Is your content fresh? Is your marketing calendar organized? Fresh pages and offers help to make your site look modern, credible, and encourage customers to keep coming back for futur
e visits. Today I will offer some tips that are easy to follow and use.
1. Establish a product and marketing calendar – Many people use a calendar to help them stay organized with daily activities in their personal lives. The same rule should apply in your job. If you do not have a calendar to help organize your company and company events, you need to. A product and marketing calendar needs to be updated and used throughout the year. This is not a calendar to keep track of your daily meetings and appointments, but a calendar to help organize and prioritize tasks. Some important tasks you could track are:
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- New products
- Emails you send to your customers with new product announcements and promotional offers
- Social media offers o Cross sells & Up Sells – establish a rotation of merchandising offers to help keep them fresh and new
- Upcoming conferences, events and trade shows
- Website changes and updates The product and marketing calendar needs to be maintained and current to keep you, your employees and business organized.
2. Cross Sells & Up Sells – These are both great ways to help increase your Average Order Value (AOV). You should give your customers the option to take advantage of these merchandising offers, which will help grow your revenue. Here are some simple facts about each:
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- Cross Sells – products offered should be less expensive than what is initially being added to the cart. It will be easier to add on items to an order if the product(s) are inexpensive, complimentary and equals three or fewer products. Do not overwhelm your customers with too many options or they will not focus on the offer presented to them. Think of this experience like going through a grocery store checkout and the items you see. Inexpensive items like magazines, candy, beverages, etc.
- Up Sells – if you have a similar product that offers more features and functionality, but is a bit more expensive – this would be considered an upsell. The goal is to increase the AOV by having them replace a less expensive product with one that costs more. If you add up sells to your cart you need to clearly list out the additional features, the added price and also offer a discount to upgrade.
3. Build a Social Media presence – We all know social media is very popular and used by most companies to advertise, communicate and share their brand. Social media is an easy and fast way to reach your audience. Use these free avenues to communicate with your customers, ask them question(s), present online polls and post special offers, announcements and promotions. It is also a great place to show pictures of your products, your company and people who work at your company. It gives customers a personal sense of you and your business.
4. Coupon Field – When you go to a shopping cart online and see a coupon field, do you search for a coupon code online? Most of us do, including myself. When I find a coupon that gives me a discount on the product(s) and/or shipping, I feel like I have gotten a good deal and I am more apt to purchase. Do you ever decide not to purchase if you can’t find an active coupon code? Again, I have also done this. So think about the many other customers who behave the same way. This is where your social media engagement can allow you to interact with your audience and potential customers. You can post coupons on your social sites that can be found by following your pages or doing a simple search. Not everyone will automatically search for a coupon, but many will so be prepared to capture those customers. You don’t always want coupons so easily available, but sprinkle them in from time-to-time to help your customers feel that they are receiving a good deal.
5. Keep Offers, Products & Pages Fresh – It is important to keep everything located on your website fresh and updated. This doesn’t mean you have to make wholesale changes on a regular basis, but try to make little changes on a regular basis. This is where a product and marketing calendar will help you stay organized.
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- Release new products regularly
- Rotate home page banners and merchandising offers
- Partner with other companies to offer their products
- Post regular social media updates
- Release emails/newsletters and blog content regularly
- Utilize videos from your website and/or YouTube
These are just a few ways to offer fresh marketing & merchandising while staying organized doing it. Do you have any thoughts that you would like to share? Please follow our blog and leave a comment below to let us know what worked for you!
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Marketing & Merchandising: Keep it Fresh and Organized
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