Why eCommerce Businesses Need Physical Retail Stores

Significantly, eCommerce has sort of transformed how people shop and do business online. It offers real convenience, ease of doing business, competitive pricing and unlimited varieties in products and services. All these you can do at any time of the day 24/7 and from anywhere there are internet services. With just a few clicks on your computer or smartphone, you can browse and purchase products from anywhere they are. Despite the online shopping convenience of eCommerce, business owners now recognize the value of having a physical presence as a retail strategy. Welcome to physical retail or brick-and-mortar stores! These stores provide unique advantages that complement online retail and can significantly support business growth.  Many eCommerce business owners are presently taking good advantage of this as part of their retail strategy.
 
Here is how such stores can aid eCommerce businesses to thrive in an increasingly competitive market. They help them to:

Build Trust and Credibility

In matters of physical business identity, a physical store gives an eCommerce business a tangible, physical and verifiable presence. A known business address really! This helps to make the business appear more legitimate and trustworthy. A physical store helps to allay the fears of consumers who are still hesitant to buy directly from online-only retailers. A physical store location reassures consumers that the business is real and reliable. In addition, a physical store allows consumers to return or exchange products easily. This can be a major factor in helping the business to build trust because when shoppers know they have a convenient way to resolve issues quickly, they are more likely to make a purchase confidently. For business identity purposes, a well-designed store can help to reinforce this identity. By contrast, an online store relies solely on digital branding that may not be too impactful. But, a physical store’s layout, decor, and ambiance can create a memorable experience that significantly helps to strengthen customer loyalty.

Leverage Omnichannel Retailing

E-commerce businesses that can integrate both online and offline channels usually provide a seamless shopping experience that meets all the needs of modern consumers. Welcome to omnichannel strategies where the future of retail lies. Omnichannel retailing allows ecommerce businesses to offer services like, Showrooming and Webrooming, In-Store Returns for Online Purchases and Buy Online, Pick-Up In-Store (BOPIS). Consumer convenience and trust building is better enhanced by these services.

Strengthen Customer Relationships

Physical stores always provide good opportunities to engage with customers in person-to-person conversations. This helps business owners to better understand customer needs and to drive more quality feedback on what really matters to them back to an eCommerce business. Such face-to-face interactions in a physical store allow businesses to build stronger customer relationships. This type of personalized service, friendly interactions, and a welcoming environment create a sense of connection that is difficult to achieve online. That in addition to, loyalty programs, exclusive in-store discounts, and personalized recommendations further enhances customer retention. This is because when shoppers feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to return. Recommending the business to others also arises from such pleasant experiences in a physical store.

Expand Market Reach

A highly visible and attractive physical store can attract new customers who may not have discovered the business online. Even though digital marketing may be an effective marketing technique, it has some limitations particularly in reaching certain demographics. Additionally, many shoppers may prefer in-person experiences or may not even be very active online. Physical stores help to attract these kinds of shoppers. If such store is in a high-traffic location, it can easily generate lots of walk-in customers who might not have otherwise noticed the business. Such stores directly help to increase business exposure and create new and highly valuable sales opportunities for the business.

5 Ways to Make Money as an Active Affiliate

Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy in which an affiliate marketer promotes a product merchant’s product/service in exchange for a commission. The business is simply a marketing arrangement between a business owner/seller and its affiliate marketers. The affiliate is required to help promote products/services for the business owner by referring and directing prospective buyers to his website to make purchases. What the affiliate gets in return is to earn a commission from the sale when anyone they refer makes a purchase. It is a performance-based business strategy where affiliates earn a commission for each transaction or action brought about by their promotional activities. What this means is that if you are really active in promoting products/services, you earn more than affiliates who are not as active. You can easily become an affiliate by signing up for free in most cases on reputable affiliate programs like Strong Future International, SFI and you start earning commissions right away.

