As 2019 comes to an end, most business owners are thinking about two things; filing taxes and coming up with a marketing strategy for 2020. While we do not provide advice on taxes, we can certainly recommend our partners over at Gusto to make your life easier when it comes to filing your payroll taxes. We do, however, provide expert recommendations on Marketing Your Jewelry Store in 2020.
As a business owner, do you ever feel like marketing is just a blackhole for your business? When was the last time you ran a marketing campaign and saw crystal clear results and a positive return on investment? For most retail stores, it’s actually pretty rare to have a marketing company that provides indisputable evidence of a return on investment. After all, if your current marketer provided you that level of confidence, you likely wouldn’t have clicked on this article.
For many years, online businesses have been using Pixels, Cookies, Landing Pages, Google Analytics, SEO, and a number of other tools providing them trackable marketing. All these tools when used correctly affords eCommerce operators a deeper analysis into the health of their business. For example, they can better understand their customer journeys, the lifetime value of their customers, and even their customer acquisition cost.
While most of these tools were originally developed for the online world, new technologies are quickly emerging allowing retail store owners to become more competitive. We believe all retailers should have a healthy mix when it comes to their marketing for best results. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket in the event that basket doesn’t yield more eggs. Below we will attempt to outline some of our recommendations for marketing your jewelry store in the new year.
First and foremost, you need to establish a budget. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, you should be spending between 7-8% of your total gross sales on marketing every year. For the sake of using easy numbers, we will outline a strategy using $500,000 in annual gross sales.
7.5% x $500,000 in gross revenue = $37,500 marketing budget.
If your retail business is doing under $5,000,000 in annual sales, you should have a lot of room for growth. In addition, if your net profit margins are over 10%, then you really should be reinvesting in your business. To be clear, your net profits should be after you pay yourself. We are not asking you to forego your salary to market your business.
While spending thousands of dollars on marketing can be scary, the reality is, it’s a necessary force to acquire new customers in your market. So long as your sales can justify your spending, you will come out on top. Money goes out, money comes in, a concept as old as time.
As the whole world has transitioned to digital, the buyer’s journey for the typical consumer has changed a lot and this needs to be addressed. Ten years ago, people were reading the newspaper and magazines on a daily basis. While older demographics are still reading print, you should be focused on other avenues if you want to reach folks buying engagement rings. Let’s consider the following statistics:
- 68% of ALL Americans use Facebook
- 74% of Facebook users access the site daily
- The average US Facebook consumer spends more than 35 minutes per day on the site
- 96% of users access Facebook via a mobile phone
- Facebook owns Instagram
We could go on all day but, hopefully you get the point. Your existing customers and your potential customers are all on Facebook. In our experience, most businesses are already on Facebook too. If that’s the case, then why aren’t they acquiring a bunch of new customers?
In order to run successful marketing campaigns, your business needs to be laser focused on capturing your existing customer data.
We recommend you start by looking at your existing point of sale system. If you are using a POS (point of sale) that allows you to store customer information, this is a gold mine when it comes to marketing. More specifically, if you are able to export that data, it can be used for nearly ALL of your marketing execution. If your system doesn’t allow you to both capture and export data, we suggest looking at more modern systems.
With data comes clarity. Let’s run a quick exercise to see how much you know about your business. If you know the answer to the below questions, give yourself a 1, if you don’t know the answer, give yourself a 0. At the end, tally up your total score (0-10).
- What are my top 3 zip codes for biggest spenders?
- What age ranges are most profitable?
- What do customers spend over their lifetime at my business (Lifetime Value)?
- How often do my customers visit (Customer Visit Frequency)?
- What does an average customer spend?
- How much does it cost to acquire a customer (CAC)?
- What are my customers top professions?
- What income ranges do my customers belong to?
- Which fiscal quarter has the highest volume?
- How many new vs. repeat customers do you have?
Below we have provided a grading scale. If you scored poorly, rest assured we are only here to help.
A: 9-10 range
B: 7-8 range
C: 5-6 range
D: 3-4 range
F: 0-2 range
The first step towards a more profitable business is to seek answers to the above questions using your in-store data. There are many software’s out there that can do a lot of this work for you. You should never rely 100% on a human being to come up with the answers for you. While humans are great at being creative, we would prefer to rely on algorithms to provide us clean data.
Once you have the answers, you can start marketing your business.
Social Media (30% of the budget = $11,250)
Running targeted social media marketing campaigns is one of the most cost effective outlets to connect with your existing customers and to seek out new ones. You can still put out your daily organic posts but, your focus should be on running ads to reach the correct audiences. We recommend using both Custom and Lookalike audiences as well as Detailed Targeting.
A Custom Audience is simply the audience in which you want to serve ads to across Facebook and Instagram. By using your existing customer’s emails and phone numbers, you can actually serve them ads to keep your business top of mind (remember, consumers login to Facebook daily and spend over 35 minutes browsing on average).
A Lookalike Audience allows you to leverage your existing data (names, emails, and phone numbers) to serve ads to people in the area most similar to your current shoppers. Facebook actually uses a rather complex algorithm that will match millions of data points to connect you with new potential customers.
Detailed Targeting is perhaps the secret weapon of digital marketing. Consumers are constantly offering up information about themselves on the Internet; recently engaged, shopping for wedding dresses, celebrating an anniversary, graduating from college, etc. This information can be used to target people with ads based off of their specific interests and behaviors.
