You are all set — your online store is running and you are ready to start selling. But opening another online store means little if nobody knows where you are and what you’re selling. So, how do you let people know there is a new shop in their virtual town?
Here is a short marketing checklist for anyone looking to make their first sale.
Stage 1: Who are you?
As basic as this sounds, we have to start by asking this somewhat ridiculous question. Yet, so many businesses aren’t quite capable of answering this question in a concise way. So, think about it. If you can’t say what you do, how will your customers know? So, bear with this incredibly important intro before we move on to specific strategies and tools on our marketing checklist.
Every marketing checklist starts with some basic soul searching. This includes:
1. Determining your mission
While many businesses treat a mission statement as a checkbox exercise filled with some motivational fluff, it is actually one of the cornerstones of your marketing strategy. As Hubspot nicely put it, a mission statement is a declaration of the purpose an organization serves to its audience. Practically, this means a general description of the organization, its function, and its objectives.
2. Performing a SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis focuses on your business’ previous, current, and potential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Running this analysis will enable you to establish your target market and understand both your business and its environment.
Similarly, running a SWOT analysis on your competitors can show you how your marketing strategy can harvest their shortcomings and weaknesses.
Take a look at this Google report, where you’ll find great info about retailers’ strengths and weaknesses in the United Arab Emirates.
3. Determining your buyer persona
A prerequisite to any marketing effort is knowing who your target audience is. While you want to reach as many people as possible, you don’t want to yell into the void of disinterested, disengaged masses. You want to reach out to those who likely will understand your message and buy your product.
While determining a target market is a good start, creating a buyer persona (or several of them) is a way to genuinely personalize your branding message. A buyer persona is a detailed customer profile that includes their name, age, education, profession, income level, lifestyle details, attitudes, and even quotes. Here is a detailed guide on how to create a buyer persona for your marketing checklist.
4 Determining your unique value proposition
A unique value proposition is a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer, the way you solve customers’ problems, and what distinguishes you from the competition.
5. Determining the 4Ps
Your online store’s marketing mix finally comes down to the four Ps: product, price, promotion (marketing strategy) and placement (marketing channels).
6. Determining who is in charge
Who is going to be in charge of ticking off the items on your marketing checklist? Is it you? Is it a marketing team? If it is a team, who is in charge of which process? Make sure you clearly define the assignments and people in charge of completing them.
What do you want?
Oh yes, we know — you want to sell as many products as you can, right? We all do, but that is only one of the goals on your marketing checklist!
7. Determine your objectives
This includes your online store’s long term, big-shot goals, such as reaching a certain revenue level or selling a certain amount of products. Afterward, you move on to smaller, specific milestones. These include things such as making a certain number of sales in the first quarter, acquiring a certain customer base, driving traffic, generating leads, etc.
These goals should be measurable and realistic. Finally, define marketing goals. They usually come down to:
- Traffic — the number of visitors to your online store.
- Lead generation — the number of people who sign up to your email list and have shown an active interest in your product or offer.
- Sales conversion — the number of visitors and leads that turn into customers.
Here are some useful benchmarks you can rely on in the Middle Eastern retail industry.
8. Define Key Performance Indicators
Once you define your goals, it is extremely important to measure them. Some important things, such as customer loyalty or brand awareness, cannot be directly measured. However, in the first stages of your e-commerce venture, you want to be as grounded and number-based as possible.
You will achieve that by determining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — traffic, cost-per-lead, click-through-rate, sign-ups, customer acquisition, etc.
9. Define marketing channels
While there is no universal rule, in the world of e-commerce and retail, there are quite a few safe bets for marketing channels. They include Google AdWords (even better, Google Shopping), Facebook, Instagram, email, and organic search.
10. Define conversion strategy
Each channel has its specifics when it comes to marketing campaigns. Search engines and social media usually require paid advertising. So, your campaigns need to be carefully crafted and targeted to maximize the click-through-rate and sales conversion.
However, by creating a blog, optimizing your website, and using lead capture forms, you can drive a lot of valuable organic traffic to your online store.
All of this requires you to define a specific route your customer takes from seeing your ad to landing on your website, to purchasing your product. This path is different based on whether you use ads, content marketing, social media ads, or email.
For example, a perfect customer will notice your product ad while they are searching for a product on Google, click on it, and buy your product. However, most customers abandon their shopping cart.
So, the next step is to either use dynamic retargeting by displaying these product ads while your website visitor surfs elsewhere, or capture their email address by using opt-in forms. If they opt-in or sign up, you will craft an email campaign that will either nurture a lead by offering product-related blog content, or push them toward purchase by promoting a discount on the products they were searching for.
The possibilities for each channel are endless, so be detailed in determining your conversion strategy. Here you will find some excellent ideas.
How do you do it?
And finally, let’s get busy. Click away to set up these basic tools that will help you generate your first sales.
11. Set up Google Analytics
To measure the results of your marketing efforts, you want to set up Google Analytics. Of course, all of the advertising platforms offer their own analytics platform. But Google is probably the most versatile and welcoming, since it allows you to connect many marketing channels to it.
It will allow you to measure how many people visit your website, discover where this traffic originated, figure out which marketing channel and campaign produced the best results, how they interact with your website, etc.
While it may look a bit intimidating, and you will need some practice or professional help to tweak analytics to their full potential, don’t give up on it! You can find a great guide for Google Analytics beginners here, so you can start your setup.
12. Set up Google AdWords and Google for Retail
Google AdWords and Google for Retail are must-have solutions for online sellers who want to make the best of this marketing channel and maximize the possibility of a sale. Google for Retail enables you to upload your online store and products and display them in Google search results for the related keyword, harvesting the power of Google AdWords.
On top of that, signing up for a merchant account allows you to fully automate this process, adjusting various ad layouts and copy based on targeted audiences’ preferences and previous behavior.
Here are the guides to setting up Google Adwords and Google Merchant Account.
13. Set up Marketing Automation
Analytics, Adwords, and Shopping Campaigns are among the prerequisites for automating your marketing campaigns. Yet, this is not where marketing automation stops.
Based on your conversion strategy, you may be interested in automated email solutions, lead generation tools, or conversion rate trackers. You can find the list of top-rated marketing automation solutions here.
14. Split test
Split testing is just one feature in many marketing automation solutions. Yet, we decided to include it in this marketing checklist to signify the importance of your creative input in generating your first sales.
Experiment with ad copy, layout, and content. Do the same with your best and worst-performing ads of website pages. Compare how audiences react to large or small variations in messaging — you may be surprised. To do this, make sure any marketing automation solution features split or A/B testing.
In conclusion, the never-ending step:
15. Optimize
Finally, here is the final item on your marketing checklist — the one you will keep checking off.
Do not stop optimizing your website and marketing campaigns. Based on your audiences and customer reactions, as well as split tests, make slight changes to your marketing strategy. Of course, do not make changes for the sake of changes, but in the beginning, be super attentive to the way your first visitors and customers are interacting with your business.
Now you’re ready. Press “publish” on your first ad!
We are Fetchr; a company specialized in e-fulfillment. We help e-commerce entrepreneurs grow their business in the Middle East. Let’s make it happen! One box at a time. Learn more here.
