Whether you notice the subliminal messaging or not, our feeds are filled with paid posts encouraging us to part ways with our money, and the specialised algorithm on each social platform knows exactly the type of ads that will stop the scroll.

But the problem is, these social shopping ads have become so sophisticated that during a scrolling session, it can sometimes be hard to determine the difference between the content of those you follow and those that are sponsored.

Meta and TikTok have recently come under fire due to users noticing you can no longer scroll more than five posts before an ad, or a piece of sponsored content appears. But is this just the way of modern social media marketing?

We’re delving into what social commerce is, how it’s evolved over time, what’s trending and even how to set up a social commerce strategy.

TikTok has taken the social commerce world by storm. It may have been late to the party, but the global giant has revolutionised the way in which users interact with shopping ads, with 62% of weekly TikTok users engaging in ecommerce behaviour on TikTok.

The proof of its success is in the options available for advertisers to work together. They’ve created a cohesive and seamless way for influencers and brands to collaborate, combining features such as ‘Commission Paid’ tabs and ‘Shop Now’ tags to enhance the experience.

And it goes without saying they’ve been a driving force behind the uprise in ‘live shopping’ experiences. Similar to generic paid videos and carousels, these ‘lives’ appear within a few scrolls, so the user is never too far from being presented the opportunity to join one.

 

According to Hubspot, Instagram is the third most-trusted social shopping platform, but consumers say it has the second-best in-app shopping experience.

Instagram, alongside Pinterest, is one of the original visually led social platforms, and that means its users are expecting its sponsored content to achieve a certain level of either polish or personability. A study even indicated that 30% of shoppers now begin their shopping research and purchase journey on Instagram.

Instagram Shopping is split into various features to help customise your customer’s journey.

 

Product tags in images and videos within the app, allows your customers to be directed to your Instagram store to find out more information, or browse for similar items. This can be set up in both organic content, as well as Ads Manager, with the inclusion of product tags.

Instagram has also recently launched ads that are available with promo codes as another option to entice users to click through.

Pinterest is the original visual mood board where users, brands and creators can come together to visualise whatever they like. There are so many topics users can actively choose to engage with, from beauty and interior design to fashion.

Sharing ideas and inspiration is what this platform is all about, and if you’re a visually led brand then this is the place you need to be.

According to Pinterest, when users find something they love, they’re willing to pay 40% more per month than on other social platforms – that’s almost double the price!

The platform also makes it incredibly easy to upload your products to get started on your advertising and selling journey.

Similar to Instagram, Meta has created a robust advertising platform for marketers to showcase their products to users on the Facebook app. And according to Hubspot, Facebook is the most trusted social shopping platform overall in 2023, so it makes sense to ensure you’re hitting your audience on this platform.

Again, the Facebook social commerce experience can be defined in two main ways of display:

• Facebook shop:
  This is like a digital storefront where customers can explore the range of products available.

• Brand collections:
  Build up the ranges and collections of the products you want to showcase.
  

The post The Rise of Social Commerce: What it means for your ecommerce brand appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

From the glorious triumph of the Women’s Euro to the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth II, 2022, (like most of the 2020s), has had its ups and downs. In the shadow of these historic events, any content marketing agency, and the marketing world, has been working overtime to keep up with so much breaking news and so many trending topics. We’ve taken a look at some of the best and worst marketing campaigns of 2022.

The Good: Some of the best marketing examples in 2022

EE – “Hope United” 

Mobile network, EE, released their Hope United campaign back in July. The campaign, which was released in conjunction with the UEFA Women’s Football Championship, was launched to tackle online sexist hate while delivering powerful messages of perseverance and unity through visual imagery. Throughout the 90-second advertisement above, various players from the Women’s EURO football team are met with the line “That’s going to be a problem” when faced with obstacles such as gruesome physical injuries, parenting and menstruation. The campaign cleverly demonstrates the less glamorous side of everyday life as a professional female footballer and challenges social discourse surrounding gender biases. Premier League footballer, Jordan Henderson, concludes the advert with the evocative line; “Women face problems every day, but sexist hate, that’s not her problem. It’s ours”. Before a closing shot showing the men’s and women’s football teams united, the words ‘SEXIST HATE STOPS WITH MEN”. This was a large integrated campaign encompassing ATL adverts, digital PR services, and highly engaged influencers with social marketing services across channels. Using the hashtags #HopeUnited and #NotHerProblem, it generated (Sep-Oct ’22, measured via Brand Mentions):

• 925 mentions
• 45.7k interactions
• 55.4k reach
• 45k likes
• 99% positive sentiment (909 positive mentions vs 3 negative mentions)

What can we learn from this campaign?

Rallying the public together for the common good can be powerful. It was a highly emotive campaign with strong values and clear relevance to current affairs – a real homerun for EE, but most importantly for the greater cause it was tackling.

CBP London – “Imagine”

CPB London leveraged vital data from a nationwide UK study to tackle unconscious biases – to #BreakTheBias. The study discovered that 39% of children surveyed believed that females (or Mummies) should do most of the housework, be the primary care giver for children, and that males (or Daddies) should go out to work. Creating posters and postcards that made people stop and imagine people based on their roles or behaviours – and what gender that conjured up. Ultimately this made people stop and address their own unconscious biases. Activated around International Women’s Day in 2022, the posters were placed OOH in cinemas, billboards and social platforms too. CPB went even further, to get to the root of the issue – children. By creating a colouring book that asks children to draw what they imagine, encouraging parents and caregivers to talk about gender roles and ensuring our children are aware of bias and believe in equality. The campaign generated:

• 4.7M+ impressions
• 250K+ engagement on social media
• 10.28% organic engagement

International Women’s Day Campaign | Imagine from Crispin Porter Bogusky London on Vimeo.

What can we learn from this campaign?

Leveraging data in your marketing is powerful, and when used right, it can make for compelling storytelling, bringing brands into important conversations, in the right way – forcing people to stop and take notice. This campaign worked so well because it’s something we can all engage with, and learn from. It’s meaningful, bold, and compelling. When brands are considering joining a sensitive conversation, like bias and equality, or even an important cause – using data that could be useful or relevant to support it, then anchoring your campaign on that data, will make for a more meaningful, relevant and successful campaign.

