DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY FOR AN ONLINE TECH RETAIL STORE

Written by Thakazelo Douw and Naeemah Mohamed

Introduction

The eCommerce industry has been growing at a steady rate over the past few years. In 2020, global e-retail sales grew 27,6% compared to the previous year. However, with the growing rate comes increasing competition.  

Brands have to communicate with their customers at every step of their buyers’ journey to ensure a smooth customer experience. Online retail stores need to ensure that they devise a strategic plan that will make their customers shop with them on a regular basis.

For eCommerce businesses, the use of digital marketing strategies is essential. This blog will outline how an online tech retail store, such as KAYITECH, can use digital marketing strategies to boost growth.

Establish Business Goals

Short Term Goals 

Short-term goals are focused on building awareness of your tech brand to the public.

Key focuses:

• Consistent B2C and B2B content creation
• Gain 1000 followers on social media
• Launch hero products to the market

Long Term Goals

Long-term goals focus on increasing sales, brand loyalty, and market positioning to remain competitive in the tech industry.

Key focuses: 

• Benchmark sales and profit margins to competitors 
• Retain B2B relationships
• Retain customer loyalty

Evaluate and Measure

A way of determining how effective is your digital strategy in achieving your business goals is by setting Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).

KPI’s are used to measure the performance of activities by your business. Monitoring them will help e-commerce entrepreneurs identify progress toward sales, marketing, and customer service goals. Moreover, they help in enabling an organisation to make effective decisions.

KPI’s for an online tech brand include:

• Number of transactions  
• Average order size
• Shopping cart abandon rate
• Return on Ad Spend (ROA)
• Email Open and Click Rate
• Social Media Engagement

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Rachel Leist from HubSpot defines Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as “techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This makes your website more visible to people who are looking for solutions that your brand, product, or service can provide via search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.”

SEO helps you organically increase brand awareness and direct organic traffic to your website. Tips include using the right keywords and creating content that will fit the needs of your audience.

For anyone to find your online store, you’d have to rank above all the other websites. It would be best for your store to make keyword research an ongoing task.

In order to stand out in the technology sector, you will need to find top-notch keywords related to this industry. Online keyword research tools are reliable sources to find out the current trending keywords in technology.

Examples of most searched technology keywords include laptops, headphones, tablets, computers etc

Headphones Keywords:

Bluetooth headphones

Wired headphones

Headphones with mic

SEO plugins and tools that your business can use to perform SEO checks for your online store include:

• SEMRush
• Google Search Console
• Yoast SEO
• Ahrefs

You can just pick only one to avoid plugin conflict.

Social Media Marketing

With your audience mostly using social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, you have to create a social media marketing strategy that will reach and engage with your audience on the platforms they frequently use – each social media platform has a specific target audience.

Social media marketing allows you to organically grow your brand, as well as paid advertising. Target your audience and be active in social media spaces; this will create a conversation between your business and your customers, which will increase loyalty and generate new leads.

Set out time every day to respond to social media queries that customers may have that apply to your store. Ensure that the queries are addressed and answered.

According to Nicole Martins Ferreira, some strategies that you could try include:

• Sharing user-generated content: if your customers post content on social media that include products from your businesses, you can share that content with your audience (with their permission) – this will help build customer loyalty. For example: if a customer posts on Instagram headphones they bought from your online tech store, you can share their post on your account.
• Analysing your consumer demographics: depending on your audience’s age group, they’ll be on different social networks. You can use tools like Google Analytics to get a more detailed understanding of your customers; this will then allow you to tailor your content accordingly.
• Creating a social calendar: evaluate how often you post each day and what type of content you’re sharing. Once you figure out what your audience responds to, you can improve your social calendar to get the best results. Planning your strategy will allow you to be consistent.

Utilizing LinkedIn for B2B Marketing 

LinkedIn is known as a powerful platform for B2B marketing. It effectively builds a professional network that every business is seeking, and is already an inevitable part of digital marketing. 

Additionally, 46% of the social media traffic to B2B company sites is from LinkedIn.

Not only is it an effective way to build up your reputation as a reputable online tech store, but it will open new opportunities to build business relationships that seek connections to negotiate good value products to purchase at high volumes.

Follow this free guide to master B2B marketing on LinkedIn. 

Email Marketing

There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. For online retailers, email marketing generates the fastest results in terms of webpage traffic and sales. Year after year, email marketing continues to deliver a high return on investment (ROI) for businesses.

