In 2018 alone, B2C ecommerce sales worldwide hit $2.3 trillion. This number is expected to rise to $4.5 trillion by 2021.

Because of this, there’s cut-throat competition in the industry. And to break through the noise, you need to do things differently.

Having an effective B2C marketing strategy is the key to success. It can help you execute your marketing campaigns more efficiently and help you get the most out of your marketing budgets. 

Here are some solid B2C marketing strategies that can help you stand out. 

1. Content Marketing 

Content marketing is an excellent way to reach out to your audience and catch their attention. When you share informative content that can genuinely help your prospects, they’ll keep returning back to you. In the long run, it can help you become an authority in your industry. 

Additionally, through content marketing, you can very subtly promote your brand and products to consumers. You need to target their requirements and problems and create content that can solve their issues. Through this content, you can showcase how your products can help solve their problems. 

A great way of doing this is by writing blog posts and guest posts. These informative posts can have a call-to-action at the end, through which the readers can purchase your products. 

Au Lit Fine Linens, for example, creates informative content for their blog while marketing their products too. 

Image via Au Lit Fine Linens

2. Host Engaging Contests

Contests can be real crowd pullers. If you have a prize that is worthy of attention, it can help increase your reach. Additionally, if the contest doesn’t require a lot of effort to register, you can get a lot of participants as well. 

You can launch these contests on your blog, social media profiles, or even your website. Some competitions may require participants to fill out a form while the others may ask them to share the post or like a page. Through them, you can increase brand awareness and generate leads. 

For instance, Frito-Lay, the company behind Lay’s, launched their “Do Us A Flavor” contest in 2012 and subsequent years. During the contest, people could submit new flavor ideas, and the winner stood a chance to win $1 million. 

They managed to get over 4 million submissions of new flavor suggestions through this contest. Not only did it help them increase brand awareness but also helped them connect with their customers. 

Image via Facebook

3. Give Priority to Search Intent

The searcher’s intent is the reason behind every Google search. It’s the underlying question that a person has for which they search for answers on Google. While targeting keywords can help you start ranking for them, you need to figure out the search intent behind them as well. 

By finding out the search intent, you can start customizing your content for it. This can help you come up with informative and helpful content for the searchers. When their intent is satisfied, they may keep coming back to your website for more information. 

Not only will this improve your traffic but also help strengthen your SEO. This is because the visitors will spend more time on your website and keep returning back to it for more information. 

4. Social Media Marketing

Nearly 3.5 billion people are using social media in 2019. So it’s no wonder why social media marketing is so popular and effective. While many people use it to connect with their friends and family, or for entertainment, you can use it to market your brand and products. It’s a relatively affordable method of marketing to your audience as you can create content and post it, often without any charges. 

While recent changes by platforms such as Facebook have affected the organic reach of content, you can still make get more exposure through paid promotions. By posting regularly, you can increase your brand’s reach, generate leads, or even get sales. To periodically post with ease, you can use social media scheduling tools

You can even combine this strategy with others, such as retargeting and influencer marketing, to get the highest ROI possible. But to make this work, you need to work with the right influencers. You can use tools such as Influence.co to find/attract reliable and relevant influencers. 

This tool allows you to list your campaign so that the right influencers can apply to participate. You can also search for influencers based on their niche and following size and get in touch with them through the platform.  

Image via Influence.co

5. Use Retargeting

Retargeting is a great way of reaching people who’ve already interacted with your brand in the past. This strategy is especially relevant for brands involved in B2C marketing. While retargeting is a paid form of marketing, it can give you solid returns as well. In fact, a study found that for every $150 invested in Facebook retargeting, you can get returns of about $6000!

In this form of advertising, whenever a customer interacts with your brand, a sequence starts off. Whenever the person then visits Facebook or any other website that has Google Ads enabled, they’ll see an ad for your business. The two most prominent retargeting networks are Facebook Ads and the Google Display Network. 

Some consumers may click on the ad and buy from you. However, many may not. Retargeting helps you reinforce your brand image to these consumers. This can help you increase brand awareness. 

Here’s an example of one such ad: 

Image via Facebook

6. Email Marketing 

There are about 3.7 billion email users in the world now, which is almost half the population of the world. This has made email marketing a very profitable strategy, which can give an average ROI of $32 for every $1 invested in it. 

By sending out emails to your subscribers and customers regularly, you can catch their attention. It can even help you retain your customers. In fact, about 80% of small and medium-sized businesses rely on emails to retain their customers.  

You can even add your products to the emails with direct links to enable easy purchases. One brand that does email marketing extremely well is Sephora. Using predictive analysis, they figure out the time taken to use their products. When the product is estimated to be finished, they send an email to the customer to prompt them to purchase the product again. 

Image via In2sight

Final Thoughts

B2C marketing is no easy task as there are loads of competitors out there in almost all niches. With solid B2C marketing strategies, you can cut through the noise and start winning over customers. Through content, email, and social media marketing, you can attract new customers and retain your existing ones. 

Contests can help you generate buzz in the industry and get you tremendous attention. You can also use retargeting to reach those consumers who have interacted with your brand in the past. Which other B2C marketing strategies do you use? Let us know in the comments. 

About the Author: Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.