Virgin Media – “We’re Better Connected – Skatergirl”

In response to the Women’s EURO 2022, empowering young women was a prevalent theme in marketing over the summer. With so many brands jumping on the gender equality bandwagon, we saw our share of predictable and lacklustre adverts with no real authentic message to bring. However, Virgin Media’s “We’re Better Connected” campaign managed to avoid the latter. The advert tells the story of Aamira, a young skater befriended by a skate crew after a day at the park doesn’t quite go as planned. The ad demonstrates how technology connects us all and leaves viewers feeling confident and satisfied with both the product and the narrative of the campaign. Inclusivity and connectivity are fundamental themes that unite us, and an ability to tap into these tactfully and uniquely proved to be a storming success for Virgin Media.

The Bad: Marketing fails of 2022

UberEats – “Uber Don’t Eats”  Door-to-door delivery services have become a staple of everyday life in the 21st century, with Just Eat, Deliveroo and UberEats reigning as the UK’s most popular. “Uber Don’t Eats” was initially launched for the Superbowl back in February 2022. The campaign featured an abundance of A-List celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Coolidge and Trevor Noah. With such an impressive selection of celebs, we would expect the advert to make us laugh and cry. However, the ad was perhaps just a little too on the nose. The premise of the campaign suggests that anything delivered by UberEats is, by definition, edible. Without hesitation, the featured celebrities proceed to consume various household items, including aluminium foil, cat litter, washing-up liquid, deodorant, sun cream and more. Twitter users were both amused and disgusted by the campaign. The advert, while intended as light-hearted humour, was perceived by many as cringe-worthy nonsense, and was even considered to promote dangerous messages of harmful ingestion, leaving US authorities urging viewers to “not eat soap”. With a gleaming repertoire of Hollywood celebs lending their time to the campaign, arguably much more could have been achieved to create brand awareness. On this occasion, UberEats may have benefitted from thinking beyond the obvious.

OVO Energy – “Cuddle Your Pet”

One of Britain’s largest energy suppliers was forced to issue an apology earlier in the year after launching a tactless campaign that intended to combat the cost-of-living crisis. In January 2022, OVO Energy advised customers to eat porridge, cuddle pets and do star jumps in an attempt to keep warm and keep living costs to a minimum. Of course, these ‘solutions’, for lack of a better word, were not at all viable and left many viewers questioning whether or not the campaign was genuine. We don’t have to tell you that leaving your target audience debating whether a media campaign is serious, or a joke, is an immediate flop for the brand that created it. After overwhelming national criticism, OVO Energy later issued a public apology for the insensitive and unrealistic suggestions, with one spokesperson claiming to be “embarrassed” by the supplier’s advice.

THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY

LinkedIn – “Follow in Her Footsteps” 

The “Follow in Her Footsteps” campaign, created by LinkedIn, promotes messages of visibility for female professionals and role models. Though the heart was in the right place and this definitely wasn’t one of the worst marketing ideas ever, the narrative of the advert comes across as an underpinned afterthought. The advert follows Carol Thomas BEM, the first captain of the UEFA Women’s EURO in 1984, as she embarks on a historical 30-mile walk from Gresty Road Stadium in Crewe to Old Trafford stadium in Manchester. Unfortunately, the advert does not show any footage of Carol’s excursion, despite having a 60-second airtime window. More bizarrely, the advert encourages viewers to ‘Follow Carol’s journey’ but does not however provide any details of where or how interested football fans may do so. This feels like an extravagant concept for a campaign, (particularly for Carol Thomas having walked 30 miles), to receive virtually no screen time. Showing highlights of the journey would have acted as a hook to capture the interest of viewers and encourage them to further research Carol’s journey elsewhere. Instead, the campaign solely relies on viewers being interested enough to want to research Carol’s journey on their own accord, without the bait to lure us in. Given the incredibly powerful and emotive media campaigns centred around women’s football and gender equality at the time, this campaign from LinkedIn was a bit of a bust.

Our thoughts…

We’ve chosen what we think are some of the worst and best marketing campaigns in 2022. Following the major sporting events of the year, this summer has seen predominant themes of gender equality, empowerment, and unity. These themes, if implemented correctly, can be fantastic marketing tools to execute for any media campaign, as broadcasting to a more inclusive demographic will only broaden your target audience and ultimately market your product or service to a wider variety of people. As seen with UberEats, the most effective concept for a marketing campaign usually stretches beyond idea number one, and companies would benefit from thinking past the obvious choice. Creating an out-of-the-box advert is much more likely to leave a lasting impression on your target audience. Any advertising campaign that may cause possible offence or promote harmful ideas should be avoided at all costs. If you’d like to discuss your next marketing campaign, contact us using the form below!

The post The best and worst marketing campaigns of 2022 appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

If you think your website is ‘Christmas ready’, you may need to think again. From my experience in technical SEO, you wouldn’t believe the issues I find across a number of sites – even the biggest of brands with huge digital budgets have SEO/UX issues.

Let’s dive in to how you can optimise your website for increased Christmas sales…

Discover new products to sell

This is by far the least obvious thing on my list, which is why I’m putting it right at the start. If you’re in a competitive market, the best thing you can do is branch out and create multiple categories for all the products that people are searching for at Christmas.

People’s search habits change drastically during the festive season, with ‘Christmas’ becoming a core focus of their search, even when looking for mundane, typically everyday goods like new dining cutlery and accessories, household lights and clothing.

There’s five first key points to our first task:

• Research the search volumes and trends of last year’s top selling products
• Create your Christmas categories, sub categories and product pages
• Optimise these pages for your primary and secondary keywords
• Indexing isn’t immediate, get these pages live ASAP to get ahead of the competition

Fix your website speed

Brands large and small are STILL falling into the trap of not truely optimising their website speed. Pagespeed isn’t just a ranking signal, it’s an important aspect of the customer journey; influencing whether they’ll stay on your site and if they’ll convert, but it can also impact how much they’ll spend.

“Walmart saw up to a 2% increase in conversions for every 1 second of improvement in load time. Every 100ms improvement also resulted in up to a 1% increase in revenue.”

It’s important to check the speed of every page on your site, not just the homepage. Check each category page, product pages and even your blog/news articles; people will drop out at all stages of the journey if your website is slow.

If you’re still not convinced pagespeed is important, here’s a great read on why pagespeed is important by our Head of SEO, Laura Rudd.