What most active affiliates do to earn money quickly after signing up is to carefully choose products/services that align with their preferred brands and audience. The reason is simple! Active affiliates make more money by promoting product/services that they genuinely believe in and can help them to earn good commissions.

In that wise, there are many ways to make money as an active affiliate, some of which are:

1. Email Marketing: If you have a responsive email list in place, you can use it to promote any special expertise of yours and make money online. For effectiveness, you can segment the email list to help get your messages to the right persons who may really need the messages. If you decide to promote this expertise of yours through email newsletters, you can regularly send it to your email subscribers who are interested in the specific niche. You can promote products/services as an affiliate by including affiliate links in your emails and earn commissions on any resulting sales.

2. Social Media Marketing: With over 4.5 billion active users worldwide, social media is another place you can make money online. This is more so if you have a large following on the very popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok. On these platforms, you can take advantage of their in-house marketing tools to promote products/services to your audience. You earn commissions as an affiliate from purchases made through your unique affiliate link.

3. Website/Blog Content Promotion: You can open an e-commerce store and sell products/services through your website/blog. On the website/blog, you can regularly create good content on a particular product/service by doing reviews, comparisons with other products. If you choose, you can even directly make products/services recommendations to your audience. If you include unique affiliate links to other merchants’ websites in your content, you can earn income from any sales made through the unique links.

4. Offer Paid Advertising: To earn money online, you can sell ads spaces on your website/blog. This is most rewarding when you have a large and dedicated following online. Through these ads spaces, product merchants who want to advertise to your audiences can pay you to display their banner ads on your website/blog.

5. YouTube Videos: Creating short video reels on YouTube requires some skills particularly how-to videos. If you have the skills and are adept at creating videos you can create videos on product reviews/demonstrations and post them on YouTube. If you include unique affiliate links in the video descriptions, you can earn a commission on any resulting sales through these unique links.

Summary

Earning money online requires a lot of skills, dedication and hard work. A bit of ingenuity is required as well. There are very many ways to earn money online but the foregoing five ways are about the easiest to embark on to get good results. They however require sustained hands-on though to get the right results. Give them a try, will you?

5 Digitized Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Increase ROI

These days, both direct and indirect marketing techniques are evolving rapidly. The main targets of the marketers are good Return on Investment, ROI and lead generations. To get appreciable results, business owners have largely targeted influencers and individuals who can divert customers and online users to products offered by product merchants and e-commerce websites. Many depend on affiliate marketing to set things in motion with a view to getting increased ROI. That is achievable because affiliate marketing is largely cost-effective in design and approach. Through it, business owners target customers through various third-party platforms and influencers. Affiliate marketers and data tracking tools also assist brands/products, and online ventures to optimize their marketing approach and targeted strategies. This too is great for ROI. This is more so when affiliate marketers work only for a commission or on percentage basis so costs can be tightly controlled. Even at that, affiliates can still earn good money by promoting products/services mostly out of free and very popular social media platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok.

 

These here five digitized affiliate marketing strategies can help to increase the ROI for your online business if diligently used.

1. Diversified Marketing

Online marketers tend to get the best results when they target the right audience. That is, an audience with common needs, perspectives, ideas and even thinking, anywhere it is around the globe. In that wise, Influencers and data management tools can greatly assist brand managers to align their user-centered content and advertising streams for best results. This requires some well enhanced marketing techniques to produce substantial results and ultimately a solid online presence. So, by producing user-friendly and globally accepted content, you will attract more audiences and more online visitors. That is diversified marketing. A diversified online market tends to generate more revenue, traffic, and potential leads.

2. Seasonal and Trends Marketing

Affiliate marketers habitually stick with products that sell well. Some of these products may be seasonal and trending at the time. The reason is simple. They want to earn commissions. That is why their marketing approach is always customer-oriented advertisements, products, and online activities. It is much easier for them that way to generate substantial online traffic and revenue. It is for same reasons online marketers and social media Influencers do not stick with just one brand/product permanently. The trend is to constantly search for new opportunities, products and brands with greater customer interaction and commission earning probabilities.
 
