Jhara Valentini, founder of Valentini Media Group, a consulting firm focused on digital marketing and content strategy, specializes in building high growth e-commerce businesses and uses an analytic and behavioral-based approach to ensure the best return on investment with every campaign. Valentini shares her insights into how a brand should approach their Q4 digital and social strategy and tips for optimizing your eCommerce business.
Why is Q4 so important for brands when it comes to their digital presence?
The difficult part about Q4 is the oversaturation during this time. The digital landscape is bombarded with so much content, sale incentives, and campaigns. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle if you don’t plan ahead and set up concrete distribution strategies. It’s imperative that there are prospecting, retention and retargeting campaigns set up during this time frame to ensure you stay ahead of the competition.
How will the Instagram algorithm affect a brand’s visibility?
Earlier this fall, there was an update that impacted overall reach for users. Essentially this means your posts won’t be shown to as many people as it was earlier this year. As a result, overall impressions and engagement will go down.
How can a brand prepare and address what will be an oversaturation of election/political content on social?
We are already seeing oversaturation on the platforms, reach is lower than usual even for Q4 standards. The election and voting is such a big part of the social conversation right now and if you are not a part of it, you will definitely see a shift. To ensure that your brand is still getting the visibility that it needs try to add more touch points via email, SMS or other platforms.
How can a brand approach have what could be considered “sensitive” or “difficult” conversations with their audience?
I think there is a lot right now that can be described as sensitive or polarizing content and brands don’t have to address things head-on if they don’t want to – but I do think acknowledging that consumers are going through a difficult time is smart.
At the end of the day, any kind of support is going to be well received. Engagement and sentiment data is proving this too, people are looking for that kind of content to engage with and welcoming it with open arms.
What are some of the key areas a brand should consider communicating over the next few months? How does this all translate to revenue?
With e-commerce, multiple touchpoints are key. Repetition is essentially your reputation online. The more consumers know about you, your brand and what you stand for, the stronger that brand relationship is going to be, which eventually turns into customer loyalty and continuous revenue growth. Even if there isn’t much to promote on the product side, your brand story, values and inspiration still help guide audience perspective. It may take some time but staying consistent and having a constant dialogue with your audiences always pays off.
What are five tips to running a successful eCommerce business?
- Understand where and how your audience consumes all of their media (not just social platforms).
- Know the importance of owned data and a strong CRM and always have a strategy is to scale it.
- Social platforms aren’t going to meet every objective – have backup platforms running campaigns at all times.
- Never stop listening to your consumers. They will tell you what they want and how they want it – you just have to pay attention.
- Be open to change! There is no way the same strategy will keep working. Over time perceptions will change, the competition will increase and the digital landscape will evolve- make sure your strategies evolve with it
