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Cyber Monday Marketing Tips

By Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

Cyber Monday marks the first major increase in online holiday spending as people go back to work after the Thanksgiving weekend and begin to think about how to get a jump on their holiday shopping. And this year’s holiday shopping is the shortest one yet.

According to this article I found on venturebeat.com, Adobe is forecasting the biggest Cyber Monday sales in history.

What can you do to help increase sales from your share of Cyber Monday’s sales? Here are a few Cyber Monday marketing tips:

  • Give a free gift away for orders over a certain amount
  • Create product bundle gift packages
  • List a promotion on CyberMonday.com
  • Follow up with consumers both before, and after Thanksgiving
  • Give customers a way to spread the word
  • Offer certain special deals ONLY on Cyber Monday but run your promotion for several days

There you have it. A few ways you can get a piece of the “holiday shopping pie”.

Now, get working on those ideas, and prepare your store for the holiday shopping season! Cyber Monday will be here before you know it.

 

Filed Under: Increase sales, Marketing Strategies Tagged With: cyber monday promotions, cyber monday sales, increase ecommerce sales, increase online sales, tips for ecommerce sales

Check It Out: 75 Words to Consider During Your Next Electronic Campaign

By Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

75 Words to Consider During Your Next Electronic Campaign

Social media and e-mail, for all of their popularity, can only offer so much reach to potential customers. You can have the perfect sale at the perfect time using the most pristine analytics possible but lose conversion because your message got lost along the way.

How can you be sure your message will get in front of as many eyes as possible?

  1. Consider using some of the most popular retweetable and repeatable words on Twitter and Facebook.
  2. Avoid words that will land your message in a customer’s spam filter

The 20 Most ReTweetable Words & Phrases (according to DanZarrella.com) are:

you twitter please
retweet post blog
social free media
help please retweet great
social media 10 follow
how to top blog post
check out new blog post

According to spam filter experts, there are at least* 55 words or phrases you want to avoid in your e-mails include:

#1 Accept credit cards Affordable
All natural Apply online Bargain
Best price Billing address Buy direct
Call Cards Accepted Check
Click /Click Here / Click Below Click to remove Congratulations
Cost / No cost Do it today Extra income
For free Form Free and FREE
Free leads Free membership Free offer
Free preview Full refund Get it now
Giving away Guarantee Hidden
Marketing Marketing solutions Money
Name brand Never No Hidden Costs
No-obligation Now Offer
One time / one-time Opportunity Order / Order Now
Order today/ Order status Orders shipped by priority mail Performance
Please read Price Risk free
Sales Satisfaction guaranteed Save $
Save up to Special promotion Urgent
US dollars

You may obviously need to use some of the words above in your next e-mail, however, be sure to use the word(s) sparingly and never put a word like Free or Now in all capital letters. Increased frequency or repeated use of these words can highly increase your chances of an email landing in the spam folder.

Many third party email systems like Constant Contact, iContact, and AWeber automatically pre-check your email for you against a spam database and then give it a “spam rating”. The rating is supposed to help you gauge how your email stacks up against other spam and thus provide an idea of whether it will be caught in spam filters or not. I highly recommend one of these types of services if you are not already utilizing a third party system.

*This list was adapted from //www.marketingforsuccess.com/wordstoavoid.html. For a list of 250 words and phrases to avoid, take a look at Words and Phrases that Trigger Some Spam Filters at: //www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm.

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Social Media Tagged With: ecommerce business support, ecommerce business tips, ecommerce expert, ecommerce marketing, ecommerce traffic conversion, Email Marketing

Top 10 Ecommerce Mistakes

By Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

Top 10 Ecommerce Mistakes

Here is a list of the top 10 mistakes (and myths) I see ecommerce stores fall into:

  1. Thinking that driving more traffic to your website will increase sales. (There are two types of traffic in general. Knowing which one to go after is the key to increased sales. More is not always better — that is, unless the right elements are in place to maximize sales from it.)
  2. Weak site design in relation to your target market. (i.e., Do you design for your market or do you just design a site thinking that alone will sell your product?)
  3. Not marketing enough or properly. (You can’t make sales if nobody knows you exist. Marketing is critical but it must be done correctly to gain the maximum benefit.)
  4. Try to sell the wrong product online. (Think that just because you have a product it’s going to sell? Think again. Unless you’ve done your homework first, you may be surprised to find that there isn’t a market for what you’re trying to sell online.)
  5. Not testing your site to find what really works. (If you ignore your site the results will show.)
  6. Not optimizing your product pages for increased conversion. (Your product page has a single overall objective with sub roles that help meet that objective. If you don’t know what this is, you have no chance of getting users into your checkout process at all.)
  7. Inadequate site usability. (There are a number of things that can help you determine if usability is a problem and then help you improve upon this. Usability is like the Yellow Brick Road to more sales.)
  8. No comprehensive marketing plan in place. (This is one of the number one reasons most ecommerce businesses are destined for failure before they even start.)
  9. Too many obstacles to shopping. (Adhering by the KISS [Keep It Simple Stupid] principle is crucial to helping customers do their job.)
  10. Poor customer service. (Do you answer your customers’ questions before they ask them? Knowing what they expect and at what moment will improve your customer service.)