Identify upselling opportunities

There are three main places that you can upsell to customers:

1. The product Page is always a good start, making it easy for people to find similar products to the one they’re currently viewing, with a quick and easy ‘add to cart’ (or basket) button – with the ability to add additional related items to basket, without leaving their current page.
2. In the cart/basket can be another great place to upsell products. Pro tip: use different products than what you tried to upsell on the previous product page.
3. In the purchase journey – It’s never too late to promote an upsell, just try and focus on the smaller items in the cart, the things people really need at Christmas and always forget. If you sell gift items, think wrapping paper and wrapping tape. If you’re a clothing retailer, why not think accessories like scarves, hats and gloves?

Add product reviews to boost conversion rates

It’s never too late to generate reviews, especially if they’re product reviews. Ann Summers saw up to a 230% increase in product sales from adding Trustpilot reviews to their website. In fact, even products with just 1 star saw an increase in conversion rate over products which hadn’t yet been rated.

Reference: Trustpilot.com

Looking at the graph below, we can see that the lowest conversion rate observed was 1.44% on products without any reviews. Once reviews were added, this increased drastically to 2.54% for products with a 1 star rating.

Reference: Trustpilot.com

Enable stock notifications and manage out of stock product pages

Christmas is a fluid time of year. You don’t want to purchase too much stock in fear that you won’t sell all of it; purchase too little and you run the risk of selling out too quickly. It’s not always possible to increase your stock count at the last minute, but if you do, it’s important to alert people about the increase in stock availability.

By giving people the option to sign up to stock notifications, not only do you get the chance to inform them of stock updates, but you can start to gain a picture of which products are the most popular and which products people want to see restocked.

This also gives you the opportunity to increase users to your email lists for general marketing later down the line, providing they opt in for this, of course.

When a product sells out, don’t take it off your store. Removing a product from your store altogether can reduce the amount of traffic you get through your website. A product page could be a great source of traffic to your site and even if the product is out of stock, that page can be used as a springboard for users to enter a different part of your site and make an alternative purchase.

Talk to us about your ecommerce marketing strategy

If you’d like any help with your ecommerce SEO strategy, our team would love to hear from you. Use the form below to get in touch.

The post How to optimise your website for increased Christmas sales appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

The last few years have seen increased media and public awareness and focus on the health of our planet, the introduction of more environmental government targets for businesses to meet and a rise in savvy consumers who want to spend their money with a brand who share their values. So, it’s no wonder that sustainability and green initiatives have become something that brands need to incorporate into every area of their business. A 2021 survey found that 52% of UK consumers factor a brand’s green credentials into their purchase decisions. As we look forward, environmental responsibility and sustainable values for businesses are not just a ‘nice to have’; they are essential.

What is sustainable marketing?

Essentially, sustainable marketing is how a business promotes and communicates about their environmentally responsible products, services and practices as part of their marketing strategy. Depending on what the business does, they may market about sustainability in relation to a specific product or range, a service they offer, a cause they are supporting or as brand values and general business practices.

What is greenwashing?

Greenwashing is a term to describe a situation where a company or organisation markets about their sustainable practices but are either exaggerating the environmental impact of their efforts, or they don’t have any evidence to back up their sustainability claims. An example of greenwashing could be when a clothing brand starts marketing themselves as sustainable fashion because one garment or line uses sustainable fabric, but the rest of their products are still environmentally damaging. Another example could be when a brand uses packaging or marketing creative that makes their product look more environmentally friendly than it is. For example, using lots of the colour green and imagery that makes something appear to be ‘green’, such as wind turbines or nature.

How to market sustainability

When looking at incorporating sustainable marketing into your wider strategy, it’s important to be transparent in the way that you communicate your efforts in this area. Making a business significantly more sustainable doesn’t happen overnight, and consumers will appreciate the efforts you are making in the right direction as long as you are honest about what you’re doing and the areas in which you still have to make some changes.

Five sustainable marketing examples

We’ve looked at some examples of good and bad sustainable marketing; the learnings about which can help your business to get things right with your own strategy.

McDonalds’ paper straw fiasco

In 2018, McDonalds famously axed their plastic straws in the UK (which were recyclable) in favour of paper straws in a ‘green initiative’ that was heavily marketed across multiple channels. They even changed the straws after customer feedback to be a bit more robust, while still being made from paper. However, it was soon discovered that the paper straws were not compatible with recycling processes available at the time, so customers were encouraged to put their paper straws in general waste bins after use. This essentially made them unrecyclable, despite them being brought in to replace an element that was already able to be recycled.

What can be learned from McDonalds?

This seems to be a lesson about looking before leaping. McDonalds were undeniably trying to make a change that was fundamentally positive for the environment by introducing paper straws to replace plastic ones. However, whether it was a lack of testing before launch (their first generation paper straws were known for disintegrating before customers could finish their drink), or simply a failure to properly research the recycling processes they had in place – there was clearly more work that should have been done before they started publicly marketing about the changes they were making.

Lush’s ‘Bring it Back’ product pot recycling scheme

Lush are a brand that have long been considered to have more environmentally responsible practices than many brands. They use mainly recycled packaging materials (90%) and say they are working on the rest, along with a variety of other measures in their product manufacturing processes. In 2021, they revamped their previous recycling scheme in the UK and Ireland to try and increase the number of customers returning empty product pots into stores by giving a 50p discount for each qualifying item they brought back, which could be spent in store that day. This was on top of their existing scheme that offers a free Lush face mask to customers returning five empty black pots in-store. They used a multi-channel marketing campaign to launch the scheme, including PR and social media, to communicate the details to their target audience.

What can be learned from Lush?

Lush were already doing more than many brands in terms of environmental policy, but wanted to ramp things up even more by offering customers a tangible incentive for helping them recycle more of their packaging. Their multi-channel marketing approach was key to getting the word out about the new scheme, with digital PR and social media content going out ahead of time, along with in-store promotion once the stores reopened after the COVID-19 lockdown that was in place when the launch was announced. Taking advantage of a slower news period probably helped give them more reach too, with coverage in lots of national titles such as the Metro, along with extensive retail trade coverage and featuring in ‘green’ trade titles too. That way, they got a chance to communicate about this sustainability strategy to the mass market, along with a more niche audience that were specifically interested in environmental news.

Valspar’s ‘cat pee smell’ paint disaster

Paint brand Valspar removed some of the chemicals from their interior paint line several years ago, in a bid to help make it a more environmentally friendly product and meet stringent guidelines on chemical additives from the EU. However, it turned out that removing these chemicals enables bacteria to grow once paint is on the walls, leaving households with rooms that may have looked gorgeous, but smelled quite the opposite. Much of the marketing creative that Valspar put out around this ‘green’ change on social media, in-store and through the media was based on a reduction in smell and breathing easily, which meant that when people’s homes started to reek just like cat pee, it really looks as though they shot themselves in the foot! Valspar (and B&Q, who stocked the brand) ended up having to compensate customers with smelly walls.

