Category: Business Strategy

An Elevated Holiday Shopping Customer Experience

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Holidays are approaching, and shoppers are ready to make purchases. You need to be on your A-Game and be prepared to give your customers a great shopping experience, whether that’s online or in a brick and mortar retail store. It’s not all about holiday deals, for many shoppers it’s the overall experience that can make or break a sale. We have some great pointers that will elevate your customer experience this holiday season.

First Impressions
The tone is set the moment a shopper walks into your store. Now is not the time to make your sales staff do double duty as salesman and door greeter. They need to focus their energy on the additional customers that appear this time of year. Hire greeters to free up your sales staff. They make sure each shopper that walks through the door receives a warm welcome. They help direct the customer to the proper person or area within the store and can alert shoppers to new products, sales products, demos or events you may have going on in your store.

From an online perspective, chatbots take the place of in-store greeters and salesmen. They can be programmed to answer questions regarding products, holiday deals, warranties, shipping, and more. This makes the online shopper feel they are getting a personalized experience.

Gratitude & Appreciation
Your customers could have shopped anywhere, but they chose your store. Show them you appreciate them. Thank them verbally for stopping by whether they bought anything or not. Make sure your greeter thanks everyone who leaves the store. Consider a pre-printed thank you card that you give shoppers with their receipt. The card can do double duty if you include a discount offer for the next time they shop with you, tell them more about your after-sales services or include other messages you’d like shoppers to know about. This translates easily to online sales by including a thank you and discount offer email after their purchase.

Spread Holiday Cheer
These days, a lot of your customer base is shopping online and never sets foot in the store. Use that as an opportunity to get personal across your social media channels. Extend friendly holiday greetings, share end-of-year deals, and market gift ideas through social media. Tag brands that your store carries to reach more people. Make sure your website is updated with available products, deals, and holiday banners.

With the above tips, you should be set to make a memorable impression on your customers and have an amazing holiday sales season. If you’re not sure how to implement An Elevated Holiday Customer Experience or need help with your holiday sales strategy or promotional items, we’re here to help, so just contact us.

Client Dashboards: Understanding Your Data

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If you don’t know your data, you may not be making good business decisions. You may have access to your data, but do you understand what it means? Andrew Ansley from Raven.com states, “The key to effective marketing is to have a solid handle on the data. If you’re not paying attention to how your various marketing channels – organic, paid, social media, and email – are performing, you’ll end up wasting time and money, losing potential customers in the process.”

At Riley & You, we couldn’t agree more. We want our clients to have a handle on their data, and our Client Dashboards provide an organized, simple, clean home for that. Our team works with you to develop and adjust a marketing strategy based on the data. Here are a few points to keep in mind:

  • Data Drives Decisions. You can’t make good business decisions without good data. Just like a business owner can’t run a successful business unless they pay attention to their sales data, you need to pay attention to your marketing data too. It tells you who is looking at your product and what they are buying. Data is the key to improving your ROI on your marketing dollars. 
  • Data Points Matter. In this digital age, there is no shortage of data that is available to you. But do you know which data points actually matter? The ones that are important to you might not be important to another business – it all depends on your objectives. Riley & You customizes our approach to your data because we know which metrics matter the most to you and will help you achieve your goals. 
  • Dashboards Display Data Effectively. A Marketing Dashboard is like a dashboard on your car; it gives you all the important data you need in one accessible location. For Riley & You clients, we create a custom dashboard page that displays data in a way that’s easy to understand with graphs and charts. We customize it to fit your goals and tracks your KPIs. You have access to this dashboard any time and can even track the money you have spent in online marketing.  
  • We Utilize Your Data. Having all your data in one place is ideal. But having someone you can call to help you understand, review, and evaluate the data is even better. Best of all is knowing that your marketing team is utilizing that data to make adjustments to your marketing plans so that you continue to get the most bang for your buck.

At Riley & You, we use dashboards as a reference for our clients to understand what’s going on “behind-the-scenes.” When you understand what all the data means, then you can make informed decisions about your business, your marketing plan, and your budget. Call us today to let us get started creating a dashboard for your business!

Creating Content That Matters

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Content creators are different from content consumers, and the success of your marketing strategy depends on the content you create. According to Forbes, “Creating new, frequent and insightful content is a healthy and necessary practice of business in any industry. Many companies choose not to allocate the time and resources towards content creation, and in doing so they often fall short of their marketing goals.”

Content is all about building your audience. When you position yourself as an expert through your content, it establishes your brand as a trustworthy source with your audience. Over time, you build a library of content that improves your SEO. This, in turn, creates more inbound leads and web views and supplements your inbound marketing.

