Customers trust you with their branding needs, so ensure yours is also on point from the moment the customer locks eyes at your building, enters your showroom and so on. Catching a customer’s attention visually is key, whether this is in-store with visuals, point of sales materials and Marketing collateral or outside branded with visuals, decorated windows or sandwich boards with your last offers, promotions and latest range of products.

Along with this consider things like promotional giveaways and merchandise giveaways branded with your info and details, branded samples and swatches. Anything that enhances your businesses brand that may also come useful for your customer.

You can also extend your offers to be store only. Offer showroom specific offers, discounts and incentives which can only be used by visiting your store, give people a reason to visit you.

Combining all these factors makes for an enticing store which hopefully both existing and prospective customers will visit. Offer a professional appearance, service and give customers a reason to go one step further than picking up the phone or searching for you on Google.

It allows them to visit you, see the quality product and proposition you offer, chat to you, get a feel for your business and brand. Despite the steady year on year growth of personalised clothing being sold online, there is still no replacement for seeing the quality of both a product and a service.

Do not just our word for it.

First and foremost - what is it we offer?

What are the other 'options'?

What about us?

Again do not just take our word for it...

To get your business thriving online in the post-COVID era we have put together some advice to help you achieve success with an ecommerce website.

Ensure the website layout is mobile & tablet friendly: An almost essential for a website which is still overlooked by many. Your website needs to look great on both a desktop PC/laptop and a mobile & tablet. Customers shopping from home are looking for a crisp, easy user experience to buy their goods online.

Mirror how you work in-store online: Make sure users know all about your knowledge & expertise. Customers previously would have potentially visited your store to find out about your products, service, and branding methods. With this being limited ensure this can be found online to put their minds at ease and help with any queries.

Communicate with your customers through the website: A simple point inexplicably overlooked, provide clear call to actions (CTAs) for customers. Make it easy for them to reach out to you, this can also be through the use of chat bots and live chat facilities.

Set up designated areas for your customers: There will be exiting customers – schools, clubs, businesses who will want to re-order. Provide them their very own shop facility to make their repeat orders simple.

Keep products & prices up to date: This is a mammoth task, but one that needs to be considered. Products are continuously dis-continued and added from suppliers with prices often changing. There are website solutions from wholesalers that manage this aspect but are extremely limited and tie you in to using their products offering no choices or flexibility. Create a website selling the products you want at the prices you want.

Keep your website safe & secure: Customer information needs to be safe & secure and since the introduction of GDPR this is under more scrutiny than ever before. Your website needs an SSL certificate to appear safe in your customers browsers. If it does not have one it will display an error and give your customers a poor user experience or cast doubt in their mind.

Taking payments online: Something not many consider when looking for an ecommerce website, you need a secure payment processor and checkout plus in most cases a merchant account. There is often a monthly cost to these services from banks & payment providers.

Lastly, consider the costs of building an ecommerce website. The garment decoration industry is unique and to build a solution from scratch with products and branding options is complex and expensive. An ecommerce solution may not tick every box a bespoke website does, but it will save you £1000s in development and increase your businesses sales post COVID.

For more information or to book an online demo to see how we could help your print & embroidery business with its website email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2074 1663

Similar with other Online Marketing tools, look at things like Sponsored Ads on Social Media, Google Adwords and identify if there is opportunity for your business. Plan a strategy, budget and build all the key words ready to go live to your audience once business is fully operational.

You might think all this sounds a bit costly. Where will the budget come from with cashflow being tight, it is a great opportunity for a bit of Marketing DIY. Grow your knowledge, skills and carry out the review and analysis. Plus there is also a chance to broaden your skillset and carry out these ideas yourself learning on the go, familiarising yourself with Social Media channels, or testing our different pieces of software for CRM, Email Campaigns, Social Media scheduling and so on.

It is an unprecedented time that presents many challenges but the optimistic business owner the freed up time is a great opportunity to look at your business, think of where it was, where it is now and think of where you want it to be in a year’s time. Use the time to develop your skills and your business, time wasted is time lost.

There are a few things to consider when using an automated approach:

• Define your goals & outcomes: What is your campaigns end goal? What data is relevant to be collected and collated? Knowing your aims & goals allows you to decipher what data is the most relevant and appropriate to use.
• Complete a data audit: Your business probably has an abundance of data readily available. Data from Analytics, Webmasters & Ads plus any CRM data or transactional data from previous orders and enquiries. Assess this data and work out what is relevant, what can be used and what would provide value to your business and its online efforts.
• Consider external data sources: Alongside having data about existing customers, creating an online profile for a new potential customer is essential. Use public data sources such as Google Trends, UK Data Service and other readily available datasets to identify any existing online retail trends.

