Category: Marketing

People are fed up with Facebook, and it isn’t hard to see why. It’s gone from a great platform that everyone loves to use to a place everyone loves to hate. The reasons are many and varied, but ultimately come down to the social network’s blatant disregard for the well-being of its users. 

Pushy marketing campaigns. Creepy features that seem to track our location, our preferences, and even our conversations. Privacy scandal after privacy scandal. 

On top of all this, social media as a whole is exhausting. Negative news coverage and arguments in the comment section. The constant pressure to view and reply to the messages you receive right now, this very instant, unless you want to be a bad friend. 

Simply put, people are burnt out. 

Yet even in the face of this, the network’s membership is apparently still growing. According to Statista, it currently sits at approximately 2.5 billion monthly active users. Although at least some of this number may consist of fake accounts (again, per Statista), Facebook is still the place to be as far as social media is concerned.

That’s true both for users and for marketers. This may not always be the case. It probably wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that most people who are still on Facebook are there only because there’s no viable alternative. 

Because that’s where their friends and family are. Because many employers now all but demand that people have a Facebook account. Because without Facebook, how would one keep track of the parties they’ve been invited to and the events they have to attend?

Basically, what we’re saying is that just because people are on Facebook, it doesn’t mean they aren’t burnt out by it. It doesn’t mean they really want to be there. And it doesn’t mean 

In a study conducted by real estate technology firm BizCatalyst360, it uncovered some telling sentiments towards the network and its behavior.

• 80 percent of Americans have privacy concerns about Facebook’s usage of their data.
• 95 percent of Americans are concerned about their privacy on social media in general.
• 76 percent of Americans find social ads annoying, and 83 percent are creeped out when ads seem to ‘follow’ them around. 

Given the numbers above, it should be fairly obvious that your business should not attempt to reach prospective customers through traditional means. Non-native social ads are, at this point, effectively a lost cause. Impersonal, untargeted marketing messages are no longer going to grab people’s attention.

Instead, your brand needs to focus not on itself and its products, but on its audience. Who are they? What do they want? What interests them? What kind of content do they want to see, and how can you provide them with that content?

For now, Facebook remains a great way to connect and communicate with your audience. But it’s important to remember that this may not always be the case. While social media as a whole is unlikely to die out anytime soon, it’s worth considering, at least in passing, what you might do if one day using Facebook was no longer feasible.

Per research by digital marketing expert Adthena, Google Shopping ads generate 76 percent of retail search ad spend and generate 85 percent of all clicks on Adwords. Search engine marketing blog Search Engine Land rightly called it the largest growth opportunity of the year for online retailers. What we’re saying here is that if you’re in the e-commerce space, Google Shopping is a platform you should already be using. 

When people encounter your brand online, what do you want them to think? How do you want them to feel? What sort of emotions do you want to convey?

Marketing is actually a fairly general term. An umbrella that applies to a wide range of disciplines and tactics. Today, we’d like to go over a few of the more important ones. These core tactics can each be applied to your business in their own way –  and each is worth considering as part of your overall strategy. 

When people talk about how powerful a marketing tool social media can be, they’re usually referring to websites like Facebook or Twitter.  They often overlook another platform that’s every bit as formidable, perhaps more-so – YouTube. As the most popular user-driven video platform on the Internet, it brings in around 2 billion unique monthly visitors, who between them watch over two hundred and fifty million hours of video a day. 

Per research by ecommerce analytics firm SaleCycle, the average global rate of shopping cart abandonment across all industries in Q1 2018 was nearly 76 percent. Even more shockingly, that figure represents nearly a 2 percent decrease from 2017’s statistics. Upsetting, isn’t it?

It’s long been known that shopping cart abandonment is one of the leading drains on ecommerce revenue. Any business that can recapture even a fraction of these “lost” sales could arguably be considered a success. It’s not especially surprising, then, that there are so many tactics and techniques on the web that claim to help you do just that such as:

• Reminder emails
• Coupons and special offers 
• Complex, feature-rich customer engagement platforms

These are all valuable. They’re all things you should be looking into. But they also won’t save you if your shopping cart is fundamentally broken.  

In short, the best way to reduce shopping cart abandonment by far is to determine why people are abandoning their carts. Here are three reasons.

Your Checkout Process Leaves a lot to be Desired

Your customers should not have to jump through hoops just to purchase your products. While it’s perfectly acceptable to encourage registration to purchase a product, it’s inadvisable to require it.  Focus on making the case for why people should register an account on your website, or give them the opportunity to do so post purchase. 

It’s also worthwhile to examine your checkout process for any unnecessary complexity. At most, you should require payment and shipping information, and keep it to as few fields as possible. Additionally, the fewer pages a prospective purchaser has to go through the better. You might also consider including a progress indicator so customers know how much more they need to do before their purchase is complete. 

Finally, make sure your shopping cart and your website are both fully compatible with mobile devices. A growing percentage of ecommerce purchases are now made via smartphones and tablets. Failure to account for those purchases effectively means you’re shooting yourself in the foot. 

There are too Many Hidden Costs

One of the most common reasons for shopping cart abandonment, according to a 2018 survey by ecommerce marketing firm Barilliance, involves shipping costs. It’s safe to say that most people when making a purchase online expect to pay at least a nominal delivery fee. However, if you load up every single purchase on your storefront with unexpected, hidden costs, people are going to ditch your checkout process in droves.

Your best bet here is to include the expected delivery costs on each of your product listings. That way, no one will be taken aback when a product ends up costing significantly more than expected. It’s also advisable to make an effort to reduce your shipping costs. The less a customer has to spend on delivery, the better. 

You Haven’t Bothered With Security

Last but certainly not least, if your site isn’t using SSL, then you’re doing ecommerce wrong. We’re living in an era of data breaches and privacy violations, in which consumers are more cognizant of their data than ever before. If they suspect that your checkout process is insecure, they aren’t going to proceed with it, simple as that.

To be truly successful, you must be capable of learning from failure and not just your own. Paying attention to what the people around you are doing wrong is a great way to avoid making those mistakes yourself.

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