Creating new, quality content is very time-consuming. We know that you may not be an expert writer or graphic designer and that you are focused on running your business, not just creating content. At Riley & You, we focus on three things to help you create content.

  1. Trending – We stay on top of the latest trends to know what your audience is looking for. We know what kind of posts are the most popular and generate the most leads for your business.
  2. Customizing – We create custom content that is specific for your business and your customers. Once we know your target market, our team of experts goes to work creating content your audience will want to read. 
  3. Engaging – Our team knows your audience wants content that is smart and easy to read. We also know how to avoid spam and content that is useless for your audience, and we track the data in order to know what content works and what doesn’t. Then we adapt in order to keep your audience engaged and sharing the content.

Take a look at these examples of content we’ve created for some of our clients and you’ll see that we practice what we preach.

  • This blog from Friedman’s Appliances created customized content that capitalizes on the struggle consumers feel when trying to purchase a new stove and frames it like a personality test in order to engage the audience and deliver quality content. 
  • This blog from Appliance Gallery may not seem like an appliance-related article. However, we recognize that part of their market is designers and trend-setters. Providing relevant content like the Color of the Year can expose their brand to even more designers by giving them content they can use. 
  • This content from Buckhead Vacuums positions them as an expert on this topic. It also gives their audience the information they need to make decisions about their purchases. It asks them engaging and relevant questions, and the format makes it easy to read. 
  • This blog from Distinctive Appliances capitalizes on their audience’s desire for luxury living and features engaging pictures of their products. Lists such as “Top Five…” are trending and we know how to combine eye-catching photos with creative content to showcase your brand in list form. 

Riley & You is here to help you create quality content that matters to your brand and to your audience. Plus we work across many platforms including social media, blogs, newsletters and print to get all the pieces to work seamlessly together. Contact us today for a business strategy to take your content to the next level.

Marketing to the Generations

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Understanding generational characteristics is essential in connecting with your market. When we approach potential customers with the mindset and intention of beginning a new relationship, trust and loyalty will follow.  By studying generational behaviors, we can gain insight to drive sales, marketing, and measurable results.

When looking at the generational sales market, there are 4 key groups to consider.

  • Baby Boomers represent a post-WWII boom in the birth rate from 1946-1964.
  • Gen X-ers came of age during a surge in divorce rates and a new trend of both parents working.
  • Millennials (born 1977-1995) were affected by Facebook’s birth and the early adoption of social media around 2004 and The Great Recession in 2008.
  • Up-and-coming Gen Z is the most influential group of technology trendsetters.

To connect with various generations, it is key to familiarize yourself with their background and characteristics. Learning to communicate with specific generations in their preferred format (ie: sending text follow-ups to Millenials) is the gateway to understanding their needs. Once you know their needs and desires, communication preferences, and buying habits, you can market and sell effectively.

Do you struggle to connect with your market? While it’s often easy to understand and relate to those in a similar life stage, knowing how to market to other generations can be a challenge. Through studying generational behaviors, we gain insight to drive sales, marketing, and measurable results. Let our team create an effective marketing strategy for your business today.

The Power of a Great Headline: Using the Curiosity Gap to Sell

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One of the most important elements of digital marketing is writing a great headline or email subject line. It makes your audience want to open the email or click to read more. It prompts them to take the next step toward making a purchase. It’s an essential component of your marketing campaign, but it can also be very difficult to craft.

The key to creating a successful digital marketing campaign is the headline or subject line. You need to know your audience and know what works the best. The most popular types of headlines are list posts, how-to posts, resource posts, question posts and heart to heart posts. Effective headlines give the subject, but also make your audience want to find out more.

At Riley & You, we have the experience and the time to help you craft the right message. We know that you don’t want to use cheap clickbait headlines because they chase clicks and gossip without fulfilling content. They’re written for scanners rather than readers. But they are effective because they open the curiosity gap and make your audience curious about finding the answer. There are ways to open the curiosity gap without the bait and switch, and we know how to make them curious and lead them to real knowledge that comes from an expert – you.  

At Riley & You, we also take the time to track the results. We don’t chase clicks that make it look like the campaign was successful. We focus on click-through rates for emails, blog titles and Facebook ads in order to understand which style of headline is the best for connecting your audience to your content. Then we adjust the messaging to fit what works for them.

If you have been discouraged with your email marketing open and click-through rates, the problem may be in your subject line. We know that email is still a powerful marketing tool because it is the only digital platform where you have complete control of your message and don’t have to compete with an algorithm for market share. In fact, many people prefer that companies contact them through email, and it has a great ROI.

At Riley & You, we can help you harness the power of headlines. You may have great content, but if your reader doesn’t connect with your subject line, you won’t see the results you want. Contact us today to learn how our team can help you take your digital marketing campaign to the next level.