The power of social media and digital marketing for today’s e-commerce SMEs cannot be overstated, as even long-established brands are having to pivot social media and digital marketing solutions to keep up with ever evolving customer needs. As a self-taught entrepreneur, Amy Knight, Director and Co-founder, has grown her e-commerce brand, Must Have Ideas, which sells unique ‘life hack’ goods, to a turnover of over £65 million. She began her SME journey with no previous experience in digital marketing. Below are her tips if you’re beginning your journey into social media marketing.
How to identify your audience and craft campaigns that resonate
It’s essential to identify your audience early and actually market to them correctly. One of the biggest mistakes new e-commerce businesses make is assuming that simply having a great product is enough. But customers don’t just buy goods and services, they buy solutions, convenience, and trust. If you don’t understand why someone would choose your brand over another then you’ll struggle to get traction. At Must Have Ideas, we always choose innovative products that customers are unable to purchase at the supermarket. We find problem-solving products that customers haven’t seen before.
Many UK shoppers will actively choose brands that align with their lifestyle, whether it’s sustainability, affordability or innovation. Your business needs to be positioned in a way that makes it clear why you’re the best option for your target audience.
Ask yourself:
● What problem does my product solve? Customers don’t buy random items; they buy something that makes their life easier or enriches it in some way.
● Who is my target customer? A business that tries to appeal to everyone ends up reaching no one.
● What makes my business different? If you can’t answer this in one sentence, then your customers won’t be able to either.
From very early on we identified our key demographic and where they were most likely to spend their time online. That’s why we spend around £2 million each month on Meta advertising. By creating highly targeted Facebook and Instagram ads and content we’ve been able to grow a large community around our brand and products.
The success of a business is dependent on implementing the correct marketing strategies, getting the right products to the right audience and how well it uses its data.
Using data to optimise campaigns for maximum ROI
Using data is the key to optimising campaigns and maximising your ROI. Within digital advertising, testing activities are essential and enable businesses to decipher what works and what doesn’t. Marketers often run multiple campaigns simultaneously, experimenting with different creative elements, ad formats and targeting options. This process, known as A/B testing (or multivariate testing when comparing higher variables), involves creating one or even several variations of advertisements and measuring their individual performance.
KPIs such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates and return on ad spend can provide insights into which ads resonate most with the audience. This approach is fundamental to Must Have Ideas as we continuously track, test and distribute a multitude of targeted and timely adverts to our customers.
For instance, it could be that a company assesses different versions of an Instagram ad to measure which one drives the most engagement. The data collected from these tests helps determine which creative elements (e.g. images, headlines, calls to action) are most effective with a specific audience. Once the best variation is identified, it can be recreated to reach a broader audience, which in turn should allow them maximum return on their investment.
Data also plays a massive role in audience targeting. Digital platforms such as Facebook, Google and TikTok offer sophisticated audience targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviours and interaction history. By analysing customer behaviour and preference data, marketers can create highly targeted campaigns that reach the most relevant audience.
For instance, an online fashion retailer might use data to identify that their most engaged audience consists of women aged 18-24 who have shown interest in sustainable fashion. Having access to this degree of insight would allow business owners and marketers to style their ads to this demographic.
Like advertising, data is invaluable for optimising e-commerce websites with the goal being to create the most seamless and engaging user experience possible to increase customer satisfaction and drive conversions.
Website optimisation involves the ongoing testing of different web page elements such as headlines, images, product descriptions and call-to-action buttons. Tools like Google Analytics Heatmaps allow businesses to track how visitors interact with their site and armed with bounce rate, average session duration and conversion rate metrics, marketers can gain immense insight into what works best and what needs improving.
For example, an e-commerce site might test different versions of a product page to see which one leads to more sales. They might experiment with alternative product images, descriptions and even pricing layouts. By analysing the data from these tests, they can identify the most effective combination and roll it out across their site.
Innovative approaches such AI-driven video content to stand out
It’s also essential for today’s e-commerce companies to continuously innovate and try new things to keep customers interested and coming back. At Must Have Ideas, our ambition was to start a TV shopping channel, but with the traditionally high costs of 24/7 live broadcasting, it was proving difficult to fund. It’s why we decided to launch an AI-powered shopping channel, which builds upon our digital and social media strengths and appears as live to customers.
Identifying how our shopping channel could drive a new era of growth and income has been key to recent growth, both in financial turnover and staff recruitment. It proves that once you know what works for your brand, that isn’t the end of the journey. E-commerce businesses need to continuously innovate in order to bring in new revenue streams. It isn’t just enough to find out what works and continue to rely on that but to use what works and continue to develop, innovate and progress from that knowledge.
Focus on your niches and what makes your brand unique – maybe it’s through your products, your inspiring story or the excellent customer experience you provide, these are the things you can leverage in social media marketing and will keep your customers coming back.