Undertaking Machine Learning & utilising AI in Marketing is in its infancy for businesses with only large multi-nationals having the facilities and resources to build bespoke software to fully utilise it. But there are a growing number of software available for small businesses to utilise with the pick of the bunch being Phraseee, Optimove, Rapidminer and Automat.

1. Create/claim a Google my Business listing: Creating a listing for your business helps your business get found for local searches with minimum fuss. Google my Business provides customers a whole host of information including opening times, customer reviews, products and services you provide.

2. Add your business to credible online directories: Adding your business to relevant online directories such as Yell, Yelp etc is a straightforward way to ensure your business gets found online locally. Ensure these are kept, valid and up to date.

3. Ensure your website is indexed: Use Google Search Console to index your sitemap and ensure that Google bots scan your website. To check how many pages are indexed type site:yourwebsite.co.uk into Google.

4. Test your mobile site speed: There is a growing importance on  how websites perform on mobiles/smart devices. Speed is playing a larger part in determining how your site ranks, use Google Test My Site to check how your site performs, it will identify performance, areas to improve etc.

5. Make sure these is a page title in place: Ensure all your webpages have page titles in place describing what you do, these are the first thing Google bots scan on your page.

6. Use long tailed keywords: It would take a lot of time/effort to get found for terms like workwear, shirts, polo shirts etc so use longer keywords in your on-site content. For example, branded polo shirts, personalised workwear London etc.

7. Build content for people, not robots: You are garment decorators, print and embroidery enthusiasts. Write about your passion, your business, its products and services then hopefully it will naturally get picked up for many key terms. Often people write ‘out of shape’ content focusing on keywords which is not entirely customer friendly.

8. Create quality links: Inbound links are another thing to consider helping your page rank in search engines. Collaborate with customers, local schools, sports clubs, businesses and link back and forth to each other, creating an online shop/testimonials page is always a common method employed by garment decorators.

9. Start a blog: Create a blog for your customers sake, not for SEO purposes. Content Marketing at its finest, produce quality, relevant content frequently and Google will reward you. This can include things like latest news, case studies, latest news etc.

10. Encourage reviews: Ask customers to use Google reviews, this will help give your results more prominence in the search results.

The industry leading software for email campaigns, Mailchimp is recognised worldwide. Ideal for small businesses, it offers a forever free package (up to 2000 customers/12000 emails) which includes basic features, easy to use drag and drop templates. The choice for small businesses, the free version also allows segmenting, so you can tailor your message for different types of customers and their behaviours.

Like Mailchimp their forever free package offers up to 12000 emails to 2000 customers and 100s of templates to customise. Where Zoho stands out is the A/B testing that is included in the free plan, test different subject lines for each campaign and monitor them with Zoho’s more concise and in -depth analytics. Recommended for users looking for a more analytical and scientific approach to email campaigns.

An interesting option Email Octupus offers a free of charge ‘Shrimp’ plan where you can send unlimited emails to up to 2500 customers. This offers plenty of templates and great value for customers looking to produce a larger amount of email campaigns. However, there is a compromise the functionality is basic and there is no automation (paid customers only), prepare to be more ad-hoc and produce emails as and when you need to send out a campaign.

Benchmark is visually the most pleasing of all the email templates. They have 100s of simple, elegant designs that are easy to customise. Benchmarks functionality is limited with only very basic features but just tops Mailchimp and Zoho’s useage with 14000 emails to 2000 subscribers. Benchmark is the ideal software to make a striking impression and communicate to your customers in a contemporary way.

Freshmail on the surface does not match the heights of other providers with free plans only available for up to 500 subscribers. But where it differs from the others that emails can be customised and designed using several templates using their mobile/tablet app. Customise on the go and create aesthetically pleasing campaigns anytime, anyplace.

Mailerlite offers easy to use drag and drop templates for up to 1000 customers free of charge. As well as unlimited sends the tools provided in Mailerlite is comprehensive compared to the others mentioned in the list, personalising, segmenting and A/B testing and some automation features are all readily available in the free plan.

2019 promises to be an interesting year with the introduction of new technologies being used as part of the Marketing Mix. 

