What would be the best marketing strategy for a organic food store?

[Natureveda]

I am the founder of Natureveda.store , already receiving  50 users per day, but i am looking to get a good marketing strategy other than social promotion and link building methods. 

Help me out!

[_Ash_]

Hey, there! 

That's a good question. It would be good to see some of your reports to get better understanding of where your traffic is coming from and what your most popular pages are.

There are definitely other methods or marketing online besides social media, and SEO, however I wouldn't discount either as they are both very effective and important marketing strategies, especially if you don't have a pre-existing customer base. If you don't feel confident in either I recommend taking some of the courses at Hubspot Academy.

It's also a little difficult to speak about online marketing without talking about link building (SEO), or a social strategy, as content is one of the fundamental aspects of online marketing. Your content strategy is connected to almost every aspect of a marketing strategy. 

What I would suggest is creating an ad campaign on Facebook. Shopify has a great app called Kit that leverages the data from your Facebook business page and targets new potential customers -it's very effective. In order to have effective ad campaigns you'll want to make sure you content is on brand. The content you create can be repurposed for different channels, including blog posts and social media.

Hope this helps!

[Natureveda]

Thanks Ash! My audiences are only from India (Local) and not focus on worldwide right now. So currently i am only focused on regualar social updation and content updation in my website blog section. 

I do working on link building on small level right now, since Google can punish if i get tons of links very sooner. 

As per your suggestion i would focus more on Facebook ads and try it out.

Thanks again! SO much helpful!

Ela

Founder of Natureveda

[Rockpapercopy]

Hi Ela! Maggie, Shopify Partner here 🙂

That’s such a great question! You have an interesting niche and a defined audience - local shoppers in India. Your best approach should be to analyze your current customers and create a target buyer persona based on the typical customer of yours.

Let’s say, the average age of your customers is 35-45, they live in a big city, the work in IT and are very focused on eating healthy, organic food. They don’t have the time to look for a specific items in the supermarket, that’s why they shop online. You can then extend their profile, by assuming they are very busy and like to have all the information served quickly [e.g. the love informational content about the benefits of the organic matcha tea, how to prepare it].

It can give you clues on what kind of content they are most likely to look for: short explanatory videos they can watch on their smartphone, on the way to work, or in the evening, in front of t.v. This gives you another clue, as to what times are best to post at: in the morning, during a morning commute, or late in the evening, during the popular tv shows. If you post on the social media during that times, you get the best chance to be found by your target customers.

Make sure to have a short description with the video and link back to your website [or even better, to the relevant product], to increase the CTR and the conversion rate. Linking to the product will work better for busy people - this way they can buy right away, and don’t have to search for the product again if they land on the homepage. Therefore linking to the relevant product can boost your conversion rate.

Discussion groups. Don’t limit yourself to the social media only. See if there are discussion groups you can post in. Posting in the discussion groups is an excellent way to build your brand awareness, trust and authority. Make sure to look for the groups for the lovers of organic matcha green tea, based in India, to connect with your target audience.

Create a profile and contribute to the conversations, by telling about the benefits of the matcha green tea, and linking to your website, when relevant.

Make sure to write longer, useful posts, and link to your website only if relevant. Don’t be tempted to create short answers just to pluck the link in. Forum moderators are often sensitive about people joining their forums to promote their websites, so you need to be careful when posting. If done right, this strategy can send you plenty of relevant traffic [from the people in the discussion group, therefore already interested in your product] and can boost your sales.

Backlinks are also important when marketing your website, although they are often overlooked. Backlinks are powerful, as they are permanent - they won’t disappear from view, like a social media post, after few days or weeks. Once created, a backlink works in the background on your website rank. While you won’t see the results right away, with the right backlink strategy, your website can climb the Google search results. The higher it gets in the results, the more people click on it and visit your store. Therefore backlinks are also great source of relevant, organic and permanent traffic.

Competitor analysis. What I often recommend for my clients is to check what your competitors are doing - what’s their current marketing strategy. You can search for other organic matcha tea retailers in India and check where they are linking from. See where they are being featured [business directories, blogs, influencer posts etc.] and copy their strategy to connect with their audience [as you have the same target customers]. This is another great way to drive relevant traffic.

Guest blogging is another excellent marketing strategy. Find popular blogs on the topic [organic diet/lifestyle], based in India, and check if they are willing to publish guest posts. You can search their site for the term: “guest posting, guest blogging” and see if anything comes up. Alternatively, find who’s a moderator and if they have a displayed email address. Then email them asking for a chance to contribute to their blog. Make sure that your email is short, concise and to the point. State what kind of benefits will your article offer to their readers, and how your expertise on the topic can enhance their blog. They will be happy to publish your post, if you give them strong enough reasons and benefits of doing so.

Influencer marketing is also powerful marketing strategy, if done right. Bear in mind, it works best for the time limited promotions, as the featured post is often published for a short period of time [24 hours, 3 days, a week etc.] So it’s best to tie it with a launch offer or a sale you plan on running on your website. The trick to successful influencer campaign is to find the most relevant profile.

You need to do the research to find the Influencers with genuine followers, real engagement and relevant followers. The last part is important - make sure to analyze their followers' profiles when assessing the influencer - see if they match your target buyer persona, they are based in India, are likely to buy online etc. By having all this information checked beforehand, your chances of success are much greater. Don’t be tempted to run an Influencer marketing campaign without doing a thorough in-depth research. It’s very easy to lose money on the Influencer campaign.

The content strategy on your website is great - although you are selling only two products, you have plenty of supporting content, such as videos, images and banners, keeping people busy and browsing your store - perfect.

