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Las Vegas, NV Location
1980 Festival Plaza Drive, Suite 300
Las Vegas, NV 89135
702-515-2057
Tampa, FL Location
5201 W Kennedy Blvd, Suite 720
Tampa, FL 33609
813-556-7990
Social
Social Media Marketing & eCommerce in 2022: What to Expect
We’ve seen social media change the way we go about marketing and advertising our businesses to the world. Social media is an incredible avenue to maintain top of mind awareness with your shoppers.
Influencer Marketing will Evolve
Influencer Marketing has taken the internet by storm. While it was once a trend, it’s more common than ever before. Influencers are typically experts on the platforms you see them on, they already have an engaged audience, they know what kind of content their audience is interested in, and they know that they can influence their audience with the information they put out.
Many micro-influencers have a relationship with their audience that mimics the “regular guy/gal” brand archetype, making them more relatable and leading their audience to trust their opinions and recommendations. This is a great way for a business to leverage brand awareness and grow their audience even more.
Short-form Video Content will Continue to Rise
Many of us heard of Tik Tok at the start of the global pandemic and vowed to ourselves that we would never download it. As we’re over a year into the global pandemic, many of us can’t stand by that statement anymore. We’ve been consumed by the hilarious, relatable, and educational videos that are widely spread across the internet.
Short-form video content takes less time and space to create and it also falls in line with the current fast paced attention spans of online audiences. Long-form videos can offer much depth about a product, brand, or service to your audience but ask yourself….who has time to watch one five-minute video when they could watch 15 short videos in the same time and take in MUCH more?
Mobile Optimization will be EVEN MORE Critical
Consumers spend more and more time on mobile devices every day. As buying power continues to grow amongst Millennials and Gen Z audiences, mobile friendly websites will generate more revenue than slower, non-optimized online stores.
Mobile optimization not only encompasses your website, but also things like email marketing, for example. Consider ways that you can deliver a mobile email experience to subscribers.
Social Responsibility will be Prioritized
We are all aware of the global pandemic that started in 2020. This along with other world events, caused social responsibility, ethics, and transparency to matter much to consumers more now than ever before. Consumers care about brands that care about them, their employees, and shared causes.
You may see that some businesses have already begun to shift their social media marketing strategies to focus more on inclusive initiatives, promotions and offerings all while highlighting causes or missions they support.
It’s all About the SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to how discoverable your website and content is. SEO is not new in the slightest, but you can expect to see SEO be ingrained within much, if not all of your marketing tactics and strategies.
Virtual Events are Here to Stay
We’ve had the entire year of 2021 to work through the kinks of what business will look like in 2022. As we saw many virtual events in 2020 and 2021, 2022 will be more of a hybrid approach. Expect to see businesses using more physical opportunities for their audience in 2022. Although there may be less virtual events, that DOES NOT mean that virtual events are null and void.
Social Media Marketing is (if not already) going to be HUGE for your business in 2022. Get ahead while you can and schedule your FREE consultation with us, NOW!
2021 Holiday Checklist
Who doesn’t want a successful, stress-free holiday season? You, us and shoppers alike!
To set yourself up for the best holiday season yet to come, we’ve put together a checklist so that you can be on top of all things business and eCommerce this holiday season.
Monitor your Online Tactics & Strategies
Continuously monitor your Website, Advertisements, Social Media profiles, SEO, Marketing Promotions, and Sales to make adjustments as they may be needed.
Update and Test NOW
If your website needs fixes, improvements and/or updates, the time to make those changes was yesterday. Wait no longer because the holiday rush is already upon us. This includes making changes to design, too to get visitors in the holiday spirit!
Your website will see a significant increase in traffic in the next few weeks, so your website needs to be able to support that. Tell us…would you wait for more than 8 seconds for a website to load? Images can slow your website down quite a bit, so you want to make sure they’re all optimized to yield the fastest loading time. Don’t delay Santa’s shopping by making him wait for slow images to load on your website.
You should be testing things like: the checkout process, shipping calculators, mobile displays, site navigation, all payment methods, coupon and discount codes, any CTA’s, and all outbound and internal links.
Create Marketing Campaigns
Consider promotions like free shipping, seasonal add-ons, free gifts with a certain purchase, or discounts on orders over a certain amount as part of your Holiday Marketing Campaign. Incentivize early shopping as much as you can in your marketing collateral.
Know your Top Sellers
You should have a good idea about which products are most popular and sell out quickly. Use this information to ensure your inventory is what it needs to be for all the goods to be purchased. Furthermore, think about making these top sellers a priority in your holiday marketing and promotions.
