Digital marketing is a very effective way to increase sales for your business, and in this article, we’ll explore some of the strategies and channels you can use to increase sales.
Why use digital marketing to help increase sales?
Digital marketing is a great way to put your products in front of people online as they’re actively looking for a solution your product provides through SEO or PPC or by putting yourself in front of your target audience via organic or paid social. This can be done through various digital channels, some of which are paid and others that are free but require time.
A look at the digital channels
There are a wide variety of channels to take advantage of with digital marketing. When we talk about channels, we’re talking about the different ways to get in front of your customers. For example, email marketing, paid social, SEO or PPC.
PPC
PPC (pay-per-click) or paid search is commonly described as the text ads you see at the top of the search results page, with Google and Bing being the most common. PPC is a great way to get your product or service in front of people as they search for the products you offer. For example, if you’re a mortgage broker, you can ensure your ads are shown to people whenever they search for something like “best mortgage broker”. When someone clicks on your ad, they’re then taken to your website, where they can either make a purchase or get in contact to find out more.
As PPC is a powerful way to get in front of your target audience when they’re in the purchasing mindset, there is a cost associated with this channel. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay the platform you’re advertising on, typically Google or Bing, a small fee, hence the name pay per click. Depending on your chosen keywords, these clicks can range from a few pence each to hundreds of pounds.
PPC is a relatively easy channel to scale once you’ve got your campaigns running smoothly and delivering positive results. It can also be easily turned on and off, making it useful for plugging the gap in sales for slower months. The downside of PPC is that once you stop paying for clicks, you’ll stop seeing sales from this channel.
For a more in-depth guide to PPC, take a look at our PPC service page, which goes into much greater detail on how this channel works.
PPC Tips
While you have to pay for each click to your website with PPC, this doesn’t mean it can’t be an effective way to increase your sales. If you take some time to plan your campaigns and optimise them as they’re running, you can quickly start generating sales for your business. Here are some of our top tips to help you generate a return on investment (ROI) from your PPC campaigns.
Landing pages
Each time someone visits your website from a PPC ad, you’ve paid them to visit your website, so you want to ensure that you’re turning these visitors into customers as effectively as possible. This is called the conversion rate, and it’s the rate at which you turn visitors into customers. To achieve a high conversion rate, you want to make the journey from clicking on your ad to making a purchase or contacting you as simple as possible. This is where landing pages come in.
You want to ensure that the first page you show someone after clicking an ad gives them all the information they need to go ahead and make the purchase or contact you. If customers can make a purchase directly on your website, you want to make sure they can do this as quickly and easily as possible.
For example, if you’re running a PPC campaign to increase your sales of white bed sheets and your keywords and ad copy are focussed around white bed sheets, you want to make sure you take people who click on the ad directly to a page all about your white bed sheets. If you send them to your homepage, they would have to navigate through your site to find what they’re looking for, which might cause them to return to the search results and click on your competitor’s ad instead.
If you’re a service-based business, you want to make sure your landing page clearly explains your service and gives them a way to contact you to find out more and get a quote for your services.
There are lots of ways to optimise your landing pages. Take a look at this guide from Unbounce on creating a high-converting landing page.
Start small, then scale up
It can be tempting to run a PPC campaign for all your products, but we always advise you to start small and then scale up, especially if you have a small ad spend budget. It’s better to have a campaign running effectively and generating ROI before starting the next one rather than trying to optimise everything simultaneously.
Plan your campaigns
As PPC is a paid-for channel, you can quickly start to waste budgets if you haven’t put together a plan. While this sounds simple, it’s often a step that can get missed in the excitement or need to get a campaign up and running. So ensure you have planned out the following before starting to build and run your campaign.
Keywords
Spend some time doing keyword research to find out how people search for your products or services. If you have a new product, think creatively about how people might search for it.
Landing pages
For most campaigns, we recommend creating dedicated landing pages for your ads to increase the chance of making a sale/getting an inquiry. However, if you run an eCommerce store, you may not need to do this if you have already created strong category pages for the products you’re promoting.
Ad groups
Once you’ve done your keyword research, make sure to cluster your keywords into similar themes and run these as separate ad groups. This allows you to be more specific with your ad copy and landing pages, increasing your conversion rate and improving your ad quality score.
Ongoing maintenance
PPC will require ongoing maintenance, especially when launching new campaigns. The level of ongoing maintenance depends on a mix of your budgets, the number of campaigns/ad groups you’re running and the level of performance you’re looking to achieve. Some key things to keep an eye on and update as your campaign runs are
- The search terms your ads are appearing for
- Your negative keyword lists
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Impression share
- Conversions
Testing
PPC is rarely a set-and-forget channel as there is lots of room for optimisation and reducing the CPA. Alongside ongoing maintenance of the campaign, you can test lots of different variables to make sure you’re getting the lowest CPA you can; these include:
- Testing different landing pages
- Changing the ad copy
- Changing bid strategies
- Bid modifiers
- Location targeting
SEO
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is a powerful way to increase sales. This channel is about optimising your website to appear at the top of the search results when people are searching for your product. SEO and PPC are similar in that they are about showing your brand at the exact time people are searching for your product or service. However, there is a slight difference in that SEO is earned rather than paid for.