What can be learned from Valspar?

It’s likely that Valspar conducted lots of tests before launching their new product line, but it’s really unfortunate that this probably didn’t include bacteria growth over time and what that would smell like! The key messages that they ended up using in their marketing strategy totally backfired on them due to this. Another example of not enough looking before leaping!

Finisterre’s brand ethos and identity

Surf, beach and adventuring fashion brand Finisterre don’t just have the odd eco-friendly campaign as part of their wider marketing strategy, their environmental conscience runs through everything they do and sell. It is an intrinsic part of their brand identity, as can clearly be seen on their website and the amount of real estate that it gives to sustainability. With an understandable focus on the sea and the big issue of ocean plastics especially, Finisterre have looked at every aspect of what they do, from product design and manufacture, right through to the ‘leave no trace’ packaging their products are shipped in, to minimise the environmental impact. They also run a repairs service to help extend the life of their products and, in some cases, enable a second life that keeps them out of landfill too. Their marketing activity is always underpinned with their eco-focused values. From regular content such as podcasts featuring eco-projects and interviews that will interest their audience and posting environmental news on their social platforms, to ensuring that sustainability messages are front and centre across every owned channel. Finisterre’s eco-credentials are very much part of who they are and every customer will be aware of that.

What can be learned from Finisterre?

Finisterre take sustainable marketing to a whole other level in comparison to most brands, as it’s simply at the heart of what they do and what they value, so comes across clearly in all of their marketing activity and doesn’t in any way feel like a token effort or marketing spin to make them look good. If you’re starting a new business, you can do worse than take Finisterre’s approach to ground-up sustainability as a target to aim for. Having your very identity as a brand so intrinsically linked to sustainability takes work, but if it’s always at the centre of your business then that will be a natural outworking of this. For existing businesses who are starting from a place of having legacy brand principles and public perception already in the wild, which might not be as eco-friendly, it’s more of a challenge to change this but can be done over time. It takes transparency and clear communications about what you’re doing, whilst also acknowledging (not hiding) the areas of the business that you’re still working on.

Develop your own sustainability communication strategy

If you want some assistance with your sustainability communication strategy or marketing activity, our team would love to hear from you. Get in touch using the form below.

The post Five sustainable marketing examples every online brand can learn from appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

To mark the return of Great British Bake Off, we have issued new Google search data revealing the UK’s favourite cake, and the results are off the tarts.

Our report dives into data on the most popular cakes to consume and recipes to whip up in the kitchen, as well as the regions and origins of popular sweet treats.

Revealed… the UK’s top 10 favourite cakes:

1. Banana bread
2. Victoria sponge
3. Chocolate cake
4. Red velvet cake
5. Sticky toffee pudding
6. Carrot cake
7. Cheesecake
8. Flapjack
9. Bakewell tart
10. Coffee and walnut cake

When compared to 30 family favourites, the data revealed that banana bread is the most highly searched cake in the UK, as well as the most searched for recipe – reaching around 165,000 monthly searches.

The nation’s second favourite cake, the Victoria sponge, has seen a re-surge in popularity in the past year. Google searches spiked during the Queen’s Jubilee bank holiday weekend this year, as more and more Brits were dropping it like it was hot.

The UK’s favourite cakes in numbers: 

We analysed data from Google’s Keyword Planner to assess which is the most popular cake in the UK.

Where do Britain’s favourite cakes come from?

British cakes account for 50% of the nation’s top 10 favourite bakes, including classics such as Victoria sponge, sticky toffee pudding, flapjack, Bakewell tart and coffee and walnut cake.

However, when it comes to cake and baking, it seems that Brits like to take inspiration from overseas, with the remaining 50% of the top ten bakes coming from countries outside the UK.

American-born banana bread tops the list as UK’s favourite

We became all too familiar with Britain’s most beloved cake during lockdown, with searches for reaching an all-time high back in April 2020. Yep, you guessed it!

According to Google Trends, banana bread is the most popular cake among Brits. Thought by many to be a UK staple, surprisingly, banana bread was first founded in America, making its debut in the 1933 cookery book ‘Balanced Recipes’.

The UK’s favourite baking recipes

1. Banana bread
2. Brownies
3. Flapjack
4. Carrot cake
5. Cheesecake
6. Chocolate cake
7. Victoria sponge
8. Christmas cake
9. Apple pie
10. Red velvet cake

The pie-opening data also reveals that more and more Brits are rising to the occasion, as search for cake recipes such as ‘Victoria sponge recipe’ succeed over searches for the cake itself, with 726,150 average monthly searches for recipes vs a modest 544,560 for cake.

Most Popular Bake Per Region

Britain is a nation of cake lovers – but which cakes reign regionally? We crunched the numbers to see which of our top ten cakes is most popular in each region.

We can also see the North-South divide remains prevalent, with Southerners beating Northerners to the pip in terms of search data. The data reveals that Southerners are searching for their favourite bakes more than Northerners, suggesting that they’re the bigger fan of cakes in the UK.

The Bake Off bug: how do British baking shows impact consumer behaviour online?

With millions of Brits expected to watch the return of Bake Off, it’s safe to assume more Brits will be catching the baking bug this year and monthly searches are set to increase.

While an average of 9.2 million people tuned in to watch each episode of GBBO last year, the UK saw a 157 per cent rise in the number of home baking businesses. It seems The Great British Bake Off is a mainstay of UK television and has already inspired thousands of bakers across the nation to rise up and start their own independent business.

Commenting on the data, Laura Rudd, Head of SEO at No Brainer Agency, said:

“Banana bread has officially been crowned the UK’s favourite cake, proving once and for all that it wasn’t just a lockdown fad – but it’s here to stay!

“I love seeing the impact current affairs can have on Google search trend data. While it may seem obvious, studying the data reveals the immediate cause and effect relationship between the two. The Queen’s jubilee shows more searches for a Victoria sponge, while the lead up to Christmas will naturally mean a higher search volume for Christmas cake recipes.

“It just goes to show how important it is to interact with current trends and topics as it will undoubtedly influence what Brits are searching for. Brands need to recognise and take advantage of these triggered peaks in search volume, adapting their strategies to reflect them.”

