Understanding the Buyer’s Journey: The AIDA Model

Online buyer's journey

Online buyer's journey

When asking people about their thought process when buying a product or service, they might give reasoning such as “I just think of the product or service I need, and then buy it.” The truth is that whether it is a small daily purchase, such as groceries, or a big purchase, like a car, every consumer goes through a subconscious journey to make the correct choice.

In order to make the right marketing decisions, we need to understand the buyer’s process. This understanding helps brands more effectively focus their efforts on optimizing marketing activities based on their target customers’ journeys.

What Is the AIDA Model?

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. This model is used to show the decision-making process of consumers. The process, as a whole, acts as a funnel describing how consumers go from one stage to the next to support their purchasing decisions.

Attention

During the first step in the buyer’s journey, the consumer might ask themselves what problems need to be solved and what can best solve them. They will take time to explore their options and look across all brands to see which one suits their needs the most. 

In this first step, brand awareness is the most important factor. Consumers need convincing that your brand has the solution that they are looking for. Marketing strategies like banner ads, commercials, and tailored blog posts could be enough to take them into the next stage.

Interest

After getting the attention of the consumer, you need to keep that focus on your product or service. The consumer’s next step is researching the specific product they need. They now need to know how your company will solve their problem. 

At this stage, consumers will need answers on why your product stands out. This stage is all about persuasion and holding the attention of the consumer. Some ways your brand can garner interest is through targeted ads, social media marketing and product pages.

Desire

The third stage focuses on the consumer’s “I want it” motive. This can be achieved through an emotional relationship between the consumer and the brand. A consistent online presence can be a powerful tool in bolstering this, especially as brands that have a strong online identity tend to excel at creating a solid B2C connection. 

Consumers like going with brands they trust. This can be built as the consumer continuously interacts with your brand through engaging with a subscription to weekly newsletters, reading testimonials, or case studies.

Action

The final stage in the buyer journey involves the consumer purchasing your product or requesting your service. This can be catalyzed through using a call to action (CTA) in marketing campaigns, social media posts, and SEO strategies. CTAs can provide a sense of urgency to the consumer to make them feel that they need to act on their desire to purchase from your brand. Its function is to persuade them to go to your store, call, or visit your website.

Use AIDA to Scale Your Business

While AIDA does not detail every consumer’s specific journey, it does provide a framework describing how they go from identifying a problem they have to solve to ultimately purchasing from your brand. It can be used to build a successful marketing strategy and give an idea of where in the consumer’s journey your brand should focus its marketing methods.

 

LEVERAGE has over a decade of experience in using marketing expertise to help brands achieve their goals. For more information, request a consultation today.

Doubling Instacart ROAS: A Case Study in Effective Optimization Strategies

Maximizing return on ad spend (ROAS) is a key objective when it comes to driving success with Instacart. We recently doubled the Instacart ROAS for one of our valued clients by implementing a series of optimization strategies. In this article, we share the steps we took to achieve this, and how you too can replicate our success on Instacart.

High-Quality Product Photos

Visual appeal plays a crucial role in capturing customers’ attention and driving conversions. Upon auditing our client’s presence on Instacart, we saw an opportunity to improve the product imagery to help their products stand out on Instacart’s virtual shelf. The enhanced visual experience resulted in increased click-through rates and ultimately higher conversion rates.

Compelling Product Descriptions

To complement the improved product imagery, we revamped the product descriptions for our client. We focused on crafting compelling and informative descriptions that highlighted the unique features, benefits, and value propositions of each product. By clearly communicating the product’s value, we were able to entice shoppers and provide them with the necessary information to make purchasing decisions. The improved product descriptions played a crucial role in increasing customer engagement and conversion rates.

Optimized Instacart Search Ads

An effective search ad strategy is pivotal in reaching the right audience and driving conversions on Instacart. We conducted extensive keyword research and analysis to identify relevant and high-converting keywords for our client’s products. By optimizing their search ads, we ensured that they were prominently displayed to users searching for similar items. This increased visibility, coupled with the use of relevant keywords, resulted in improved ad performance, higher click-through rates, and ultimately, increased conversions.

