Concerned about diminishing sales during COVID-19? Implement an eCommerce digital marketing strategy with a furniture retail website. Now that the pandemic has hit in full force throughout the world, especially in the US, many savvy companies are honing in on the importance of eCommerce digital marketing strategies. These days, in order to survive, companies, including furniture stores, must market their wares online or risk becoming entirely obsolete in today’s social-distanced shopping culture. If your business doesn’t reach people sitting on their couches in their pajamas, it’ll never reach them. Gone are the days when people would just aimlessly walk or drive around, finding stores and sales to pop by.
- Social media marketing
- Abandoned cart marketing
- SEM and Remarketing
- Local marketing
Read on to help your business survive and thrive during today’s COVID-19 world and beyond. Now is the ideal time to beef up your ecommerce digital marketing strategy plans. And plan to unlock your furniture store’s real potential for success. Serve your customers well, meet their needs perfectly, and look forward to an uptick in revenue. Accomplish these when you hone in on these key ecommerce marketing strategy best practices.
Social media marketing isn’t as complicated as it seems
Many business owners and managers naturally shy away from social media marketing. Especially if they identify themselves as part of the Baby Boomer or Gen X cohort. And may not be as intimately tuned into social media mores. Millennials, Gen X’ers, and other young people are often more willing and interested in diving into social media marketing strategies for their businesses. Don’t be intimidated by social media marketing.
There are a bunch of websites – such as Loomly, Hootesuite, Sprout Social, and others – that take the guesswork and frustration out of social media marketing. There’s no need to spend countless hours of your precious time trying to carefully time social media posts. Let one of these websites handle the grunt work for you so you can simply reap the benefits. Increased profits for your furniture store.
Not sure how to begin? A good starting off point is to research a few websites, compare the services they offer at various price points, and simply try one out today. If it doesn’t turn out to be a good fit for your needs, no big deal, but you won’t know that until you try it out. Some features business owners and managers have found helpful is the ability to schedule social media posts automatically ahead of time, and optimally curate their targeted ads to reach their intended audience.
Figure out who your intended audience is, exactly, before starting to invest lots of time and effort in social media marketing. For instance, Baby Boomers can often be found on Facebook, Millennials especially love Instagram, and Gen Z’ers can be reached on TikTok and Youtube. Do a little research about your audience before leaping into action on social media. It’s worth the time and effort.
Stress-free abandoned cart marketing
The age of ecommerce was already upon us before COVID-19 started to transform the world. But it’s even more essential now that so many people are stuck at home the majority of the time. The most important tool a furniture store owner or manager can use to entice people to come back to their online carts and check out their purchases is a simple email. Plenty of people abandon their carts because the website times out or they simply get distracted by something else. But when emails from your furniture store website are expertly crafted and genuinely fun to read, customers often come back to finish their purchases.
There are so many different styles of email furniture company owners and managers can choose from to encourage customers to come back. They can be polite and to the point, they can be elegant and stylish, or they can be funny and silly. Whatever you choose, in order to be effective, they should contain a picture and short description of any items the customer left behind in their online cart. With well-written emails, abandoned cart marketing doesn’t have to be stressful, and it can lead to increased revenue for your furniture store.
The power of suggestion — SEM and Remarketing
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. At it’s core, it means that your website must be engaging, visually appealing, and expertly calibrated for search engines such as Google and Bing. Remarketing is the ecommerce marketing tactic of utilizing targeted ads to reach potential customers. Remarketing involves the use of a javascript tag to reach out to customers that have visited your website after they clicked over to another page. Both SEM and remarketing, when done well, effectively harness the power of search engines to reach more potential customers and garner better sales. 
These days, the first time anyone has a question or a need, they turn to a search engine. Encyclopedias are absolutely obsolete now that we have Google! Successful businesses tap into the tremendous power of SEM and make sure that if anyone searches “armchair in [your town]” or “dining room set in [your city]”, your store pops up on the very first page. Remarketing reminds potential customers of products from your website they may be interested in so that they hopefully go back and make a purchase. It’s all about the power of suggestion for this ecommerce digital marketing strategy.
Local marketing is an ideal way to attract local customers
Another incredibly potent ecommerce digital marketing strategy is local marketing. Plenty of people have no idea what that means, and if you’re one of them, no big deal. Local marketing (also known as neighborhood marketing) is a strategy used to attract customers within about a 10-mile radius of the furniture store in question. In urban areas, this radius may be smaller, since people there often stay hyper-local, within just a mile or two of their homes. Local marketing relies on word-of-mouth to be productive. Often, the first part of local marketing is sending mailings and coupons to anyone who lives within the chosen radius.
Now that stores are beginning to open up in many parts of the US and many are starting to cautiously venture out, it’s the perfect time to make sure everyone in your city or town knows your furniture store is there to meet customer’s needs in-person and especially, online, any time of day or night. Another great way to employ a local marketing strategy is by sponsoring a local sports team (perhaps little league or soccer), contributing to a local charitable organization, and participating in local community events like farmer’s markets and fairs. Local marketing shows people in your community that you genuinely care about being part of the neighborhood and doing your part to make it a great place to live, work, and of course, shop for furniture.
Offer instant discounts on your website
Many furniture owners and managers who previously focused most or all of their marketing energy on in-person shopping may not know about this ecommerce strategy that has proven to increase revenue in many cases – offering instant discounts. For instance, a potential customer can click over to your website and see a pop-up offering 15% off any purchase. All of a sudden, the impulse to buy something increases. The feeling of urgency to utilize the discount offer may transform someone from “just looking around” to “I should take advantage of this offer and buy something now.” It’s a smart ecommerce digital marketing strategy that frequently results in increased sales, plus it doesn’t take long to design and implement a simple ad on your furniture store’s website. Give it a try. You have nothing to lose and so much you could gain through this simple ecommerce digital marketing strategy.
Start Your eCommerce Digital Marketing Strategy Now
Now that you know about these astute ecommerce digital marketing strategy, it’s time to pick one and start upping your game. Far too many people know about social media marketing, abandoned cart marketing, SEM, remarketing, and local marketing, but they push off taking actual action in order to harness their power. There isn’t time to wait around. Just pick one strategy that catches your eye and get started. When you start taking action and investing some time and effort into one of these ecommerce digital marketing strategy tactics right away, within just a few months, you will notice an increase in traffic and revenue generated by your website.
When hard times hit, like the coronavirus pandemic, furniture business owners and managers across the country are struggling. But some of them choose to step out of their usual routine and comfort zones. Try something new, and take their business back into the green zone. Now is the perfect time to reinvent yourself. Hone in on the power of the internet and ecommerce, and make sure your furniture is here to serve customers in 2021 and for many years to come. The success of your business rides on your shoulders. Give something new a try today. If you pick one of these strategies, you’ll find that they’re well worth the investment of your time and effort.
