You’ve thought of the idea, perfected your product and built an attractive, user-friendly website. But the influx of sales you expected just hasn’t come. Why? While your website and product may be up to scratch, your Ecommerce Advertising Strategy may be lacking.

Read on as we discuss four signs that your online Advertising Strategy just isn’t good enough.

1. Overly promotional social media

Want to deter your followers and send them straight to the ‘unfollow’ button? Use your Social Media pages solely as an advertising platform. Of course, this is something you want to avoid.

Social media is a great way to connect and interact with potential customers, building brand loyalty and conveying your key messages. While social media advertising can be highly effective, it should never be its sole purpose. In fact, this can actually hinder your success, with almost 60% of followers getting annoyed with too many promotions from a brand.

For most users, sites like Twitter and Facebook are a place to express themselves, interact with friends and family and escape from reality. With that in mind, they expect brand accounts to be more ‘human-like’, with friendly, engaging content.

Around 35% of customers have contacted a brand through their social media pages to voice a concern or ask a question. So, if you’re not there to respond and put things right, you may potentially lose a repeat customer. As social media is a public platform, any complaints that go unanswered or ignored will be noticed by your other followers and could negatively impact your brand image.

2. General personalisation

Ecommerce personalisation is a huge trend right now, offering individualised content for shoppers. From exclusive birthday discounts to recommended products based on past purchases, there are a number of ways you can give your customers a more bespoke experience. But a number of businesses are just missing the mark when it comes to personalisation.

If you’re sending out standardised emails, with only the name changed in each, for instance, you may be putting customers off, rather than encouraging them to shop. Using the customer’s first name in an email for example, encourages just 8% of shoppers to follow up and make a purchase. If that’s your only form of personalisation, your advertising strategy needs a rethink.

These days, customers expect personalised experiences from each and every brand interaction. And they expect them to go deeper than surface level. Shoppers are far more likely to purchase products from brands that recognise them and provide personalised recommendations. This form of individualisation can also increase customer loyalty, helping to forge a relationship between you and the shopper.

3. Text-heavy advertising strategies

Most brands out there tend to focus on text-heavy content in their advertising strategies. According to research on marketing techniques, 81% of businesses post blog articles, 82% produce case studies and 79% publish content pieces on their site. If so many others are doing it, it must be great for your business too, right?

Although lengthy articles and long-form content are an essential part of a successful marketing strategy, using only text-heavy content can deter some customers. A number of people simply won’t have the desire – or the time – to sit and read long posts and would much prefer short snippets of information to understand the brand’s message, goals and products.

While long-form content is great for search engine optimisation (SEO), the fact remains that 80% of consumers would prefer a video over a blog post, and infographics see a 54% higher engagement rate than longer articles. For a successful and engaging advertising strategy, it’s best to use a range of different content forms, including videos, images, social media posts, articles and blogs.

4. Misunderstood data

A good advertiser is one who understands the need for data to drive their strategies. From researching highly relevant topics in your industry to discovering the best time to post on various social media accounts, data is essential to make the most of your marketing. But do you understand what data is needed to help make these decisions?

Simply generating as much data as possible will not help your marketing team if the data is not of a certain quality or even relevant to your strategy. If you are reliant on general information that may not influence your work, it could lead to mistakes or misguided efforts. If your social media team is relying on data reports that analyse the mobile phone use of the entire country, for instance, their strategies may not be focused on your target audience and may neglect desktop or tablet users altogether.

Instead of relying heavily on external data sources, your business should focus on driving self-curated data to the forefront. Using information generated from your own customers or local area will provide accurate data that can be directly applied to your marketing strategies. Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the way companies generate information in recent years, helping to better understand customers and supporting key business decisions.

Machine learning business intelligence systems can take inputted data and transform it into a series of understandable, readable analytics. So, rather than hiring an additional team to sort through hundreds of data files to generate a user-friendly report to be used in future marketing strategies, you can employ a new AI system that can do it all for you.

Improving your advertising strategy

Getting your brand marketing right is one of the keys to having a successful, recognisable business. If any of the signs above sound familiar, it may be time to switch up your ecommerce advertising strategy.

The digital marketing team at Bing Digital are experienced, knowledgeable and ready to help. From boosting your social media presence to generating a comprehensive content plan to improve your overall marketing strategy, we can do it all. For more information about any of our services, don’t hesitate to contact the team today.

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