With PPC, you pay to be at the top of the search results, but with SEO; you’re showing search engines why you’re the best to help with that particular search. This is based on the technical health of your website (can search engines find it), the content on your website/page (do you answer the users’ questions) and your authority and expertise (are you qualified on the subject, do people link to you).
SEO requires a lot of upfront investment, and it can take a while to start seeing the results from this channel; however, once you begin to perform well, this can last many years without large levels of investment like PPC.
For a more in-depth guide to SEO, take a look at our SEO service page, which goes into much greater detail on how this channel works.
SEO Tips
SEO can sometimes be a confusing channel as best practice is consistently changing over the years, and techniques that may have worked in the past no longer have the same impact they used to. At Capsule, we stay on top of the latest trends, and if you’re starting from scratch, these would be our current best practice tips.
Keyword research
It’s important to research keywords and phrases people might use to search for your products and then map these to the pages on your website. This is the first step in SEO, as it shows how people are searching and what you need to optimise for. It also highlights any opportunities you could be taking advantage of, such as keywords you could rank for but haven’t got a page on your website for.
Content creation
Search engines will look at your content to understand what your page is about, what keywords it should rank for and how it should rank compared to other pages on the same topic. To stand out against your competitors, you need to make sure to do the following:
- Cover the topic in depth
- Search engines don’t care about how many words you write; they care about how well you cover the subject you’re writing about. Therefore, your content will typically perform well if you thoroughly cover the subject and answer all the readers’ questions so they don’t need to return to the search results.
Use your keywords
Use the keywords you’ve identified in your keyword research and allocated to the page. This doesn’t mean stuffing them in unnecessarily but making sure you include them in the title and using them naturally in the body of the text.
Show your expertise
Search engines are looking to show content from subject experts, a trend that has been growing over the last few years. This can be seen from the search engine’s end as Google has been releasing updates to its algorithm specifically for product reviews. With this in mind, make sure to show readers why you’re qualified to talk about the subject.
On page SEO
Once you’ve created your content and added it to your website, look back and make sure your on-page SEO has been taken care of. This includes your page title, meta description, alt text, internal linking and heading structure. All work together to give search engines a clear idea of what the page is about.
Email marketing
Email marketing can be used in two ways to increase your sales, from new customers as well as your existing customers. Email marketing has been around for many years. However, it still provides a solid ROI with £42 returned for every £1 invested. In addition, email marketing is not as complicated or expensive as it used to be, with providers offering simple drag-and-drop builders with pre-made templates and free plans, which can be enough for small businesses to get started.
You can generate sales from your existing customer base by showcasing your latest products and offering discounts or free shipping. You can also use it to stay at the front of your customers’ minds via a newsletter or industry round-up email, so when they need a product you sell, they’ll know where to go.
You can also use email marketing to increase sales to new customers, which can be done in two ways. The first way is to collect their email address through a lead magnet such as a guide or a newsletter you provide. You can then nurture them with automated follow-up messages and slowly convert them into a paying customer. Another way you can increase sales from new customers is to buy email marketing data from a platform such as Honch and nurture these leads into customers. If you choose this route, be aware of legislation such as GDPR and make sure you’re reaching out to these people in a compliant manner.
Email marketing tips
Email marketing has come a long way, but as the industry and channel as matured, there are some best practice tips that apply to anyone looking to try out email marketing to increase their sales:
A/B test
If your platform has an A/B testing feature, make sure to take advantage of it and A/B test things such as:
- Subject lines
- Call to actions (CTAs)
- Imagery
- Copy length
- Send times
By testing the different aspects of your email, you can increase your open rates, click-through rates and ultimately sales.
Segmentation
Segmenting your audience is a way of grouping members of your audience based on a range of factors you know about them, including their purchase history, age, gender, spending habits and job. This allows you to send relevant communications to different parts of your audience, keeping them engaged with your email marketing. However, if you sent all communications to your whole audience each time, you could see your unsubscribe rate start to creep up.
For example, if you wanted to promote a new luxury product for gym owners, you could choose to only send that to people who have gym owner as their job title and have spent over £10,000 with you over the last 12 months.
Automation
Automated emails can serve multiple purposes; for example, they can be used to follow up with people that have started the checkout process but then abandoned their cart, or they can be used to nurture customers into making a purchase.
Automated emails to customers letting them know you’ve saved their shopping basket for them, or using that information to give them a small discount or free shipping, can be a great way to keep the sales rolling in.