Constant Monitoring and Iterative Optimization

Achieving the desired results on Instacart requires ongoing monitoring and iterative optimization. We closely monitor return on ad spend, and other KPIs. We analyze the data to identify underperforming areas and make data-driven adjustments to improve the campaign’s performance. This iterative approach allows us to continuously fine-tune our strategy, and capitalize on successful tactics.

By implementing a comprehensive optimization strategy, we were able to double the Instacart ROAS for our client. Through the addition of high-quality product photos and compelling descriptions, we captured users’ attention and increased engagement. By optimizing Instacart search ads to focus on relevant keywords, we enhanced the visibility of our client’s products to the right audience. The success of this case study underscores the importance of constant monitoring and iterative optimization to achieve outstanding results on Instacart. Embrace these strategies, adapt them to your unique business needs, and unlock the potential to significantly improve your ROAS on Instacart.

Want to drive better business outcomes from your digital marketing? Request a consultation today.

Nurturing a Successful Partnership: How to Effectively Work With an Agency

Collaborating with an agency partner can bring a fresh perspective, specialized expertise, and valuable resources to your marketing efforts. However, to truly leverage the benefits of this collaboration, it’s essential to establish a strong working relationship and maintain effective communication, ensuring a productive partnership.

Define Your Needs and Expectations

Before engaging with an agency, clearly define the type of agency you require based on your specific goals and objectives. Determine if you need a creative agency, a branding agency, a PR agency, a digital agency, or a combination of these. The agency you choose should complement and enhance your in-house capabilities, aligning with your overall marketing strategy.

Clarify Roles and Objectives

Decide whether you are seeking strategic guidance, implementation support, or a combination of both. Clearly communicate your expectations to the agency, outlining the specific roles they will play in your marketing initiatives. By establishing a shared understanding of objectives and responsibilities, you can maximize the effectiveness of the agency’s efforts and ensure alignment with your business goals.

Empower Creativity and Expertise

When working with an agency, it’s crucial to allow them the freedom to unleash their creativity and expertise. While providing guidance and input is essential, avoid stifling their potential by imposing excessive constraints. Trust in their capabilities and encourage them to explore innovative approaches that can lead to successful outcomes. Embrace collaboration and value the unique insights they bring to the table. After all, that’s why you hired them!

Treat Your Agency as a Member of Your Team

To foster a strong partnership, treat your agency as an extension of your in-house marketing team. Establish clear lines of communication, provide them with the necessary information and resources, and involve them in relevant discussions and decision-making processes. By treating them with the same level of respect and inclusion as your internal team, you create an environment that fosters trust, collaboration, and shared success.

Assign an Internal Point of Contact

Designate a specific point of contact within your organization to liaise with the agency. This person will serve as the primary communication channel, ensuring smooth coordination, timely feedback, and alignment between your team and the agency. Having a dedicated internal contact streamlines communication and minimizes confusion, enhancing the overall efficiency of the partnership.

Foster Open and Frequent Communication

Maintain open lines of communication with your agency partner. Regularly update them on business outcomes, campaign performance, and any shifts in priorities or strategies. Encourage them to share their insights, challenges, and recommendations. Frequent communication helps build a strong rapport, enables agility in decision-making, and ensures that both parties remain aligned and proactive in achieving shared objectives.

 

Want to drive better business outcomes from your digital marketing? Request a consultation today.

Is Top of Funnel Marketing Dead?

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, there is an ongoing debate surrounding the effectiveness and relevance of top-of-funnel marketing tactics. With the increasing focus on bottom-of-funnel strategies that offer direct measurement of ROI, some question whether top-of-funnel marketing is dead. However, in this article, we will challenge this notion and shed light on the significance of top-of-funnel marketing in driving long-term success and improving bottom-of-funnel results.

The Challenge of Measuring Top-of-Funnel ROI

One of the primary arguments against top-of-funnel marketing is the difficulty in measuring its direct impact on revenue. Unlike bottom-of-funnel tactics that can be directly tied to conversions and sales, top-of-funnel awareness efforts often lack clear metrics for ROI. However, focusing solely on immediate ROI measurements can lead to overlooking the long-term benefits of building brand awareness and consideration.