Consider adding gift cards as an option for buyers! Also, use your top selling insight to upsell and bundle products.
Prioritize Security
Cybercriminals create mischievous ways to access customer information and that could lead to a lot of harm for your business. Take the time to assess your website security to ensure the best security for your business and customers alike.
Manage Expectations with Communication
Its cliche, but communication is key. Make things as easy as possible for your customers. Be proactive and advertise shipping dates so they can get their purchases on time, send email reminders as the holidays approach, and speak up about returns. Clear communication will give your customers the confidence they need to become a repeat customer.
TIP: The best place on your website to place important information would be on the homepage, landing pages, product pages, and shopping cart pages.
Provide Tracking Information
As much as your business may be obsessing over delivery dates, your customers are too. Provide your customers with tracking numbers so that they can easily track their orders via UPS, FedEx, etc..
Save yourself the stress and check these items off of your to-list now! If you’re thinking you may need some help with some of these items, go ahead and schedule your FREE consultation with us, today!
How to Sell B2B Ecommerce and Take Your Business to the Next Level
What is B2B e-commerce?
B2B e-commerce, short for business-to-business electronic commerce is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an e-commerce portal. Because orders are processed digitally, buying efficiency is improved for wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors and other types of B2B sellers.
Businesses often buy goods in bulk for a lower price and turn around to sell them at retail value. The goods are usually purchased directly from the manufacturer or distributors. This is wholesale, and is a popular form of B2B.
Manufacturers produce finished goods on a large scale by utilizing parts and raw materials in combination with manual labor and machines. In a B2B model, the finished goods are sold to other manufacturers or wholesalers.
A distributor is a person who works closely with manufacturers in an effort to bring visibility to the goods they are producing, with the goal of increasing sales. In an e-commerce model, the logistics of the sale happen online, often through an e-commerce platform. Many manufacturers work with distributors, and taking things digital creates a greater opportunity for growth. Just like other B2B models, distributors are working to shorten the lead time from sale to delivery and create a customer experience that beats customer expectations.
B2B and B2C e-commerce may look the same, but they are quite different. Business buyers and retail consumers have different purchasing needs. Here are some differences:
- Buying Impulsively vs. Buying Rationally – B2C buyers will buy on impulse and make one-off purchases, B2B buyers plan for purchases and make recurring purchases
- Single Decision Maker vs. Multiple Decision Makers – B2C purchases are decided upon by the buyer, B2B purchases often involve several layers of approval and may involve different departments
- Short-term Customer Relationship vs. Long-term Customer Relationship – B2C purchases are often one-off purchases, B2B purchases are based on long-term and on-going relationships
Why should you have a B2B e-commerce website?
- You can reduce the overall cost of selling your product to customers, and B2B can even allow you to also move into B2C to sell directly to retail customers.
- Your sales will increase tremendously. According to nChannel, B2B eCommerce is predicted to reach $1.8 trillion and account for 17% of all B2B sales in the US by 2023. The industry is twice as big as B2C. And just like B2C, more sales continue to shift from in-person to online.
- B2B also increases order values and higher conversion rates. Since they buy in bulk, an average order value of a B2B transaction is around $491, opposed to $147 for B2C. And, conversion rates are higher. B2B websites report average conversion rates at 10%, while B2C experiences are around 3%.
- You can grow your customer experience. With an entire catalog of products online, customers have access to more diverse product options than they did before. This also makes it easier to compare and contrast products and provides them access to earlier versions of products to test and trial before purchasing.
- Lastly, you have the ability to sell to a lower margin, which allows you to gain smaller clients, and reach more customers.
What to look for in a B2B e-commerce platform
- Price lists: Provide “members only” pricing, manage lists of pricing at SKU level, and give wholesale customers a discount when buying in bulk.
- Group pricing: Apply discounts only to select groups across categories and certain products.
- Manage your customers by location, behavior, etc.
- Faceted search: Allows merchants to refine product searches based on multiple attributes like price, color, size and reviews.
- Restricting users from being able to access certain content, which will help prevent competitors from seeing the pricing.
- Allow customers to quickly reorder when they need to.
B2B e-commerce is still a small part of the overall B2B market but is fast growing. If you don’t set up at B2B website your competitors eventually will. Now is the time to move and be first or early to market.
Ventura Web Design & Marketing has been offering e-commerce and digital marketing services since 1997. Along the way, we have learned a thing or two about how to sell items online. Our dedicated design, development and marketing team would love to work with you.
Contact us online or by phone to find out how your business can take advantage of B2B e-commerce. The phone number for our Tampa office is (813) 556-7990 and the number for the Las Vegas office is (702) 515-2057.