3. Indirect and Traditional Marketing

For good ROI, marketers now explore many ways to replace traditional marketing with affiliate marketing in digital space. It is now more cost-effective to promote products by way of affiliate marketing than traditional marketing techniques. With the help of AI-based automation, marketing messages can be more widely sent out through emails and social media platforms. Such messages are better targeted and better tracked too with the help of online smart tools when compared to newspapers and TV ads. These days, not many people search out for ads and products in local newspapers and contemporary markets. With a computer and even a smartphone, buyers and sellers get better connected on the Internet than in traditional marketing channels. The Internet is a well-diversified online market. Through it, many buyers easily connect and interact with genuine sellers from across the globe. With influencers, social media, data tracking and ads management tools coming into the mix, brands/businesses are better able to align their marketing campaigns for good results. That is good for ROI.

 

4. Video Content Marketing

In digital marketing, video content usually attracts more than 60% of the online visitors. Now that’s one huge market chunk serious marketers cannot afford to ignore. What to do? Device marketing strategies that will send people to your product page when they go through the product description after watching the product video. This is why highly effective Influencers and affiliate marketing platforms usually record and shoot videos of products and publish them online to engage a greater audience. Influencers and social media marketers rely heavily on the use of videos on YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook live stories to attract potential leads towards their products. Video content because of its captivating visuals appeals more to the user’s interest, making him more inclined towards buying a product while checking it out. This is why digitized marketing techniques backed by video content significantly help to increase interaction rate. That ultimately leads to more sales and increased ROI.

5. Business-To-Business, B2B Marketing

B2B is one credible way Influencers and affiliates can align their sales and marketing strategies to generate greater ROI and in turn create a solid online presence. Through B2B marketing strategy, online digital space has enabled online brands and businesses to collaborate well with Influencers and affiliate marketing techniques. The end result of this collaboration is higher ROI for all parties. This happens because, with the all-important optimization strategy, affiliate marketers are no longer limited in scope on who to market to. Through B2B strategy, they are able to effectively divert the right traffic from the websites and landing pages of one business to another. That greatly helps affiliate marketers to increase their commissions earning potentials. It plays out nicely and more beneficially for ROI when businesses and enterprises outsource their services to expose themselves to greater audiences on various platforms particularly social media.

How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media for Business Growth

With an estimated user population of over 4 billion, small business owners who genuinely want to grow their businesses can no longer afford to ignore social media. This is more so for the hugely popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. These platforms now account for billions of active users around the world 24/7. Now that’s one huge market out there which smart small business owners now take good advantage of to grow their businesses. They latch on to the vast opportunities social media provides to connect with customers, allowing them to do more business and to maximize their earnings therefrom. As an aside, small business owners can also use social media platforms to make some money even without having to sell anything.

The hugely popular social media platforms are really great at helping small businesses build brand awareness, increase customer base, increase sales, get more leads and connect with current and potential customers. This is largely because of the ease of interaction and information sharing on the platforms. With a good SMM strategy in place, small businesses can take good advantage of social media to interact easily with customers and grow their businesses. Specifically, here is how social media directly helps small businesses with business growth.

Create real connections with your brand: Small business owners can effectively create real human connections with their brands through social media. Through social media platforms, you can introduce your customers to your brand story as well as showcasing the benefits of your products/services with ease.

Expand your business reach: Yeah social media with billions of active users represents one very huge market out there. Small business owners can take advantage of this market to expand their business reach exponentially. They can take advantage of in-house marketing tools on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest to showcase products or even directly advertise products and services.

Do more business: Available marketing data indicate that more and more people are buying on social media. Small businesses can take advantage of this by adding CTA ‘buy now’ buttons on their social platforms to generate more sales. This allows social media users to buy directly without ever having to leave the social media platform they are on.

Generate more leads: With the help of social media platforms, you can increase lead generation by increasing interest among potential customers in your audience. The more leads you generate, the more conversions you get and consequently more sales.