Nurturing emails are commonly used when people download a lead magnet from you, such as a guide, eBook or template. These emails follow a set sequence you decide and are designed to give your prospect more information about your business, that you’re here to help if they need it, and why they should choose your business. These sequences are typically delivered over several weeks, and the emails they receive can be based on how they have interacted with your business since receiving the first email.
Social media
Social media is an excellent way for B2C and B2B businesses to generate sales. Social media can be split into two separate channels, organic and paid.
Organic social media doesn’t require ad spend and is great for all businesses looking to build an engaged audience around their products and services. Organic social media tends to be people who are already aware of your brand and services. Still, you can grow your organic following through giveaways and other techniques to increase the number of new people you’re reaching.
Paid social media is all about reaching a new audience or remarketing to a current audience. As the name suggests, paid social media is about paying for ads on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and more. This allows you to get in front of an audience that isn’t already aware of your brand and products but who would be interested in them.
Unlike PPC, you’re not targeting people on what they’re searching for but rather who they are; for example, if you sell prams, you’ll want to target new or expecting parents. Paid social media can also be used to retarget people who visited your website but have yet to purchase, helping keep your brand front and centre.
Retargeting ads work by adding a tracking pixel to your website, which allows the social platform to know who has visited your website. The platform will then let you display ads to people who have visited your website. If you have enough traffic to your website, you can even split your website into sections allowing you to be very targeted with your ads.
By using both organic and paid social media, you can keep in front of current customers and prospect for new customers, both of which can drive sales for your business.
Organic social media tips
Organic social is a channel that has been harder to take advantage of in recent years, with platforms limiting the reach of your posts as well as making it harder to direct people off the platform and onto your website. However, this can still be a powerful, free channel with our top tips.
Create a social media calendar
Creating a calendar where you can plan your social posts in advance makes managing your organic social media far easier, especially when combined with a post-scheduling tool such as Hootsuite. You can also plan posts around holidays and relevant national and international days, such as International Women’s Day.
Be Social
Social media isn’t just about sending out posts and hoping people will find, follow and interact with you. You need to get out there and socialise, which means interacting with other accounts, leaving comments and starting conversations. The easiest place to start with this is by looking for groups your target audience could be a part of. For example, for a beauty brand, this could be a makeup hacks page.
Keep at it
Building up an engaged following on social media completely organically can take time, so don’t be discouraged if you’re not an overnight sensation. The audience you build on social media will be invested in your brand and products and will be much more likely to recommend you to friends and family.
Paid social media tips
Paid social media has matured in recent years, with more competition trying to reach the same audience. The increased competition has seen the cost per click or cost per thousand impressions slowly increase over the years as people bid more aggressively; however, this is still an effective channel to drive sales when managed well.
Choose your platform & strategy
Choosing the right social media platform at the start of your social ad planning can make or break the success of your campaign. We recommend doing some research into where your audience can be found online. LinkedIn may be the best platform to run your ads on if they work in professional services. If your target audience is interested in beauty or travel, then Instagram could be your platform of choice. The tech sector is always very active on Twitter, so this could be that platform to promote your new SaaS startup.
Choosing the right strategy for each platform is also key. LinkedIn is a much more expensive platform to run ads on, as you can reach key decision-makers effectively. So we find retargeting on this platform doesn’t make sense for users with smaller budgets. In that case, we would use LinkedIn to find new prospects but then remarket them through cheaper platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and display remarketing.
Start slow and build your way up
Similar to PPC, it’s good to start slow with a couple of campaigns to test the water and see how your audience interacts with your ads. Taking your time with just a couple of campaigns gives the platform time to reach the best audience, and it also gives you the budget to test different creatives and copy to see what resonates best with your demographic. Then, once you know what’s working, you can create new campaigns that will perform better now that you understand what works.
Too often, we see people try and run a campaign for every product without finding out what drives their audience to click.
Keep testing
Many things can be tested and refined with paid social ads, including ad copy, creative, placements, audiences and times of the day. By continuing to test and see what works, you will consistently be improving the performance of your campaigns, making them more effective over time.
Be realistic with budgets
For most kinds of paid advertising to be effective, you need to invest enough in ad spend; otherwise, it’s hard to generate a return and even harder to test what does and doesn’t work. Calculating ad spends can always be tricky, but we recommend taking a look at our post on calculating paid search budgets which makes this much easier as long as you have some data on your conversion rates. While the post is aimed at paid search, the same technique can be applied to paid social; you just need to work out a rough CPC. For example, Facebook gives you an estimate of daily link clicks based on your budget.
Start increasing your sales today
With all the digital channels available to businesses today, there’s never been a better time to start investing time and budget into digital marketing. Even if it’s starting small by writing a weekly blog post or keeping your social channels up to date, you can slowly start to see growth and sales.
If you’re looking for digital marketing support, we’re here to help. We can support you with as much or little as you need, from creating a strategy for you to execute or letting one of our digital specialists manage a channel you’re still getting confident with. So now it’s over to you to see how you can take advantage of the digital channels we’ve spoken about.