If you make even just one of these mistakes, you are likely losing sales and hurting your ability to maximize your sales.

And please know, you are not alone in these mistakes. These are the top 10 mistakes I find most often, and I work with a lot of ecommerce entrepreneurs.

This is a perfect outline of the problems Ecommerce Amplifier fixes. The six-step tutorial will solve all of these problems and if you sign up for the Premium level, I’ll even provide you with my expert website review – pointing out exactly what you’re doing right and what you can improve.

Filed Under: Conversion, Customer Retention, Increase sales, Marketing Strategies Tagged With: conversion, customer experience, ecommerce mistakes, increase ecommerce sales, tips for ecommerce business

Planning Special Promotions for Your Online Store

By Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

Just a reminder that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If this is a time you can use to promote specialty products in your online store, now is the time to get those in place.

And don’t forget:

Columbus Day – Oct. 12

Halloween – Oct. 31

Election Day – Nov. 5

Veterans’ Day – Nov. 11

Hanukkah Starts – Nov. 27

Thanksgiving – Nov. 28

Heck! Daylight Savings ends on Nov. 3 and the Great American Smokeout is Nov. 21.

Find what fits your online store offerings and create a special promotion to match it. You can increase traffic, increase conversion and increase sales.

 

Filed Under: Marketing Strategies Tagged With: increase sales online, marketing specials, online marketing

The Impact of Color on Consumer Buying

By Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

The Impact of Color on Consumer Buying

The psychological effect of color on the mind is powerful. It drives your mood, perception, your likes, and dislikes. As a human, colors effect is programmed into you, and you really have little to say about it.

We know colors can provide visual appeal and influence buyer behavior. Use them properly and you can reap rewards, use them wrong and you could be sending a message to your visitors to stay clear.

For many years, mountains of market research have been performed to identify various colors and color combinations along with the likely effect they have upon shopping habits. Big retailers spend millions on to testing colors effect on consumers because they know it has a huge affect on how their products are perceived. A look at some of the top retailers online might show some strikingly similar uses of color.

Keep in mind that although it would be a good bet the top competitors have a firm line on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to color, it should be noted that simply duplicating those with the thought it has to work is not the best idea. The effects of color differ among different cultures. As a result, the attitudes and preferences of your specific target audience should be taken into careful consideration while planning the design of any promotional materials.

Now let me ask you a few simple questions. When you designed your website, what colors did you use? Did you choose your colors because you liked them, because your designer said to use them, or for some other reason? Did you consider your target market and product before you considered a color combination?

The colors you chose influence visitors arriving to your site this very moment –whether it influences them positively or negatively depends on the color selection you ended up with (and even that should be continually tested.)
For example, studies show that impulse shoppers tend to respond best to red-orange, black and royal blue colors while shippers who plan and stick to a specific budget respond best to pink, teal, light blue and navy. Traditionalists respond to pastels such as pink rose and sky blue.

With this in mind, it should be no surprise that red is most often used in conjunction with sales and promotions. Why? First and foremost, red draws attention. Secondarily, a good promotion typically creates a feeling of urgency (adding a time limit to the promotion really drives this point home) and need or desire (red is often associated with passion or excitement.) Thus the red helps drive home the need for ‘immediate action’ (impulse) in the mind of the consumer—in turn, increasing response.

Red is a good color choice to use for just about any site when it comes to promotions. However, designing a site that is compromised primarily of red colors when you are trying to sell products relating to children is probably not the best idea. Have you ever noticed that toys, books and children’s web sites (not ecommerce) usually contain large blocks of bright, primary colors? Young children prefer these colors and respond more positively than they do to pastels or muted blends. But in ecommerce, developing a site based primarily on these colors because kids like them would miss the target. The children are not the ones shopping the site. Their parents and grandparents are.