The Value of Brand Awareness

Establishing brand awareness is a critical foundation for any successful marketing strategy. Without brand recognition, consumers are less likely to engage with your bottom-of-funnel marketing efforts. People are more inclined to trust and purchase from brands they are familiar with. By investing in top-of-funnel marketing, you can create a lasting impression, increase brand recall, and influence consumer decision-making throughout the customer journey.

Driving Cost-Efficiency and Improving Bottom-of-Funnel Results

While top-of-funnel marketing may be harder to measure in terms of direct ROI, it plays a crucial role in improving the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of bottom-of-funnel tactics. By first establishing brand awareness, you can enhance the impact of your conversion-focused campaigns. When consumers are already familiar with your brand, they are more likely to engage with your targeted ads, click on your links, and convert into customers. This ultimately reduces the cost per acquisition and increases return on ad spend (ROAS) and overall ROI.

Balancing Top-of-Funnel and Bottom-of-Funnel Strategies

To maximize marketing effectiveness, it’s essential to strike a balance between top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel strategies. While bottom-of-funnel tactics provide measurable results, neglecting top-of-funnel efforts can limit your long-term growth potential. Consider allocating a portion of your budget to top-of-funnel campaigns, leveraging various tactics such as content marketing, social media, influencer partnerships, and thought leadership.

 

Want to drive better business outcomes from your digital marketing? Request a consultation today.

4 Ways to Benefit from Google’s Helpful Content Update and Avoid Being Penalized

Google Search is continuously evolving. What many creators and website owners fail to remember is that Google does not exist to rank websites. Google exists to provide searchers with the best information.

The latest algorithm update serves to do exactly that. 

Google’s ‘helpful content update’ rewards high-quality, informative, original content made by people, for people. This means that websites with content written for search engines, rather than searchers will likely suffer. 

Here are four ways to ensure that your site is rewarded with better rankings following the latest algorithm update.

1. Be Factual, Not Fluffy

Ahrefs finds that the top-ranking page on Google only gets the most search traffic 49 percent of the time. Why? Because the top ranking page has not always included the most relevant information. The new algorithm update looks to fix that. 

It is simply not enough to quickly draft an article and stuff keywords throughout. This practice serves no purpose for the human searcher. When drafting SEO content, remember to be factual, not fluffy.

Including well-researched facts and statistics and connecting them to your product or service can help searchers make more informed decisions. Not only does this benefit the searcher, but it also benefits your business. Why wouldn’t you want your potential customers to be equipped with the knowledge you provide them with to make a purchase?

2. Be an Expert in Your Industry

Does your website convey that you’re a subject matter expert? Does it provide well-written and in-depth thought leadership content?

More than half of all shoppers report conducting research before making a purchase. This is why it’s so important to position your brand as an expert.

Be sure that every piece of blog content teaches your reader something new. Think about why your reader is on your site, and cater your content for them specifically. Prioritizing valuable information like how to use your products, the unique benefits of your services, and other helpful insights shows readers that your brand is an industry leader. 

Consider including step by step how-to’s, listicles of best practices, and any other information that your searcher will benefit from. Not only will this motivate readers to engage and convert on your website, but it will also keep them coming back for more.

3. Be Consistent and Remove Unhelpful Content

With every new algorithm update, consistency is still key and content will remain king! What does this mean for your site? 

If you have previously enlisted the help of AI to draft your blog content, or published content that was specifically designed to manipulate rankings rather than help a searcher, consider removing this content from your site. While this content may be years old, it could still cause your rankings to take a hit. 

Google suggests removing any low quality pages, merging or updating the content of individual pages into more relevant and helpful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain.  

As you begin creating higher-quality content, the work doesn’t end there. Remaining consistent will show Google that your site is an authority in its industry, and will help increase your rankings.

4. Enlist the Help of Boost by LEVERAGE™

Algorithm updates can often spark uncertainty, have undesirable effects on your rankings, and ultimately impact your business. With a solution, like Boost by LEVERAGE™ (our premium SEO program for brands that want to dominate the first page of Google), you can rest easy knowing that your website’s SEO follows best practices and may actually benefit from these updates.

Over the last fourteen years, we’ve developed SEO campaigns for hundreds of clients, and we know what works and what doesn’t. Let us help you gain a competitive edge and take the guesswork out of navigating this new ‘helpful content update.