Methodology: 

Data collected: 06/09/22

Data collected from SEMRush and Google Trends.

The post Revealed: Britain’s favourite cakes appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

For ecommerce brands, there are several different areas to consider when it comes to digital marketing strategy at a time such as this. Your marketing and digital PR choices can not only make a difference to the revenue you are able to generate but can also have an impact on your reputation and on customer sentiment towards your brand.

In this blog, using some real-life ecommerce marketing examples, we look at how retailers that sell online can best navigate this really difficult period, for however long it lasts.

Empathetic marketing messaging

With marketing and communications, it’s not always as much about what you say, but how you say it, that can make all the difference to how your key messages are received. During a time where millions of people are struggling to pay their everyday bills, brands that fail to ‘read the room’ when it comes to their marketing campaigns are not likely to do very well.

Instead of ignoring the pinch that many people are feeling on their finances and just hoping for the best, ecommerce brands can acknowledge that times are tough, and tailor their messaging to highlight how they deliver something worthwhile to customers instead.

This can be a real challenge for those selling discretionary products or luxury and top end goods, but ensuring that your marketing feels ‘human’ can go a long way in terms of brand perception.

This October, we’re removing multi-buy promotions on high fat, salt & sugar foods, you’ll no longer need to purchase more of these products than you need to save. We’ll continue to bring you great value on products as part of our Better Baskets commitment https://t.co/MSO1ahqVyL pic.twitter.com/QZDczCvRJz

— Tesco (@Tesco) May 19, 2022

An appropriate focus on value

Even brands that are certainly considered ‘luxury’ can potentially create messaging around value and quality, although care should be taken to ensure it is sensitively done. M&S Food are usually pretty good at finding the right kind of balance here (helped by their awesome food imagery, of course) and manage to tick both boxes with their famous dine-in meals.

The value messages are perhaps easier for Aldi than for M&S, but value for money isn’t only about the actual cost, it’s what the customer gets in return for their spend.

If your products offer great quality, durability and have other benefits too, such as sustainability or a charitable focus or outcome, shoppers are often willing to pay more for something that they feel might help them save more in the future (avoiding the ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ false economy) or has other benefits that line up with their own values.

Incorporate transparency into your marketing communications

We’ve already talked about acknowledging that times are tough financially, but transparency as an ecommerce brand goes further than this.

Some brands are taking the step of explaining to customers that their product costs are going up and exactly why that is the case, rather than just putting prices up and saying nothing about it.

Beauty brand Deciem increased prices on some of their products in February 2022, but a week before the changes, they informed customers across social media about what was happening and why, which gave people a chance to stock up at the old price before the increase (bet they took a lot of sales that week!) and also offered an honest explanation for why this was necessary.

Judging by the comments on their Facebook post announcing the changes, it went down pretty well with the vast majority of their customers.

If people with less expendable income are making a buying choice, would they rather opt for a brand that seems to value and respect their customers or buy from one that sweeps things like price increases under the carpet?

Organic search strategy tweaks around value-related terms

While there is no point spending time and money targeting terms like ‘cheap paddle boards’ when you know that your paddle boards have the highest price point around, it is always worth reviewing your SEO keyword targeting to ensure that there is some provision in there for those potential customers who are looking for cheaper alternatives when they shop online.

Someone searching for any kind of product on a cost-related term is usually pretty far down the buying funnel and are at the stage of comparing different options for their price and features. Intent-led keywords are all-important here, so it’s essential to understand how your target audience search for products when price is a major factor for them. Take a look at our guide to ecommerce keyword strategy for more information on this topic.

Convincing people to click through to your site from search engine results is also important. A quick search for ‘cheap garden furniture’ at the time of writing brought up the below organic results as the top three. Which would you click on? Ensure that your page titles, meta descriptions and images are all optimised to what you know appeals most to your target audience.

Care taken with marketing about consumer credit options

The Financial Conduct Authority has recently written to consumer credit firms with a warning about their conduct during the cost of living crisis, to help ensure they don’t play down the risks of borrowing when marketing to customers who might look for credit in order to spread the cost of purchases, during a time when budgets are more stretched than ever.

Retailers utilising these kinds of credit solutions on their website, such as buy now, pay later (BNPL), will already be aware of the heavily regulated guidelines over what can and can’t be said to customers in relation to buying via credit. However, this move by the FCA indicates that they will be watching closely for any breaches to ensure that customers are being treated fairly and not misled about any aspect of borrowing to pay for goods.

Providing useful cost-saving content to customers with your marketing strategy

As budgets become increasingly stretched, more and more people will be looking for content that will help them to make savings in every area of their life.

This isn’t the right context for sales-driven content, and using money saving topics to try and sell more products isn’t going to go down well with potential customers. However, genuinely useful content offering advice or tips that will make a real difference to people can help to improve sentiment towards your brand and make you more memorable when it does come to purchase decision time.

The nature of business and the specific audience that you target will be the main things that shape your content marketing activity in this area, and while its primary purpose isn’t a selling tool, you don’t want to dissuade potential customers from making a purchase either.

It’s also vitally important to consider the best channels and mediums for this content so you can get it in front of the right people. Making a video, a blog, several social posts, user-generated content and even a PR campaign out of one single creative content idea can amplify your reach and maximise results for your budget.

Example: Nike – How to make your running shoes last longer

If you would like some help with your brand’s digital marketing strategy during the cost-of-living crisis, our team would love to hear from you. Get in touch using the form below.

The post Tips for digital marketing in ecommerce during the ‘cost of living crisis’ appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

In this article, we look at the importance of a content distribution strategy in achieving sustained and long-term results from the content that you’re creating, providing a better ROI and making a tangible difference to your business.

Jump to:

• What is a content distribution strategy?
• A content distribution framework that you ‘own’
• Which distribution channels are right for which types of content?
• Update and republish
• Measure performance to tweak your content distribution strategy in future

What is a content distribution strategy?

In its simplest form, a content distribution strategy refers to the channels and mediums that you plan on using to get your content in front of your target audience.

“If you build it, they will come” is a great idea, and it can have some traction from an SEO and inbound marketing point of view, but you could well be selling your content and brand short if you don’t take things further than this.

A content distribution framework that you ‘own’

At No Brainer, we’re big fans of making the most of your ‘owned media’ because they are the online mediums that you have the most control over. You’re not reliant on a third party and you don’t have to jump through too many hoops (internal processes aside) in order to change or update content that sits on online properties that belong to you.