Google Ads (20% of the budget = $7,500)
Google is also extremely good at knowing what your existing and potential customers are currently in the market for. After all, they didn’t start out offering Gmail for free out of the goodness of their hearts. Google is the undisputed king when it comes to search. While their platform is arguably more confusing than Facebook’s, being able to display customers ads based off their search inquiries is quite powerful. For example, if someone is searching for “diamond engagement ring” in your city, you can actually ensure your business pops up first.
While there’s less trackable tools for measuring your offline sales using Google Ads, it is simple to determine the amount of leads you are generating through insights such as people clicking to call your business or getting directions to your store via Google Maps.
As a result, we rank Google quite high in terms of your overall budget as they offer a great outlet to connect directly with consumers searching for the products you sell.
Direct Mail (15% of the budget = $5,625)
While Direct Mail may seem like going back in time, your customers are likely checking their mail on a daily basis. Utilizing the data you’ve captured in-store via your POS system allows you to target your customers at their homes. This is actually a great way to bring back lapsed customers, target folks with upcoming birthdays or anniversaries, help push inventory that’s been sitting a while, or just get the word out about your holiday promotions or private events.
While it’s much cheaper to reach your customers digitally, getting a physical cardstock in the hands of your customers is a great way to gain impressions and drive foot traffic. If you are wanting to seek out new customers, you can rely on tools like Facebook Insights to understand which zip codes are most popular amongst your social media followers.
Be sure to hire a professional designer to create your mailers. A subpar flyer that looks thrown together can do permanent damage to the perception of your brand amongst people who have never shopped with your before. This expense should be part of your overall allocated budget for Direct Mail.
Website, SEO, & Blogging (15% of your budget = $5,625)
Having an online presence is absolutely critical to your success, especially in the year 2020. While we have only allocated 15% of your budget to this category, you can purchase a high-quality WordPress website these days for $1,000 through online marketplaces like Fiverr or Upwork (be sure to check the reviews). Much like your business, your website should be constantly evolving and setup to capture customer data.
While paid advertising is much quicker to yield results, search engine optimization (SEO) and blogging can also lead to quality paying customers. This is where the bulk of your website spending should come into play. By constantly writing informative articles and putting out content, search engines will start to recognize your business as a local authority in your trade.
Over time, your business will start to rank higher in search results. While paid ads always show up first, savvy consumers have grown privy to ads and will skip the ads all together by scrolling past them. Nearly all consumers will click one of the first five organic (non-paid) listings when seeking out new products and services. If you aren’t showing up in your local markets search results, we recommend investing the funds to ensure that you do.
Radio & TV (15% of your budget = $5,625)
While both Radio and TV make it more difficult to target people with an appetite for jewelry, it still can be an effective means to reach specific demographics in the masses. According to the Nielsen’s 2019 Audio Today Report, 272 million Americans listen to traditional radio every week, an increase of 7 million or about 2.5 percent, from 2016’s figures. While some may suggest that it’s only older demographics listening to the radio and watching local cable television, the studies actually reveal that many younger demographics such as millennials are tuning into the radio on a weekly basis.
We recommend catering your Radio or TV campaigns to speak to your specific audiences that you are trying to reach. For example, running ad campaigns on a Catholic radio station could be a good outlet to promote Rosary’s or cross necklaces. Just a loose suggestion for starters but, the more specific your campaign is to the audience, the better the results.
Finally, when running a radio campaign, you need to make sure the message is memorable. Choosing a catchy jingle is always recommended. If you can get your commercial stuck in the heads of your potential consumers, they are likely to remember your brand when it comes time to purchase. Also, you should hire a professional copyrighter for your script. The success of your campaign all starts with the script.
Email Marketing (5% of your budget = $1,875)
Email marketing is a very effective and cheap way to advertise your business. In fact, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average retailer should anticipate a $32 return. For jewelry stores with higher average tickets, that figure is likely pretty low.
When it comes to running successful email campaigns, you want to take a data-driven approach. For example, when using the right tools, you can actually target your lapsed customers who haven’t shopped with you for a while. These are the folks you want to incentivize to come back. We recommend offering them a coupon or discount to get them back in.
On the flip side, you don’t want to discount items to your regular shoppers. Instead, you can offer them engaging content. Your emails shouldn’t be too wordy. It’s better to be more concise and to the point. If they are engaged, they can always click a button to continue reading. For example, you could send an email showcasing your unique skill set for hand-engraving or create some content regarding lab-grown diamonds to educate your clientele. The key is not to sell. You don’t want your content to come off as ‘salesy”. Instead, the key is to educate.
To summarize our recommendations, we always suggest retailers have a healthy mix when it comes to their marketing. Every business is different, therefore, you will get different responses on your marketing outcomes. For 2020, retail store owners need to get serious about their data collection which all starts at the point of sale and/or your credit card processing data. If you aren’t seamlessly building a Customer Database with every swipe of a credit or debit card, you should really consider upgrading your technology. Social Media marketing should be your biggest focus moving forward followed by paid search. Direct mail is still effective but you need to make sure you have both quality content and a quality printer. Don’t be cheap on the flyers, your brands perception is incredibly important as a jewelry store. If you don’t have a responsive or high quality website, get one. It’s going to be 2020 and your customers are searching for you on the Internet. They expect you to have a quality web presence if they are going to buy from you. All age demographics are still listening to the radio and watching TV. You should be creative in who you want to reach and conduct research on where to reach them. Finally, you should be engaging with your customers via email marketing. This is a very cheap medium to win customers back and increase your customer visit frequency. Be sure to avoid sending spam emails to make a quick sale. Instead, create highly engaging and interesting content. If it sounds like you are trying to sell something, scrap it and start over.
Interested in working with an expert? Schedule a 20-30 minute product demo today.