Want to learn more? Let’s talk!

Want to Improve SEO Performance? Here’s Why Content Is (Still) King

More than half of all online experiences begin with a Google search. And, studies show that less than one percent of searchers will click on results from the second page. In fact, to many people, the second page of Google might as well be considered the “dark web.” 

Investing in your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts is vital to your brand awareness, website traffic, and trustworthiness. In short, investing in SEO is crucial to generating marketing qualified leads and increasing sales.

While many factors may influence your rankings on Google, like page load speed, mobile responsiveness, and links, experts agree; when it comes to dominating the first page of Google, content is king. 

Learn more about why content remains the most important factor in your SEO strategy, and how Boost by LEVERAGE™ can help your brand gain a competitive edge. 

What Is “Good Content”?

When sharing any piece of content on your website, it’s important to remember your audience. Who will be reading it? 

Whether targeting customers looking to purchase a niche product or c-suite executives interested in learning more about your services, content must always provide value for the audience. This value may come in the form of industry insight, specific product or service information, and more. Think of who will be browsing the search engine results page (SERP) for your keyword queries, ask yourself why they care about a particular topic, and tailor content directly for them. 

Good SEO content teaches the reader something they did not know before, as well as informs them on why they should choose your company over any other competitor. It’s important that your content is free from spelling errors, grammar inconsistencies, and incorrect factual information. While these issues make your brand look unprofessional, they can also often prevent your content from ranking on the first page of Google. 

When writing good content, it is not enough to simply state your points. You must back up your claims with data. It is important to include consumer research, case studies, testimonials, and more to show that your brand has authority in a particular topic. 

With Boost by LEVERAGE™, a premium SEO program fourteen years in the making, brands can feel confident that their content positions them as industry leaders and provides significant value for their target audience.

Why It Matters for Your Brand

The term “content is king” stems from a 1996 essay written by Bill Gates on the future of the internet. 25 years later, the statement still holds true. 

Why? Because for brands across industries, it matters if they produce good content, especially for SEO purposes. 

Publishing high-quality content is the most effective way to boost rankings, drive traffic to your website, and generate marketing qualified leads. Good content is also more likely to be shared to other platforms, positioning your brand as an authority in its industry and growing trust with your audience.

Studies prove that customers inherently value the trust they have for a particular brand. Trust is the second most important factor for customers when making a decision on whether or not to make a purchase, following affordability in first place. And today more than ever, brands are being challenged to either live up to their customers expectations of trustworthiness, or fall behind their competitors. 

Good, original content also provides potential customers with the knowledge they need to make a confident purchase. Whether your target audience is looking to purchase a subscription to a meal plan service or is deciding between which law firm to handle their case, your content will aid them on their journey. 

Overall, prioritizing quality content for your SEO efforts will make a world of difference in how your existing and potential customers view your brand and choose to interact with it. 

Invest in Your SEO Effort With Boost by LEVERAGE™

Within the last year, 90 percent of consumers have used the internet to find a local business.  How does your content currently align with the image and value your brand is trying to portray? 

Over the last fourteen years, we’ve deployed SEO campaigns for hundreds of clients. Simply put, we know what works for your brand and what doesn’t. If you’re looking to improve SEO performance with quality content that speaks to your audience, we can help. 

To learn how Boost by LEVERAGE™ can help your brand, contact us today.

How to Elevate Your Digital Marketing With Video

When it comes to video marketing, 86 percent of marketers who use video report that it has been effective for generating leads. You may be wondering, “What is it about video marketing that makes it so impactful?” 

One of the most beneficial aspects is that it demonstrates your products or services in a more visually-engaging way than words or still images. In fact, 94 percent of marketers agree that video has helped increase user understanding about their products or services. Moving forward, video will continue to be an important tool in the branding toolbox. 

Here are some reasons why business owners and marketers benefit from investing in video, and ways you can incorporate video into your digital marketing efforts today.

Benefits of Video for Business Owners and Marketers

There are many benefits of video that business owners and marketers alike can enjoy. Let’s start with business owners. 

If you’re a business owner, video is more than just an attractive and trendy marketing tool. As mentioned previously, video has been proven to drive lead generation. Content that features authentic storytelling, shows off products and services, and builds trust with your audience helps grow qualified leads. 