Owned media can include, but isn’t limited to:

• Your website
• Your blog
• Your newsletters or email marketing materials
• Your social media profiles, including your YouTube channel
• Your podcast platform (if applicable)

By making sure that your content distribution strategy includes all relevant owned media channels (i.e. if your audience are present on this channel, you should be using it in your content distribution framework), as well as taking the opportunity to update, refresh and re-promote your content regularly, you can ensure that your content is working as hard as it possibly can for your marketing benefit.

Which distribution channels are right for which types of content?

The simple answer is that all distribution channels can be right for any type of content, but there may need to be some work done to ensure that the content fits appropriately with the platform.

For example, a guide that you create which solves a problem that your target audience have will obviously be published on your site and you may also push this a little on social media with links back to the original guide or link to it in your monthly email newsletters, but a small amount of additional effort can make this single guide reach much further.

If the guide offers something that you can’t get anywhere else, such as thought leadership from an individual within your brand or interesting internal data, it could potentially be repurposed as a webinar, which then is later published on YouTube, and can also be made into an interview podcast on the same subject.

The main points or takeaways can be made into graphics that work brilliantly to engage people on social media and also generate links as people credit the source of the graphic they share or use themselves. You could also offer exclusive insight or data to your newsletter subscribers on the same subject that is over and above what is available publicly.

Update and republish

Content that is good to start with can become great over time if it’s updated and added to with useful insights that meet a need in your audience. If you do some research or a survey that produces interesting results for a piece of content that people seem to find useful, why not make it an annual event?

If some new data becomes available that changes things for your original piece, why not update it to reflect this?

It’s a common struggle for content marketers – when to move on to the next piece, but it doesn’t have to be either/or. You can revisit content months or even years later to give it a refresh and ensure it’s working as hard as it can in the longer term.

Measure performance to tweak your content distribution strategy in future

Not every piece of content will hit the mark on every channel the first time; that’s just a fact of life. However, if you can measure performance and identify why something hasn’t reached its full potential, you can make sure that you feed this into your future content distribution strategy.

Knowing which metrics and KPIs are most pertinent for your needs is something that needs to be tailored to your individual strategy, but some common examples could include:

Website content:

• Traffic
• Rankings
• Traffic sources
• Engagement time on the page
• Links gained to the specific page
• Conversion rate on that page

Blogs – all of the above, plus:

• Social shares
• Exit rate of the page
• Any comments that aren’t spam

Email marketing

• Open rate
• Click-through-rate
• Click-to-open-rate
• Conversions from email source traffic
• Unsubscriptions

Social etc.

• Shares
• Positive engagement e.g. likes, upvotes, positive comments
• Negative engagement e.g. ‘angry’ emojis or negative comments
• Clicks to the website from each platform
• Community/follower growth
• Views/full views for video content

It’s important to review content performance with a critical eye. It can sometimes feel like a piece of content that you’ve put sweat and tears into is your ‘baby’ and any negative feedback can be hard to take. However, when things don’t go as you expect it can provide meaningful learning and insight into how you can hit the mark next time instead, or how you can adapt the piece you originally created and go again.

If you would like help with your content distribution strategy or want to chat about how we can assist with any element of content marketing, our team would love to hear from you. Please use the form below to get in touch.

The post The importance of utilising several content distribution channels for effective marketing appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

Unlike other social media platforms, potential sales through Pinterest may be easier than you would originally think. Once you’ve garnered a following and posted enough excellent content using the best practices covered in this guide, a lot of the work is already done. It allows a more “come and go” approach for shoppers and seems to be an often-overlooked tool for ecommerce businesses.

The image sharing and social media service, launched in 2010, has evolved immensely into the platform it is today.

After mostly being used as a site in which users would garner inspiration for things like home décor and outfit styles, Pinterest has since become a platform in which businesses can directly link their pins to products on their website, and thus means that when users see something they like they can click through directly, allowing Pinterest to generate more traffic and sales for an ecommerce business.

So, why use Pinterest?

Pinterest ecommerce stats:

Pinterest currently has a $50 average sales order, which is higher than any other social media platform. On top of this, 93% of the site’s users say they use the platform to plan future purchases.

87% of the platform’s users have bought a product because of Pinterest.

97% of searches on Pinterest aren’t brand-related either, so focusing on using keywords in pin titles is an excellent way for your business to appear in searches.

Users of the site are also three times more likely to click on a business’s website on Pinterest than any other social media platform, solidifying the idea that Pinterest is the place to be if your goal is to drive traffic to your website and your products lend themselves to visual inspiration.

Not only this, but 91% of people say that Pinterest is a positive place, and therefore users are more likely to purchase from businesses they find on positive platforms.

One of Pinterest’s biggest selling points is the fact that it brings in 33% more referral traffic to user websites than Facebook, despite Facebook’s 2.5 billion users.

But what exactly is Pinterest’s user audience?

• 71% of users are female
• 34% of users are 18-29
• 35% of users are 35-49 years old
• 16% of users are male
• 64% of users reported using the platform to search for new ideas, inspiration, and products that they can trust

Source: Omni Agency Report

How to get Pinterest traffic

So, what Pinterest traffic strategy can you apply to your own business?

1. Organisation

With the ability to create multiple different boards, Pinterest allows you to create something different for each product or service that your business has to offer, engaging audiences in content that is specific to their search or interest.

2. Keywords

Using relevant keywords in the names of your boards and in your pin descriptions ensures that your content will reach its intended audience. To generate as much traffic as possible, make sure you do some background research on your target audience – what keywords are they searching for the most?

Companies like Etsy make excellent use of popular keywords when creating their pins.

3. Upload pins via your website

When you upload a pin from your own website, Pinterest emphasises the connection between the pin and its original source link, so this way when someone re-pins your pin, your website will continue to remain the source, thus potentially driving more traffic onto your site as the visibility of the pin grows organically.

4. Timings

Finding the optimum time to post on Pinterest can help drive traffic to your website. Depending on who your target audience is, finding the best time in which your audience spends the most time online is vital to help increase engagement. Make sure you schedule your posts around those timings.

5. Consistency

If you want to get more followers on Pinterest and more engagement on your website, you have to be posting consistently on the platform. Spreading out your posts throughout the day rather than spamming is key.

Following these steps to ensure that your pins, and therefore website links, are getting as much exposure as possible also makes it a huge benefit for SEO, because Pinterest pins often appear in search results, especially for people using the images filter.

