It is a fact that you have to work harder to reach and retain your customers when the majority of your business is done online. You do not necessarily have high street premises for someone to find and return to, only a website. This makes it vital that you know about how to market yourself, your business, and your product effectively, online. This article will explore various digital marketing tools that you can consider, such as retail marketing automation, so that we can target our customers and remind them that we are there.

Retail Marketing Automation

A useful tool to adopt in any digital marketing campaign is one known as Retail Marketing Automation. This is where marketing campaigns can be set up to trigger automatically and at the right time.

This could include having an email sent to previous customers to alert them to the fact that your latest product or service is about to be launched or is now available. The same approach could be used to send them a voucher or discount code when it is their birthday. This will give the impression to someone that they are special and your company cares about its customers. The hope is that they will spend that voucher buying a product they might not otherwise have considered purchasing. Except to treat themselves on their birthday, of course. Where products require refills, emails can be generated to remind customers just where they can obtain those from. The same source as they purchased the original product from if they are reminded of its existence. Retail Marketing Automation is all about keeping the customer close and engaging with them about the products and services that you sell regularly. You do not want them thinking of a competitor but only of your company as a place to purchase the product and any accessories or updates.

Engaging Content

A website must contain engaging content. Articles that are of interest to a customer might extend beyond those just relating to a product.  Interactive videos can allow a company to have the customer find what it is they want to know about a product. Various parts of a video can be clicked on for further information. Details that a customer might find too much delivered all at once can be made available via an additional click. There is such a thing as information overload. Videos, too, can be fun to watch and draw people to a website. They can explain more about a product than a whole load of text to have to read.

The advantage of an engaging website is that customers will be persuaded to buy your product initially and also want to return to it regularly. There is no point paying for SEO or PPC (which we talk about below), to have your website found, to then not have people return to it or want to recommend it to others. So, thinking about how interesting as well as informative your website is, helps initially gain customers and secures repeat business. Sophisticated and professional-looking still images, moving pictures, and sound, should grace the screen of your customer and be heard through their speaker system. A professionally produced website should be indicative of the customer service those finding your website would expect.

SEO or PPC

You have a choice between SEO and PPC to initially attract the customers you then want to receive loyalty from. The difference between the two is that Search Engine Optimization uses organic searches, whereas Pay Per Click means that a company will pay per advert clicked on. Whatever method is used, it is a way for a company to have their website ranked higher up a search list. This is essential if you want to become visible to a consumer. There is no point even being on the second page of a search when the person searching is going to choose between the top three entries to buy their product. Unless you have a very unique product, then SEO or PPC will help you make your company the one that is found first or early on in a search. Then, very often, customers will be loyal to that first company they find, as long as they receive good service from them to have no reason to look elsewhere.

Also, this type of digital marketing approach will help a company to target their local customers, just as they can target customers globally. Particularly if you are offering a service, most of your business is likely to come from clients who live locally.

In conclusion, we can achieve customer loyalty by adopting Retail Marketing Automation to regularly remind our clients of our products, by keeping them engaged through good website content, and by having targeted them in the first instance through SEO or PPC.