With these leads comes more customers. And with more customers comes more revenue. In fact, 80 percent of businesses that use video report that it has helped them to increase sales. Utilizing video can also promote your brand’s unique personality, differentiating it from competitors in a saturated market.

For marketers, video provides another kind of value.

Video content on social media has a 1200 percent share rate compared to images and text combined. And, online videos make up more than 82 percent of all consumer internet traffic today. 

To reap the full benefits that video has to offer, it’s important to feature video content on website pages as well as in email newsletters. This is particularly beneficial for SEO purposes, helping to increase rankings and in turn increase visibility for the brand. When reporting results to clients and others in the C-suite, these heightened engagement rates, impressions, and conversions are sure to impress. 

Use Video to Tell Your Brand Story

The kinds of stories we tell about ourselves, and our brands, can make an immense difference in how consumers perceive and engage with us. If your brand is looking to tell its story, video may be a powerful medium to do so. 

Video storytelling can guide viewers through narratives that discuss their core values and spark an emotional connection. Through emotion, brands can connect on a more human level.

When telling your story through video, it’s important to define your goals, your audience, and your distribution channels. For example, a family-owned brand may have a goal of promoting their heritage story to connect with families like them. These videos may also be repurposed across social media platforms, television commercials, and paid search advertisements. 

Use Video to Build Trust

More than just visually appealing, video can help build trust for your brand among your audience. This trust serves as the foundation of long-lasting relationships between a brand and its customers. 46 percent of surveyed consumers report that they would be willing to pay more for a brand that they trust. 

Coherence and transparency through video can help customers feel more connected to a brand’s message. In addition to sharing an authentic brand story, video can help those skeptical about purchasing a product or investing in a service they’ve never used before. Video can answer frequently asked questions, demonstrate uses, and help customers troubleshoot in a more efficient way. 

By allowing these videos to live on your website and social media platforms, this provides your customers easy access to in-depth information about your brand, its products, and its services, at the click of a button.

Invest in Video for Your Digital Marketing Strategy

In 2020, 90 percent of consumers increased their video consumption habits. 9 out of 10 of these consumers also reported that they would like to see more brands and businesses utilizing video. Is your brand ready to elevate its storytelling, authenticity, trustworthiness, and value? 

Contact us today to learn more about what video can do for your brand.

3 Tips for Creating Engaging Email Newsletters

Are you ready to roll out an amazing email newsletter campaign for your brand? It takes a lot more than just typing out a few lines and pressing “send.” 

Creating engaging email newsletters can help increase your brand’s credibility, stay top of mind, encourage repeat purchases, and have a positive impact on brand loyalty.

Here are three tips you need to know to keep your customers opening your email newsletters.

1. Prioritize Headlines and Subject Lines

In 2022 alone, 332 billion emails are expected to be sent and received everyday, and it may feel like every last one of these emails are coming to your inbox. With so much clutter from other brands, how can your brand differentiate itself among the masses?

One way is to nail the headlines and subject lines. 

You’ll want to keep your headlines and subject lines short, sweet, and to the point. But, you’ll also want them to spark curiosity. 

For headlines, hint at what’s in the email newsletter, but don’t give it all away. Entice readers to open the email to find out more.

Subject lines with fewer than nine words tend to perform the best, and it’s recommended to stay under 60 characters. While emojis are fun, you should also stick to using only one in a subject line. 

A strong headline and subject line will keep customers engaged and interested in what your brand is offering. 

2. Make It Visual

It’s true what they say. First impressions can make or break your brand. 

That’s why it’s so important to not skimp on the visuals in your email newsletters. Think about yourself as the consumer. Do you want to read a text-heavy email with no images or appealing graphics? 

Odds are, you’ll click out of that email pretty quickly. So will your customers. 

A study conducted by Microsoft shows that the human attention span is also decreasing, dropping from 12 seconds to eight seconds since the year 2000. It’s crucial that you keep long-form copy to a minimum and break up content with images, dividers, buttons, and other graphics to help make the message flow. 

Remember, you can always link to a blog post or other page on your website that can offer more extensive information. But, once your readers are tuned out of an email, it’s very difficult to re-capture their attention.