Here are three key trends to keep an eye on in the upcoming year:

Chatbots: There are no such thing as opening hours online, customers have access to your business, its website and Social Media 24/7. Chatbots are becoming more and more important to deal with your customers queries on demand. 

Frequently used on Facebook to help customers communicate with your business Chatbot usage is expected to rapidly grow. 

Chatbots can be integrated in a website, app or on your business’s social media accounts, they can act quicker than humans in dealing with customer requests and can provide a more personalised service by gathering user information that can later be used to tailor your businesses Marketing campaigns.

VR/AR: Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality are seen by many as a Sci-Fi like future, but they are very much here and slowly creeping their way into businesses Marketing activity. This is still at very early stages and for the foreseeable future will begin to grow exponentially but it’s a great time for businesses to invest and explore the options. 

VR/AR gives your customers the chance to be both engaging with your products/services and actively participating in your Marketing activity in ‘another reality’ putting them at the heart of your business.

Voice Search: 2019 is widely expected to see a significant growth in voice searches & queries - almost 1/3 of the 3.5 billion searches performed in 2018 were carried out by voice assistant devices such as Apple Siri, Google Home & Amazon Alexa leading the way.

This is expected to grow to almost 50% of searches in 2019. Your online presence needs to consider optimising content specifically for Voice Searches, focusing on ‘Position Zero’, Local SEO and creating content around questions your customers may ask.

To get the most from these promotions here are a few simple pointers to get you started:

Start planning now: Plan your promotions in advance, build up suspense with your customer base and let them know of any upcoming offers and savings in advance whether its in-store, on Social Media or via an Email Campaign.

Create specific page copy: Plan the products or services you are going to offer savings on. Ensure your website is optimised with product pages for these specific items. Point customers in the right direction and ensure your user experience is customer focused, they are not afraid to shop around when it comes to huge savings!

Create eye catching content: Whether it is for your businesses website, Social Media or to be distributed to your list of customer contacts creating eye catching content significantly increases click through rates.

Plan for an upsurge: Ensure your website can deal with increased volumes of traffic, too many page requests can slow the site down or crash the site itself. Test your website using tools like Loadimpact.com to ensure the server that your hosts your businesses website can take the strain.

Test, test, test: Before any of your promotions, artwork and copy goes live test your processes and ensure your site is fully prepared, functioning and operating as you would expect with the new pages, copy etc. Get another set of eyes from a team member and gain feedback.

Some businesses go as far as offering loyal customers a first glance ‘Exclusive’ access to a flash sale. This is used to gain customer feedback, fine tune and tweak their offering to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible in time for the main event.

Whether you love it or hate it, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here to stay for the foreseeable future. The chances are if you are not taking part, your competitors are. If you think it would be something that would add value to your business dip your toes in, start planning and prepare a campaign using these few simple pointers.

Test your equipment: Prior to going live, before any trial run ensure that all your equipment is in full working order. Ensure your laptop/desktop/smart device is running at full capacity. Having a slow device or a device with a chance of break may affect how well your video is produced. You want to produce a quality professional video not one that may end at any given moment.

Have a trial run: Before going live have a run-through, it should be both scripted and un-scripted. You want to know what you are going to talk about, but you also want to mix this with more personable chat with viewers, this leads to higher levels of engagement. Test the equipment, have a few run throughs and once you are 100% confident flick the switch and go live.

Engage with customers: Quite a simple but important one, engage with people live. Use their names, interact, ask questions, thoughts and try get their feedback. A Facebook Live video and any webinar should be a two-way experience.

Invest in a microphone: Invest in a good-quality microphone to deliver your customers a crystal-clear message, you don’t want your video to be muffled, voice distorted or break up. Investing in decent quality recording equipment will improve your recording experience, the streams quality for both you and your viewers.

Schedule your broadcast: People working won’t have time for webinars. Ensure that your broadcast takes place outside of working hours, viewing figures are likelier to be higher outside of the hours of 9-5, an early evening slot gives you the chance to expand your audience and its potential reach compared to doing it during the day.

Don't forget to promote: Running a successful webinar is one thing but don’t forget to promote it for a few weeks, build up hype through Social Media, Email Campaigns, Blogging or whatever other advertising medium you use.

One last thing to consider, something very-obvious but after watching numerous webinars test out your internet connection. Test that the signal strength is all okay and ensure that there are no disruptions to your live video.