Perfecting your Pinterest traffic strategy

Remember to make sure that you go in with a sensible set-up in terms of the buying process once someone arrives on your site via Pinterest. Your conversion rate will never reach its potential heights if you’ve made it difficult for new customers to access and purchase your product online.

Some of the most important factors to double and triple check, to ensure you get the highest conversion rate possible, can include:

1. Making sure you attach the correct links to your pins

Ensuring that the links on your pins actually lead to the correct product that you want them to is vital in increasing your conversion rate. Similarly, make sure that the links themselves aren’t broken, otherwise they’ll just lead to a 404 error and give a poor user experience, as well as sending a negative signal to search engines.

2. Ensure the images on your Pinterest go with the images on your website links

Your pin image doesn’t necessarily have to be the exact same as that on the page that the link leads to, but it still has to be relevant to the content of the link otherwise you could confuse customers and therefore lose their interest.

3. Avoid listing in Pinterest descriptions

Make sure the descriptions for your pins seem natural. Yes, include keywords in order for your content to reach its intended audience, but you still want consumers to be engaged by your content, so keep your descriptions as natural as possible.

So, why not give Pinterest marketing a go?

Uploading the best content that you can, showing your products off in their best light visually, and consistently updating your pins, can all help you to make the most of this powerful tool to engage new consumers for your ecommerce business.

The platform is so straightforward to use, and if you use it in the right way while putting in the necessary effort, it can make a huge difference in the way you reach your intended audience and start to see results. Making your content attractive, helpful and easy to understand, along with being consistently updated, it’s an excellent opportunity for your site to increase conversion rates by sending this highly relevant traffic towards your business.

Interested in social marketing for ecommerce? Get in touch with us below

The post How to create the best Pinterest strategy for ecommerce appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

Bold patterns and colours

As an antidote to the neutral greys and pop of bright colour that have become the staple of many homes in the last decade, 2022 could well see a move towards bolder and stronger looks that give spaces in our homes a more individual look and feel.

Search trends back this up, and although greys are still in demand, blues and greens are beginning to climb. Home decor brands can take advantage of these trends with inspirational and how-to content on their websites – including variations of “top green paint”, even smaller challenger brands could create data-led campaigns around top sellers and their application to boost traffic and grow market share on search. 

Making the most of small spaces using levels and storage solutions

Millions of people have turned small areas of their home into work spaces or multi-functional zones during the pandemic, whether for home working, home schooling, a home gym or to give a dedicated place to hobbies, side hustles or family activities. While we’re not all going to move into tiny homes, taking inspiration from this movement can help provide great ideas of how to make small spaces perform several functions and how to do more with less.

Leading some of the top searches around small spaces are hallways and bedrooms. Marketing teams should continue to showcase great ways to use these kinds of spaces, keeping things organised and simple – leveraging key platforms to bring it to life. TikTok, Pinterest and Instagram are great platforms to drive ecommerce traffic (depending on your audience of course) – using short and snappy videos that are “hands-on” or “before and afters” will drive traffic, especially if you link directly to key products highlighted.

The outdoors indoors

If there’s one thing that lockdowns and pandemic isolations have taught us, it’s the importance of the outdoors to our mental and emotional health. Bringing some of that indoors is looking to be a key trend for the next few years, whether that’s with clever use of wallpaper, houseplants or even living walls.

Sustainability and upcycling

Upcycling existing pieces or furniture might seem to be anti-retail in the sense that people are using what they already have rather than buying new, but retailers can still jump on this trend by showing shoppers options for accessorising and making the most of upcycled home items.

Everyone wants to shop sustainably when possible, so retailers that can effectively communicate how certain products have sustainable credentials can certainly stand out.

Very Peri

The Pantone colour of 2022, Very Peri is a blue/violet shade that is expected to be showing up in everything from mugs and rugs to sofas and ceilings. Even if you don’t sell anything in this shade, creating visual content to show how what you do sell can complement and enhance home products of this colour can help to inspire shoppers to make a purchase from your ecommerce site.

Cottagecore

Cottagecore was big in 2021 and this looks set to continue throughout the next year at least. Floral prints and organic textures abound in this look that gives countryside vibes even if you live in an inner-city high-rise apartment. Another way to bring some of the outdoors in, cottagecore is backed up by huge amounts of content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, so brands getting in on this action using these social channels can certainly drive sales directly this way too.

Shades of green

An alternative way to get a feel of the green outdoors inside your home is to use shades of green within your home. The great thing about a green sofa is that it doesn’t need watering like a houseplant does! Green is a colour that goes really well with a wide range of other tones and shades, so you can play it down for a calm and neutral feel, or easily play it up for a more striking look by choosing different colours accents.

Unexpected wallpaper

We all know the impact of a feature wall but using wallpaper in less usual places is certainly also a trend at the moment. How about a wallpapered section within a larger wall or even a ceiling? Or perhaps consider lining the inside of cupboards and other storage with wallpaper for some additional interest and colour – there’s plenty to play with for home-decor brands to capitalise on this.

Different textures for touchabilty

A trend that seems to be gathering pace is using different textures on walls, furniture and accessories to increase the tactile appeal of spaces. Whether that’s a cork wall in your living space, a rattan room divider, a textured headboard in your bedroom, or some hessian used on cupboard doors or in your soft furnishings. With soft and neutral tones but a surface that adds variety to the textures in your home, products like this can bring a whole new dimension to a bedroom, kitchen or living area.

Making the most of these interior trends with your marketing activity

Inspirational interior visuals

Whether you sell paint, wallpaper, art, furniture, lighting, houseplants or soft furnishings, creating aspirational visuals of your products in the context of finished rooms with complementary decoration or furnishings can be absolutely key to driving more sales.

Trend pages to group products together

Consider developing trend pages containing these visuals, product details and optimised content to help bring organic traffic in. Carrying out marketing activity such as digital PR campaigns that link back to these pages can help with ecommerce SEO performance.

Cross-sell during checkout

Showing related and complementary products during the checkout process can also help nudge up the average order value and maximise the revenue generated by every transaction. Delivering this in the context of showing the product in their basket in the same scene as the other products can help shoppers visualise how this will look in their own home. Using your own unique images, which are also properly optimised for search engines, will also help bring in search traffic.

Make the most of visual social media channels to drive traffic

Pinterest is still a top platform for home inspiration and traffic driving to product pages, so don’t neglect this channel even if you also want to focus on Instagram and Facebook audiences for generating sales. Home inspiration content is also still hugely popular on TikTok, with transformations of rooms, homes and furniture provides good opportunities for ecommerce brands to create their own content or work with content creators on the platform as part of their influencer marketing strategy.