So with that in mind, you might be selling books for children but you are marketing to grandparents and parents. The books you sell might be designed in bright, primary colors (reds, blues, yellows) to appeal to the children who use them. However, your marketing materials (including the website) should be designed with grandparents/parents in mind and thus you might decide to go with blues (trust, reliability), pinks (nurture, sweet, security) and yellows (happy, playful) as your pallet of choice.

On the other hand, if you run an adult website you may want to consider reds and blacks as they are thought to convey sexual connotations (a full list of colors and their effects on mood is presented below.) But never overdue it on one color as doing so can completely reverse the impact subtle use could have.

Take for example the colors black, gray and silver. Black on a site in the right locations can convey a sense of luxury. Silver conveys prestige, and gray—sophistication and affluence. Ever notice that luxury cars in commercials are often gray? The reason is because we know from studies that gray is associated with affluence. So when you see a Lexus in some commercial they don’t even have to use the word affluence in the script, simply showing the car in that color gets the message across.

Having said that, let me ask you how many ecommerce sites you arrive at that use black backgrounds in conjunction with heavy black elsewhere? I suspect not many. This is because overuse of one color can sometimes have the opposite effect. Using the luxury car example and taking into consideration the attitudes, preferences, and status of the target market in question, an overuse of black would make the site appear unprofessional, hard to read, and dark—not the message you intended, and certainly not the message your target audience is looking for. In this case, overuse of color may cause what could have been an otherwise qualified prospect to be turned off and leave.

Below I’ve listed a number of colors that are associated with certain qualities or emotions in North American mainstream culture. Use this as a guide to your own marketing.

Red: Excitement, Strength, Sex, Passion/Love, Anger, Vigor, Danger

If you want to draw attention, use red. It is often where the eye looks first. Red is not a good color to over use but using a spot of red in just the right locations(s) is smart in most cases.

Yellow: Knowledge, Joy, Intellect, Youth, Happiness, Energy, Warmth, Sunshine

Green: Fertility, Wealth, Healing, Success, Growth, Nature, Fresh, Relaxation, Abundance

White: Purity, Healing, Perfection, Clean, Virtue, Mild

Look at the colors of various soap products. You see a lot of white. You wouldn’t likely be drawn to buying soap that was black in color—even if it did clean your clothes.

Blue: Knowledge, Trust, Wisdom, Dependability, Reliability, Tranquility, Calm, Peace, Cool

Blue is often listed as the most popular color. Other conveyed meanings are steadfastness, and loyalty.

Black: Fear, Secrecy, Formal, Luxury, Sophistication, Elegant, Seductive

Black is a serious color that evokes strong emotions; it is easy to overwhelm people with too much black so be careful when using it.

Purple: Royalty, Wisdom, Spirituality, Dignity, Imagination

Orange: Creativity, Invigoration, Unique, Stimulation, Playfulness, Warmth, Vibrant

Orange is often used to make products that are high priced look more inviting—stimulate—because psychologically it makes them seem more affordable.

Gray: Balance, Sophistication, Affluence, Neutrality, Uncommitted

Too much gray will lead to feelings of mostly nothing; but a touch of gray can add a rock solid feel to your product.

Pink: Soft, Sweet, Nurture, Security

Gold: Prestige, Expensive

Silver: Prestige, Cold, Scientific

So how can you put this information to use? I’ve provided a short guide below to get you started.

Quick Guide to Marketing thru Color

1. Know Your Market
What culture are they? What race are they? Are they young? Old? High income? Low income? Male or female? You’ll need to speak their color language to build a relationship.

2. Research the Market
Market research and testing is of vital importance. If you are serious about maximizing your profits, research your target market’s color responses. Design several versions of the site, and test those designs on the target market.

Also, solicit feedback and make changes if needed. Your aim is to use colors to build a website with which your target market relates.

3. Watch the Top Retailers
Top online retailers spend millions on color research so you don’t have to. Watch the top selling etailers to see any emerging trends.

4. Use Safe Colors
Unless you’re dealing with an already strong brand, stick with safe colors. Trying to develop a new brand around colors that don’t traditionally work in selling isn’t the best idea.

So you see color has a much broader impact than one might believe on the ability to sell your product. Keep with the marketers mind and remember to continually test everything. I’ve seen a simple change of color on an “add to cart” button (keeping all other elements constant) have a positive impact on the conversion rate (in this case adding the item to the cart) and result in higher sales (providing the checkout process is setup to close the sale.)

When you look at your website and marketing materials what message is it sending to your target? Do the colors portray the image and message you intended or is there something else being said?

Filed Under: Design & Usability, Marketing Strategies

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