3. Include a Powerful CTA

What is the purpose of your email newsletter? Is it to drive people to your website to read your blog posts? Or is it to advertise specials and new product or service releases?

Think about what action you want your readers to take. Then, include this in a powerful call-to-action at the end of your message. This call-to-action should be clearly-stated, bold, and easy to complete. 

For example, if you want customers to visit a product catalog on your website, be sure to link that page in an attention-grabbing way. Let your customer know what you want them to do and make it simple for them to do so. 

Use Email to Connect With Your Customers

If you want to speak directly to your customers, email is one of the best ways to do so. Through a regularly scheduled email newsletter campaign, you can keep customers up-to-date with what your brand is doing, as well as connect with them on a personal level. 

To see how we can help your brand develop and execute an effective email marketing strategy, request a consultation today. 

How to Determine an Appropriate Marketing Budget

Has your brand decided that it’s time to level up its marketing plan? One of the first steps is nailing down an appropriate marketing budget. Whether it’s for digital, traditional, or a combination of both, you’ll need to decide on the budget before any work begins. 

You may be wondering, “How do I know what to spend and how to spend it?” We can help. For a basic guide on how to determine your budget for marketing, read on.

Decide on Growth Objectives

Before locking down a marketing budget, growth objectives should be at the forefront of all marketing plans. Is your brand looking to abruptly skyrocket sales, or maintain the solid momentum it already has? 

Being specific with your growth objectives will provide marketers with a more clear direction for building a tailored strategy. If your goal is to maintain incremental growth for an extended period of time, your budget may be lower than if your goal is to significantly spike sales as soon as possible. 

While the solution to these two strategies will require different tactics, your budget will look different, too. A study conducted by Deloitte found that the average business spends about 13 percent of revenue on marketing. It’s important to have a strong grasp on your objectives to determine how much it might take to reach them.  

B2C vs B2B Marketing

Whether your brand markets to consumers or to other businesses, this will be another factor in how much you’ll spend on marketing.

When trying to reach consumers, brands are looking to build strong resonance. Brand resonance describes the extent in which consumers feel they are in sync with your company. This means that business to consumer marketing will focus on strengthening behavior loyalty, attitudinal attachment, sense of community, and active engagement to build brand equity. 

Marketing for consumers may be more emotionally driven with captivating and creative storytelling to inspire purchase. 

On the other hand, business to business marketing is typically more informational and technical, involving multiple parties in the decision making process. Marketing tactics will focus on product and service features heavily, and often work to appeal less to emotion and more to logic. 

Overall, brands typically spend more on marketing to consumers versus marketing to other businesses. Businesses that market to consumers typically spend anywhere from 10 percent to as much as 18 percent of revenue on marketing, while businesses that market to other businesses may spend anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent of revenue on marketing.

Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

Depending on your brand objectives and target audience, your strategy may include more digital marketing tactics like social media promotion and website design or more traditional marketing tactics like out of home advertising and product innovation. 

The last year has seen tremendous growth in digital marketing tactics across all industries. 

A survey conducted by Gartner found that nearly 60 percent of business’ marketing investments go toward digital marketing activity. This is in part due to the massive shift to online operations during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

If your brand is looking to drive revenue, sales, volume, and profit, digital marketing may be the right avenue. If your brand is looking to improve customer experience or enhance your existing products and services, traditional marketing may be a better option. 

Your target audience demographics and psychographics will also influence whether your brand incorporates a more digital or traditional strategy. Depending on your objectives, budget allocation for digital, traditional, and integrated marketing will vary.

Additional Tips for Estimating Your Marketing Budget

After determining your growth objectives, there are many other steps you can take to get started on planning your marketing budget. Some simple ways to get started are to:

Revisit last year’s spending 

Are you looking to maintain momentum or grow from last year? Nearly half of all companies set marketing budgets depending on the previous year’s costs 

Assess your competitors

What strategies are industry leaders employing to grow their business or maintain customer relationships? 

Estimate Cost Per Lead

Determining your cost per lead is simple. Take your projected marketing costs divided by the # of new leads you want to generate. For example, if you spend  $300,000 on marketing with a goal to attract 3,000 new people, then you’ll divide $300,000 by 3,000 to get a final cost of $100 per lead.