If you would like some assistance with your ecommerce SEO or wider marketing strategy, our team would love to hear from you. Contact us using the form below.

The post How online retailers can capitalise on 2022’s emerging home design trends appeared first on No Brainer Agency.

There are lots of great reasons to keep an eye on what your ecommerce competitors are doing in terms of marketing activity, including to:

• Benchmark your and their online market positions
• Spark inspiration and ideas for your own strategy
• Learn from their marketing mistakes and successes

Collating all of the information you find and then digging out the insight can take time, but is a very worthwhile exercise to help shape parts of your own ecommerce marketing strategy. It’s easy to go down a bit of a rabbit hole when it comes to ecommerce competitor research, so we find it useful to put some parameters around what we look at and dig into, to make sure that we’re only spending time on things that will benefit our own marketing strategy. One of the first steps is to determine who your competitors actually are for the purposes of this exercise.

1. How do I find my competitors for ecommerce?

The answer to this question can vary, depending on your business objectives, but it’s recommended to look at other ecommerce brands that sell in the same space as you, both in terms of products and target audience. However, you should also take into account the specific channels that you’re planning to utilise and the size of business you are, and are looking to become. The chances are that you’re not going to be a direct competitor to Amazon, for example, despite the fact that they might dominate every marketing channel you want to target. Instead, look for ecommerce competitors that are a similar size to your business as well as some aspirational competitors for where you want to see your brand get to. For SEO, try Googling some of the keywords you’re targeting with your ecommerce site. Who ranks ahead of you in organic search results? Sometimes the results can be surprising, and it might flag some competitors that you weren’t previously aware of. Rather than making this a huge exercise and looking at 20+ competitors, it’s usually a better use of resources to keep the group fairly small. We recommend looking at 2-3 competitors of a similar size and stage of business, then a couple more aspirational ecommerce brands that can help you take a step up in your marketing strategy.

2. Review their backlink profile

A growing backlink profile is important for SEO performance, so finding out which domains are linking to your competitors, and why, can help inform your own activity in this area, whether through digital PR, content marketing or other strategies. The easiest way to do this is by using a backlink analysis tool such as SEMrush, where you can directly compare backlinks pointing to several websites at the same time and find opportunities for your site to target. The links they have will also give insight into the types of activity they are doing e.g. links from news websites often indicate digital PR work, or are they guest blogging on relevant sites? Links from bloggers might show you what they are doing from an influencer marketing point of view too.

3. Review their organic keyword rankings and on-page elements

Exploring organic search rankings around your competitors and taking a look at their on-page SEO tactics and overall visibility can be a good guide to how you can catch up with and overtake them through your own ecommerce SEO strategy. Again, a tool like Semrush can help you do this very easily, along with alternatives like MOZ and Ahrefs. They all have specific competitive keyword analysis tools to help show you potential opportunities that your competitors aren’t currently focusing on, as well as showing some of the reasons why they have the organic rankings that they currently hold.

4. Look at their digital PR activity

You might have already seen some of the sites they gave gained links from via their digital PR activity, but the chances are that they don’t gain links from all of the PR pieces they put out. Brand mentions online, while not considered anything near to as beneficial as a link for SEO purposes, can have an impact on rankings and, of course, brand awareness with the target audience. You can simply Google the brand name and filter by news results to see if they have had any recent coverage, as well as checking out their website press section or media centre. Do they have local coverage as well as national pickup? What kind of stories are they telling?

5. Review their social media activity (organic and paid)

Information such as how often an ecommerce brand posts on social media isn’t usually very helpful but looking at the type of posts they put out organically, and how their customers engage with this (or don’t), can give some useful insight for your own strategy. Do they actively manage their social community or are they using it mainly as a broadcast channel? Looking at their paid activity can often also provide useful info that can be used in your own campaigns. Which ad formats are they using for products on Facebook and Instagram and are there any choices they are making from a creative point of view that you can learn from?

6. Look at their content marketing activity

Are your competitors attempting to reach their audience through different kinds of content? Ecommerce content marketing is much more than just having a blog on the website and putting out listicles, and if you want to attract and convert more of your shared target market, you can learn from what they’re doing and work out how to produce something that’s even more useful and engaging to whoever it is that you’re trying to reach. Areas you might want to look out for include:

• Content hubs – with themed content that builds into a big resource over time
• UGC – are they using any of their customer’s own content and how?
• Types of content – do they post tutorials, graphics, videos, podcasts, text articles or anything else?
• Interactive tools – do they have any tools on the site that perform a useful function e.g. a style quiz for fashion brands to make recommendations based on results
• Gated content – do they restrict access to any useful content and only show to subscribers/account holders or in return for data?

A good example would be US eyewear retailer Zenni Optical, take a look at their quiz which enables shoppers to find a range of recommendations for frames depending on their face shape.

Extra tip: Check out their marketing emails

Signing up for all of your competitor’s email newsletters might feel a bit counter-intuitive, but it can give some really useful marketing insights for you to use in your own strategy and campaign activity. The frequency with which they send communications out along with the kinds of content and marketing tactics they employ in them, can all be useful to help shape your own approach. Do they give priority for new stock or lines to subscribers? Do they usually give a certain percentage discount to their subscribers that you could improve upon? How do your templates compare in terms of look, feel and content amount? All of these questions could provide you with ideas for how to make your own email marketing strategy better than theirs.  

Turn the ecommerce marketing competitor learnings into action

Once you’ve taken a look at your competitors and their digital marketing activity, how you use those learnings is key to how useful an exercise it is for your brand. You can:

• Share the main findings with your team and discuss what you like or dislike about what you’ve seen others do
• Take a look at your buyer personas again – do you need to update these to incorporate some of what you’ve learned about how your audience engage with your competitors and their marketing activity?
• Use the ideas you’ve seen which have worked to help inspire your own ideation sessions – how can you make a similar impact but do it differently and make it even better?
• Look again at your benchmarks and the metrics you’re using to measure performance – do these need to be revised in light of what you’ve learned?

If you would like to find out how we can help you with your ecommerce SEO, digital PR, email marketing or any other aspect of your digital strategy, our team would love to hear from you. Fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch for a chat.

The post Six ways to use your competitors to improve your own ecommerce marketing strategy appeared first on No Brainer Agency.