99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking 20 times a day. Of those people, 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the morning before they check social media or the news.

Email usage is expected to increase in the coming years, so businesses should use email marketing with targeted, relevant emails. Sending regular updates and newsletters is a good way to keep in touch with your audience.

Email marketing is important for eCommerce businesses because consumers usually purchase from the company after receiving an email.

Add value by:

• personalising marketing emails for each customer. Consumers love receiving messages and offers that are personalised to their needs and interests.
• emailing reward or loyalty points after consumers purchase products, which can be redeemed later.
• sending out thank you emails after customers have finished shopping.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is one of the most important digital marketing trends of 2021. These days, customers would rather watch a video to learn about your product, than read an article.

84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

Video marketing:

• converts viewers into customers.
• builds trust between you and your audience.
• is the best content for social media.

Nicole Martins Ferreira (check out her blog, it’s great!) suggests trying these video marketing strategies:

• Creating different types of videos: you could create a variety of videos depending on what your online tech store sells. Examples include videos of your products, tutorials and customer testimonials. The length of the video will depend on the platform you use (YouTube, Instagram). 
• Post short videos on social media: the advantages of short videos include the fact that you can post more of them, they take less work to produce, and they increase your brand presence.
• Use Instagram stories for sales: With Instagram Stories, you can create a quick video with your product that links directly to it. Your videos need to be eye-catching and entertaining to keep your viewers watching. You should also include a call-to-action (“SHOP NOW”) in the video to get people to swipe to buy the product.

Google My Business

An effective way to start up your business is to set up a “Google My Business” listing.

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that allows your business listing to show up alongside other related local businesses. It can help reach potential customers that would otherwise not know how to find you. Business information like phone number, website, address, review ratings, hours, and more will all be available on one easy screen for potential customers.

Tips to optimize a Google My Business listing:

Consistent GMB posts – This is a great way to improve the overall SEO strategy. By posting on GMB, it can help generate more organic clicks. Google posts come with CTA buttons which will encourage users to take action off the post.

Select a clear category – For your primary category, choose the one that best represents the core offering of your business. If any other categories apply, choose them as secondary categories.

Post relevant photos – Google loves it when you upload photos to your listing and if customers post relevant photo reviews.  It signals that you are an active and relevant listing worthy of ranking higher in results.

Easy online shopping experience

Having a fully functional e-commerce store as a new start-up makes shopping easier for clients and makes your business more trustworthy. Ensure that your e-commerce store is easy to navigate, represents your brand image and values correctly, and is simple to purchase items.

Start-up friendly e-commerce platforms include Shopify and Wix, which are affordable and require no technical coding skills to get started.  

Tips to optimize your e-commerce store:

Organise products in categories – Products that are organised in category tiles will maintain an inviting aesthetic to your Homepage and make it less overwhelming when browsing products. This will also ensure a pleasant experience for mobile users on limited screen space. 

Easy and efficient checkout process – Nothing will have a client leave your store faster than having to endure a time-consuming and complicated payment process. Ensure a variety of third-party payment gateways are integrated and authorised on your website to offer an easy and secure checkout.

Updated promotional banners – Keep your website looking fresh and worth revisiting by consistently updating promotional banners. Clients love a bargain hunt for quality tech items and will come back to discover what’s new on offer. 

Google Analytics

Utilize free web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, to provide you with important data such as the number of website visits, how quickly users leave your website, customer behaviour and the devices they use, and sale conversion rates. 

Google Analytics is a key tool to gain an understanding of your customers, grow your online business, and track marketing campaign performance. This type of useful data will help you evaluate what’s working, what’s not, and where to improve your marketing strategy if needed.  

Conclusion

A Digital Strategy Plan is essential to achieving your E-commerce business goals such as high conversion rates and returning customers. Customers should always be at the forefront of the content creation of your product and services.

Google My Business is imperative to establish an online presence, as it can drive footfall from its billions of search engine users.

Once you have traffic to your online store, you want to convert a site visitor to a customer by ensuring your site is fully functional and communicates your brand image and values.

For an online tech retailer, ensure that your competitors are researched and that you are using the correct platforms to reach your target audience.

Social Media Marketing, Paid Ad Search, Video Marketing, and Email Campaigns should be utilized in your strategy to increase brand awareness and engage with your customer to build brand loyalty.

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