How To Promote Your Website In Your Global Retail Strategy–Omni-Channel Edition
By Miggy Bondoc
Our digital experience has become a big part of our lives. So it's no wonder that many retail brands have incorporated part of it in their global strategy.
Gartner reported that 50% of big companies and organizations "failed to unify engagement channels," which ruins the customer experience. Your user interaction is crucial as it can increase your customers or diminish them.
Suppose you're wondering what you can do to make your customer's online experience more unified regarding engagement and digital connectivity. In that case, you will have to build a global retail strategy suitable for your international users.
To learn more about this and how you can get started, keep on reading!
What Is An Omni-Channel Retailing Strategy?
Let's first define an omni-channel. It's an approach wherein companies access their offers, products, and customer support to their customers and prospects in various channels and platforms across different devices.
Omni-channel channel retail strategy combines the omni-channel approach in your retail marketing and sales to have a fully-integrated buyer's experience.
Before the pandemic, many well-known brands integrated this strategy for their "brick and mortar" stores. Some services need to be done in person and cannot be done online, such as salon appointments. Nordstrom had considered when implementing omni-channel retailing. Their customers would order online and pick them up at their "brick and mortar" store.
Later on, we will guide you on implementing omni-channel retailing and a global retail strategy to promote your website.
How To Promote Your Website For Your Global Retail Strategy?
When it comes to how to promote your website, you will need to build a distinct brand for your website that will make it easier for your potential customers to identify your business. You can build up your brand's image through your website's user experience (UX), digital content, and having it efficiently run through desktop and mobile devices.
A consideration when promoting a website is that you might want to make your website accessible in other languages for your international audience. It's because 72% of online shoppers spend significant time on multilingual-friendly websites that offer content in their native language.
We've written below the different essential ways to promote your website to enhance your global retail strategy.
Multilingual SEO
In creating a website available in different languages, besides translating the website, you will need to conduct keyword research and multilingual SEO of the target market you're planning to enter. It's because even simple keywords from your niche don't translate exactly in another market.
For example, the keywords "Cell Phone" works in the U.S. SEO market. Still, for Germany, the equivalent of this keyword would be "Handy," or in the Belgian SEO market would be either "Portable" or "gsm."
Many websites fail in integrating multilingual SEO due to a lack of research and strategy. The basic SEO principles are applicable in multilingual SEO, such as keyword and competitor research, creating content, incorporating multilingual SEO into websites, and more. You can seek out professionals in multilingual SEO, especially if it's your first time working on a global retail strategy.
This step is crucial in how to promote your website due to the majority of your content relying on your SEO strategy. By optimizing your content, you enhance your omni-channel retail strategy. It would enhance your customer's buying experience as they could read more of your content.
Content Creation
As we discussed, the content creation of your website would heavily rely on your multilingual SEO research and strategy.
You will need to know your target market's consumer behavior, cultural preferences, and native language in content creation. At the same time, introduce your brand's unique traits and qualities because people, in general, want a connection.
We advise that you look for linguistic experts who can tailor multilingual content to understand and culturally relate to your target audience. It's because much of content creation involves building connections through storytelling and communicating to your customers what your brand is all about.
When it gets down to how to promote your website, we’ve listed the types of content that you'll have to keep in mind:
- Your Website's Blog Posts and Guest Blogging
- Client Profiles and Case Studies
- Reports, White Papers, and eBooks
- Infographics
- How-To Guides
- Podcasts
- Thought Leadership
- Email Newsletters
- Videos
- Social Media Posts
Depending on your target locale, some content is preferred more than others. We suggest that you test out all types of content and evaluate which ones have more engagement.
Social Media And Forum Platforms
Now that we've established our linguistically diverse website and content, it's time to look into the social media and forum platforms where your target users often stay. Because social media posts are part of content creation, they will enhance your omni-channel retailing.
A word of advice though, some platforms might be popular in the U.S. but not in another country. For example, Facebook is a popular social media platform in the US, but it isn't often being used in Japan.
As for forum platforms, it’s one way of how to promote your website because of how engaging it is in interacting and answering questions for customers regarding your brand's niche and market. If you're having a hard time tracking down all the platforms, you can use CRMs and brand monitoring tools.
Some people use Twitter and Facebook to voice out customer complaints and concerns. So it's always good to be on the lookout for these posts and respond right away.
Promote Website Through Email Marketing
Email marketing might not look like it, but it's an excellent way to increase your website's traffic and strengthen your global retail strategy. There are three steps you will need to do to promote a website through email marketing:
- Creating an Email List - There are several free email marketing platforms out there that you could use to get started with your email list.
- Segmenting Your List - Because each person is different, you will need to segment your list and study your audience to make specialized emails.
- Content Creation for Your Target Market - In creating the content of your website, you will need to consider their cultural and language preferences. You can conduct A/B testing to evaluate which works best for your email marketing campaign.
Final Thoughts
There are different ways on how to promote your website, and what’ve written in this article are just some of them. We hope that it can get you started in combining omni-channel retailing and global retail strategy.