The Areas Of Marketing That Matter For Jewelers
May 15, 2019 (0 comments)
What should a jewelry store’s overall digital game plan look in 2019? There are a lot of options available to jewelers to utilize in their marketing. But figuring out how to organize them and which ones to prioritize is sometimes difficult.
I believe in a holistic approach to digital marketing. Regardless if you’re a tire company, a restaurant, or a local jewelry store, there are going to be a few similarities between the marketing approaches for each. You’re going to utilize 4 different areas of focus in some way, which I call “pillars”. These pillars can form a really solid foundation for a jewelry store's marketing plan.
4 Pillar System
I visualize a marketing strategy like a table. For a jeweler, this means the table top is your overall success, and it’s supported by 4 legs (I call them pillars to emphasize the point).
Pillar 1: Website
Pillar 2: Search
Pillar 3: Social
Pillar 4: Email
These are the 4 areas that you really need to put effort into - they’re the things that will impact your success the most.
It’s true that your website is not really a “marketing avenue”. It’s where the marketing traffic is brought to. However, your website is going to impact the success of the other 3 pillars. There are also a lot of components to it. Therefore, I give your Website it’s own pillar that you always need to improve and work on.
Let’s take a look at each pillar and learn what makes each one work.
Pillar 1: Website
Today’s jeweler relies on their website for success. Very few people walk into a jewelry store nowadays without scouting your website out first. Your website is the first impression people will have of you.
More importantly to consider, however, is the impact that your website has on potential foot traffic. The majority of people find local businesses through Google search nowadays. So your website needs to be as optimized as possible to show higher in the search results.
Potential store foot traffic directly correlates to your Google rankings!
Bad websites get ranked low. Clean, proper websites get ranked higher. So we really need to do what we can to continuously optimize our websites.
Pillar 2: Search Marketing
There are 3 areas of Search that you should consider in your marketing plan.
Local Search & Organic Search
Local search is when someone is specifically looking for a certain type of business in their area. You’ll see below that when I search Google for “Hoboken jewelry store”, Google displays local jewelry store listings:
You'll notice the 3 stores listing first in the Local Search are Noellery, Hoboken Gold And Diamonds, and W. Kodak.
Now - interestingly and not surprisingly -
these 3 stores are also the ones that are mentioned below in the Organic Search Results area! Under Google's "local business" listings, they show their "normal" search listings which all 3 stores appear at the top of as well. W. Kodak's website is listed first. Then Yelp (which mentions Hoboken Diamond, W. Kodak, and Noellery), and then Hoboken Diamond's actual Yelp review.
This is impact of optimizing your site for Search. All 3 stores - by combination of their local listing and organic search results - dominate the first page of Google for my search.
PPC Ads
Another important element to any retail location are Google Ads to help increase their visibility in local results. In the same graphic, above, when I click "More Places" under the local listings to see more stores, Google shows me this:
You'll see that in this expanded view, Avianne & Co. Jewelers and Corey Friedman Fine Jewels both appear above those 3 previous stores. You'll notice a little "ad" icon next to their listings. In this expanded view, Google is now showing you ads of similar businesses.
This is important for a lot of stores. If you still can't outrank local competition in natural searches, running a nice Google Ads campaign can make a real difference.
Pillar 3: Social Media
It's really impossible to ignore the importance of social media. We need to regularly post on our social media pages and we also need to run intelligent ad campaigns. Facebook and Instagram are mandatory. I think Pinterest should be getting in the mix, too. Pinterest is the only platform with users who are constantly in buy-mode. This is a great avenue for jewelry stores and jewelry brands alike - especially who sell online.
Pillar 4: Email
There are two primary ways jewelry stores can use email to leverage sales.
Newsletters - Most businesses have some kind of email newsletter. This is a good way to keep existing and new customers in the loop with what you're doing. However, many businesses either don't utilize their newsletter enough (making it near pointless). Similarly, many businesses send it out too frequently and annoy customers. It's tough striking a balance with your newsletter, but it's still an important part of your marketing channel.
Drip Campaigns (marketing automation) - Drip campaigns are different than newsletters because they're a series of automated, carefully selected, sequential emails. The main purpose of this strategy is to nudge someone closer to the sale. Recently, Wayfair collected my email when I was browsing bed frames. Over the next 4 or 5 days, I received a variety of emails from them talking about free shipping on their beds. That is a drip campaign - they set up an automated series of emails to get sent to me based on what I expressed interest in.
Hopefully this gives you a clear picture of what marketing channels are available to you!