Drive traffic to your website/online eCommerce store: If you habitually create and post high quality content on social media, it helps to grow your audience and traffic generation. Through social media posts and ads, you can drive traffic to your website or your online eCommerce store. If you continuously share great content from your website to your social channels, it encourages more click-throughs to your website. That is good traffic.

How to Globalize Your E-Business

To think global, you must act global. With increased restrictions in physical business transactions because of the current global pandemic, e-business owners must think outside the box to survive. They need to explore all ways to really globalize their e-businesses. Even with the increase in remote jobs that the current pandemic has engendered, earning a living online through e-businesses is not becoming any easier. Though e-business owners can now market to anyone anywhere in the world 24/7, they still face a very huge challenge of globalizing their operations for better results. These challenges cut across culture, time zones, language, business ethics and so no. Making conscious business efforts to globalize your e-business is one great way to take on these challenges. Going global? Here are some tips to help you.

Research Your Target Audience

To successfully operate a global business, you cannot afford to ignore peculiar characteristics of various countries and geographical regions of the world when designing your marketing strategy. These include legal issues, cultural issues, language issues and suchlike peculiarities. It calls for accurate information and research data to get things right in your marketing strategy. It is imperative therefore, to thoroughly research the countries and geographical regions you are targeting before you design your marketing strategy. From your research data, you can better design your website SEO to enable cost-effective targeted ads to any part of the globe. In addition, you can deliberately create and market through a multilingual website to help you target specific foreign markets. Since your e-business is online, it is one great way it can leverage the internet to give it a better global outlook if you tweak a few things on your website based on the information from your research efforts. If such tweaks help to remove such business barriers like time zones, borders, legal, customs and commercial obstacles, it earns a global outlook and your brand can emerge a global brand.

Leverage Online Translation Tools

You cannot successfully globalize your business without factoring language barriers in your marketing strategy. The language of business is not universal around the world. To connect emotionally with local markets, you’ve got to adapt your content according to the sensibilities of local audiences. That is the first major challenge your business must deal with in your globalizing efforts. There is no cause to worry too much though. With online tools like Google Translate, you can take advantage of fast translations from one language to another across web platforms and channels. Even though the most realistic translations are still done by humans who understand context and culture better than an application or set of algorithms, these tools are really helpful for fast and effective transactions across the globe. Worldwide, every language has its own set of diverse nuances based on region and other factors. You can get around this by studying your analytics to know where your website visitors are coming from. Next is to factor in their language and culture in your marketing messages to get better results. 

Give Your Website a Global Outlook

Good communication is great for business. The language of communication is greater still. If you aim to market to global audiences, your marketing strategy must factor language in. First is to consider offering your content in multiple languages if a language translation feature will not be adequate. However, if your own local language is one of the commonly spoken languages in the world such as English or French or Spanish or Chinese or Russian or Arabic, you can get by with just a language translation feature on your website. Be sure to stick to the generally accepted form of your chosen language while avoiding modern slang and colloquialisms. That makes it easier to translate for better understanding and will help your business to connect better with diverse peoples in other countries/regions of the world. If you offer more languages, you’ll gain a more competitive edge since it helps to make your business relatable to a wider global audience. That is one of the major benefits to making your website multilingual.
 
Make Your Content Global in Context

A great global content marketing strategy should be one that is effective on anyone who happens to stumble upon it anywhere in the world even if such persons are not in your target market. That calls for a flexible content that has global appeal. You can factor in various cultures and write blog content that consistently addresses a certain niche or field for a global audience and search engines. You can carefully use analytics to find out who, and from where your content is accessed. Write and target this audience with content that fits their search goals while remaining relevant to your products, brand and business values. Analytics data can help you to decide on where to target markets with ad campaigns and which content and context can be unique for different languages, cultures and countries. If you pay good attention to email and social media feedback, the insights can help you figure out which languages to optimize your messages with and to prioritize for translations.