Estimate Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate is equal to the # of conversions you receive divided by the # of leads. This rate can help you determine how many of your leads are likely to convert.

Taking each of these steps can help you get a better idea on what you may need to spend on marketing. The best way to determine your marketing budget is to work with a trusted marketing agency. 

Start Planning Your Marketing Budget Today

It’s important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing your brand.  Deciding on what you should spend and how you should spend it requires extensive planning with professionals who are passionate about the success of your brand. Request a consultation with us today to get started on determining an appropriate marketing budget to reach your goals. 

The Keys to Growth in Subscription Box Ecommerce

One of the greatest areas of opportunity in business today is for existing subscription box brands. Today, nearly one-third of all US consumers subscribe to subscription box services. On average, each of these consumers spend 57 dollars per month on these boxes. 

Even if your subscription box service has an established audience, there are many ways to promote even further growth. 

So, what’s the secret to long-lasting success and customer retention? To learn more about our top tips on growing your subscription box ecommerce, read on for our basic guide. 

New Customer Acquisition

The truth is, most customers are not automatically attracted to subscription boxes. As you know, there is no magical energy that pulls them in. That’s why acquiring customers, and then keeping them, is such a difficult task. 

Offering a free or highly-discounted trial period can facilitate a “nothing to lose” mindset for apprehensive consumers. However, it’s crucial not to overinvest in these areas. If you’ve already started planning your customer acquisition marketing strategy, be sure not to neglect your returning subscribers. 

Focusing on the lifestyle of your target audience provides an exclusive offer they can’t resist. Catering to your audience’s everyday habits can help acquire more new customers to an already successful brand, but also keep them for the long haul.

Another tip is to prioritize word of mouth marketing. Influencer marketing is one of the most popular forms of marketing this year, and can be highly beneficial for growing your subscription box even further. If you’re in a unique niche, consider working with an influencer to reach even more of your viable target audience. 

Finally, use email marketing to your advantage. Consider that many potential customers will browse your website and products seeking trust symbols. By using opt-in forms and email sign ups on your website, you can learn valuable information about these potential customers as well as speak to them directly. 

Customer Experience

With a strong customer acquisition strategy under your belt, catering to a highly-personalized customer experience is another strong trend in the subscription box industry. 

More than ever before, customers are searching for products, services, and media specifically tailored to their needs. This trend is especially true in 2022, as consumers continue to turn to ecommerce versus traditional in-person shopping experiences. In fact, 91 percent of customers are more likely to buy from brands that cater to their personalized preferences. 

Allowing customers to curate their monthly box with preferences not only shows customers that you’re paying attention to their needs and wants, but it will also show that they can get something unique from your brand that they won’t find anywhere else. 

You may also consider asking your existing customers for user-generated content. Simply ask them to snap a photo or short video of their box at home and products in-use. Then, share these photos on your social media, website, and email marketing campaigns. 

This allows your customers to feel that they’re involved in an important relationship with your brand. It also allows other potential customers to see your products in action. 

Churn Reduction

Studies show that across all industries and services, cancellation rates of subscription boxes are at nearly 40 percent. Most cancellations also happen within the first six months. 

Are you experiencing higher churn rates than you’d like? And why are so many customers canceling their subscriptions?

One of the main reasons is that consumers are searching for an A to Z experience rather than a product. While flash sales and incentives can be great to attract new customers or increase sales for a short period of time, they likely won’t work to build long-term relationships and reduce churn.

Be sure that your subscription box continues to adapt over time and grow with your customers. Allow for continued opportunities for customization and curation, and welcome feedback along the way. 

You might also offer specials for your existing customers or a loyalty reward program. Even simple items like hand-written thank you cards can go a long way with existing customers. 

The key to reducing your churn rate is to focus on personalized experiences and tailored communication no matter how far along your business is.

Think Outside Of the Subscription Box: Growth for 2022 and Beyond

Ecommerce is an ever changing landscape of opportunities. Your subscription box service is no exception. That’s why it’s crucial to continuously develop your marketing strategy to grow with your customers and market competition.

Now that you know some of our top tips for subscription box success in 2022 and beyond, what are you waiting for? 

Request a complimentary consultation today.