! Use tools such as Canva and Adobe Photoshop to help create social media posts and advertisements.
For social media posts, make your content simple and engaging. For advertisements, include a call to action.
Keep up-to-date: As a business owner, it is important to always keep learning in order to help grow your business. Check out articles and take courses in order to improve your digital marketing skills and give you an edge over your competition.
Now that you have read this guide, it’s time to create a digital marketing plan and put it into action. If planned and applied correctly, these steps will help increase awareness and make your business more profitable.
About the Author
Abdulahi Dibbasey is a Digital Marketing Analyst at the International Institute of Digital Marketing™.