It’s great that you are blogging regularly - your niche is perfect for blogging. You can create even more posts about the new recipes using matcha tea, such as a healthy matcha cheesecake, matcha ice cream, matcha shake etc. You can also create an explanatory post about the different grades of matcha and what to look for when buying the matcha tea online. That’s a great way to build trust and authority in your niche, and also attract more traffic to your website.

Not sure if you noticed, but your Beeketing upselling app shows info about a recent purchase from 13 or 15 days ago:

This app works best if it shows a purchase someone made just now - it creates an urgency and prompts people to buy right this moment. Make sure to change the settings of this app, so it doesn’t display when the purchase was made, or replace it with a different up-selling app.

The side menu [icon by the cart in the header], when opened reveals an empty white panel - not sure if the content that was supposed to be displayed there is missing, or perhaps the menu isn’t assigned to this element - please see the screen recording showing what I mean: https://youtu.be/MHBRHpTloag Consider optimizing this element, or removing it for now.

Contact us page - make sure to use a professional email address [such as sales@natureveda.store] instead of gmail one. It’s a great way to build trust as an established business. You can create a custom email address matching your domain with G-Suite - learn how to do it here: https://youtu.be/j_0ho2PUyTI

Facebook page - please check the url, as the link opens on an error page.

Your Twitter and Instagram posts look great and you post regularly.

Make sure that your posts engage with the followers and ask them to take action. Great way to increase the comments, likes and follows is to post a content people love to interact with: you can create a poll, ask a question, encourage people to vote for their favorite recipe, favorite way to drink matcha etc. This way, people will feel connected with your brand, and this will then translate into sales. Ask your followers to tag their friends in the posts to share awareness and gain more followers. See how other brands do it on Instagram:

You can create inspirational or motivational post [with your logo in the corner], share it on social media and prompt your followers to tag their friends to motivate them too. Add relevant hashtags [such as #tag or #tagsomeone] to be found in the relevant searches and further share your brand awareness.

This strategy works best, if you spend 4-5 hours per day, every day on a consistent basis, working on it. You need to be out there to make an impact. While you are busy running your online business, make sure to work with someone who can implement this marketing strategy for you.

It’s important to have a detailed marketing strategy and a step-by-step plan of action so you know what needs to be done each day to help you grow your business and drive the most relevant traffic that converts. If you are on the budget, you need to make sure each hour your team spends on the marketing brings you the traffic that converts into sales.

If you would like to receive a full, detailed marketing strategy for your niche to implement with your team, book your business consultation today. An ecommerce expert will review your current strategy in detail, research your target audience and prepare a long-term step-by-step marketing strategy you can implement in-house to promote your store. Book your consultation here: https://www.rockpapercopy.com/consultation/

I hope you liked the tips - if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at maggie@rockpapercopy.info

If you liked this website critique, and would like to request a review of your own store, please click here now: https://www.rockpapercopy.com/critique/

Best regards,

Maggie

Shopify Partner | Ecommerce expert

Rock Paper Copy  

maggie@rockpapercopy.info

[Jenn4]

I think this article can help you. 5 Effective Ecommerce Marketing Strategies For 2019 here some amazing ecommerce strategies are mentioned which you can use for your Natureveda.store

[Natureveda]

Hi Maggie,

So much thanks to you and your awesome detailed tips!

Would check these issues each and fix it.

Thanks

Ela

[Rockpapercopy]

Hi Ela,

Not a problem - glad I could help. Feel free to reach out if you needed help with your store: https://www.rockpapercopy.com/ecommerce/

[Milla_G]

You mentioned you are located in India, since you have a food store you could focus most of your efforts on local offline marketing... I don't know of you guys have something like Groupon in India, or popular local coupon booklets or something like that. Try giving a small incentive, hand out flyers, get creative to create local awareness of your brand and products.  

[Gari]

Hello @Natureveda 

I am trying to access your store but keep getting routed to a German page. Is that the right link? Could you share it with me again?

Best

Gari

[Nathandams]

Hello

Yes, i have changed the domain after my customers request that it is bit hard to remember the extension ( . Store)

So no the extension is https://natureveda.co 

Ela

[Gari]

Hi Ela

Thank you for sharing the link with me. You store looks pretty good. Well designed. And matcha! ❤️ Big fan here!

I saw a couple of points in your website which could be made better - just to make sure that your users feel comfortable finding and buying the right products. I'll add them below. 

1. Simple design point - make the top nav bar fixed when scrolling down. It makes navigating to other pages a lot easier. 
2. As a shopper I'd be first interested in what is the benefit of the product and then focus on how it is made and what I can do with the tea. So you could reorganise the content to make it appeal to the shopper's mindset. 
3. On your homepage and the product catalog, you have some offers running (discount) and have 2 products that are currently out of stock. The discount value is barely noticeable because it's a lot smaller than the product image itself. The colour stands out a bit but doesn't capture attention the way it should. There are some apps on Shopify that can help you add labels with different design styles.
4. It's a small thing, but I kept trying to dismiss the pop up for the chat but it kept popping back up every time I returned to the page. Maybe you could check this. 
5. Right now your catalog is limited to the teas themselves. You could consider adding accessories - tea sets, bowls or bamboo whiskers. Make it a more complete experience for the shopper. 
6. If you have a subscriber list, I'm sure you must be sharing interesting blogs. You can also use this list and the users who add products to the wishlist to share targeted discount offers or any new additions to your catalog. 

Do let me know if this is useful for you.

Hope to hear from you soon! Till then, good luck and do stay safe!

Garima