Marketing for Retailers: 6 Digital Marketing Tips To Get Started

Marketing online for clothing retailers is possible with the wide range of platforms and tools that are available. These help to target audiences that are potential customers to get them to purchase online or visit a store.

 

Whether you’re an online retailer, e-commerce business or have one or more physical stores where you want to receive customers, digital marketing can help you to achieve your goals.

 

In this article, I’ve listed some of the main ways that you can get started with digital marketing for your retail business. And you can reach out to me at the end of the article if you have any queries.

 

 

1. Invest in Google Ads

 

Effective digital marketing for retailers includes advertising in Google Ads with Search, Shopping and Display campaigns. This advertising allows you to target people at different stages of their purchase journey like when they are just researching or when they are searching to purchase.

 

 

The type of campaigns you will setup will depend on your goals. And you will have specific tools and features within your Google Ads account that help you achieve your goals.

 

For example, if you want to drive sales online, a Shopping campaign with a Smart bidding strategy will help you achieve this.

 

2. Review your landing pages

 

Your landing pages are important because that is where you’ll send visitors when they click your ads. So, they should provide everything that has been promised in your ads, within a single click. If not, then, you’ll lose these visitors and not be able to convert them into customers.

 

There are metrics that will help with this and you’ll find them in your Google Analytics account. And one of the main ones is bounce rate which shows the percentage of people who leave without viewing other pages. And you should aim to reduce your average bounce rate below 50%

 

 

Also, check how quickly your pages load with the PageSpeed Insights tool from Google. And follow the instructions there to improve them for your mobile, tablet and desktop visitors.

 

3. Conduct competitor research online

 

One of the important actions you can take when setting up your online campaigns is to carry out some research into competitors. This is especially important if you want to carry out some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising work for your business.

 

The research you carry out should be able to reveal the keywords that competitors appear for organically and in the ad results.

 

A platform I recommend to help you with this research is SERanking. It is an affordable platform that includes many tools and features and one of them is the Competitor research tool that you can use to carry out the research.

 

 

4. Target people who are searching

 

An effective digital marketing strategy for retailers is to target people who are searching for their products online. As mentioned earlier, this can be done in Google Ads with Shopping and Search campaigns. People who are searching are much more qualified than those who aren’t.

 

With a Shopping campaign you’ll provide a data feed with the products you want to promote and submit it to your Google Merchant Centre account. And when you’ve linked this account with your Google Ads account you can then setup a Shopping campaign and target people who are searching.

 

With a Search campaign, you’ll first do keyword research to find keywords to bid on. And then you’ll create a Search campaign and add ad groups with each carrying its own ads and keywords.

 

 

5. Track your sales

 

Tracking online sales is an effective way for retail and e-commerce sites to improve performance. This tracking helps you to see which of your shopping product listings, text ads, keywords and search terms are driving sales for your business.

 

There are a number of ways you can set this up. You could setup conversion tracking in your Google Ads account and add the related code to your website. Or you could setup e-commerce tracking or goal tracking in Google Analytics. And you can import these into your Google Ads account.

 

 

 

6. Hire a PPC consultant

 

If you’re running Google Ads campaigns, you should consider working with a PPC consultant with experience working with retailers. An experienced Google Ads specialist will help to setup new campaigns for you and manage them effectively for great results.

 

So, check that they have experience working with other online retailers and those with local stores that want to promote them. You should ask for case studies and reviews and check if they have achieved Google Partner status.

 

Case Study

 

Wombat is a seller of leather clothing that is inspired by the great Australian outdoors. Their products are for lovers of adventure and nature that want durable outdoor wear that is also stylish. They contacted me because their campaigns were not performing and they needed help to setup a new campaign. I setup a new Search campaign and Shopping campaign which helped to reduce the average Cost Per Click (CPC) to just 17p and their Optimisation score increased to 82%. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

 

Are you looking for a marketing solution that’s tailored for retailers? I’m here to help and I’ve setup and managed many Google Ads and PPC campaigns for clothing retailers. Contact me below to discuss your requirements.