What is Digital Marketing for Jewelers?
Learn how digital marketing efforts drive wild success for jewelry stores worldwide
Generally speaking, marketing is the practice of identifying and satisfying customer needs. In the jewelry industry this is particularly important, as successful marketing efforts drive inbound leads and attract a significantly large customer base. Digital marketing is a relatively new marketing practice that jewelers have embraced and found great success with.
Today digital marketing is as important, if not more so, than traditional marketing methods due to its immediate accessibility and reach with customers. Taken as a whole, it is vital for jewelers and jewelry businesses to plan and execute a viable digital marketing strategy.
What are the fundamentals of digital marketing for jewelers?
In a nutshell, digital marketing refers to any jewelry store marketing methods conducted through electronic devices that utilize some form of a computer, tablet, or smartphone. This includes online marketing efforts conducted on the internet, like Goggle Ads and Facebook Ads. When conducting digital marketing, a jeweler might leverage websites, search engines, blogs, social media, video, email, and other digital channels to reach customers.
Digital marketing for jewelers requires an understanding of the impact of consumer behavior. It is an ever-changing, dynamic process that provides an avenue for two-way communication between the jeweler and their customers or prospective customers.
These days, screen time is at an all-time high. Digital marketing takes advantage of this reality, promoting jewelry and jewelers’ services across the internet. In this way, jewelry stores ensure that their marketing efforts are more likely to reach customers, by targeting them where they spend most of their time.
From startup mom and pop jewelry stores to long standing well-established jewelers, a multifaceted digital marketing approach can lead to significant benefits for jewelers. Successful digital marketing strategy generally involves a combination of various methods, including online advertising, search engine optimization and marketing, social media marketing and management and content creation, among others.
Are there different ways to conduct digital marketing for jewelers?
Digital marketing is an umbrella term that covers many different channels for promoting jewelry stores to prospective customers. Depending on the jewelers needs and goals, there are countless ways to conduct digital marketing. There is no “one-size fits all”. There are several common methods for conducting digital marketing, including:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — The practice of improving rank within major search engines to increase online traffic to your website. SEO is an integral part of digital marketing. It helps your business become discoverable online. When done right, SEO can create the most consistent and by far the highest-quality traffic to your website. Whether it’s your in-house team or a company like Creative Pro Marketing helping with your SEO, it’s critical that it is not allowed to exist in a vacuum which can lead to poor results. SEO must be planned with the overall company goals in mind. It must be measured for progress, regularly reviewed for updates, and adjusted to improve performance.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) — Paid online advertising to increase website visibility within search engines that will drive traffic to your website; SEM is often used in tandem with SEO.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) — Online advertising where a jeweler only pays for their ads when someone clicks on them.
- Social Media Marketing — Using social media channels to promote jewelry and services. The use of social media influencers, known as influencer marketing, is common in Social Media Marketing.
- Email Marketing — Email marketing enables jewelers to send promotional content branded specifically for their jewelry store directly to prospective customers. Personalization, even using a first name in the salutation, boosts results significantly.
- Affiliate Marketing — Affiliate marketing is performance-based advertising where a company pays other people (bloggers, celebrities, Instagram stars, etc.) to advertise their products and services to generate sales.
- Content Marketing — Content marketing refers to the publishing and distribution of text, video, or audio materials to customers online. Blogs, videos, and podcasts are common ways for jewelry businesses to engage in content marketing. Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand.
- Native Advertising — Native Advertising is the use of paid ads that match the look, feel and function of the platform upon which they appear. Native ads are often found in social media feeds, or as recommended content on a web page. In many cases the ad functions like an advertorial, and manifests as a video, article or editorial. Sponsored content, where one business posts its own content on a different website, is a common method of native advertising.
As the list above indicates, there are numerous ways to implement a digital marketing strategy. For most jewelry businesses, successful inbound marketing involves the use and application of multiple digital marketing methods.
What benefits can I achieve through digital marketing?
There is great diversity in digital marketing methods. As such, there is also a diverse set of benefits available for digitally savvy jewelers. Overall, digital marketing allows jewelers to reach customers during everyday activities, such as scanning social media, reading articles online, watching videos, etc. When customers are exposed to marketing with this natural and regular approach, it can yield an assortment of benefits.
More specifically, digital marketing can help jewelry businesses achieve any or all of the following benefits:
- Global Reach — Digital marketing is not necessarily bound to precise geographic areas. The internet is available to customers worldwide. This allows jewelers to market and sell to customers who live in a different state or country removing the barriers to entry.
- Low Cost of Entry — Certain aspects of digital marketing are achieved with a small investment of time and resources. For example, even a startup jewelry business can create a website, manage social media, and publish blogs without breaking the bank.
- Measurable ROI — To maximize profits, jewelers can evaluate return on investment (ROI). Digital marketing provides instant, up to date analytics, measuring the effectiveness of a campaign. This allows jewelry store owners to make well-informed decisions to drive revenue and increase profit.
- Improved Targeting — Digital marketing enables businesses to target very specific demographics of potential customers. By engaging customers in a particular geography, industry or social channel, businesses have a higher likelihood of reaching their target demographic.
- Dynamic Adaptability — Digital marketing strategies are very flexible, enabling businesses to adjust course when needed. Jewelry stores can adjust their digital efforts on the fly, enabling quick pivots when needed to attain commercial opportunities.
- Immediate Connection — Your customers first step in making a purchase starts with online research and evaluating reviews with a search engine. But the fact is, 96% will leave your website without taking any action. We have a solution for that! Our Direct Mail Blitz program puts your message in front of your target audience, consistently and repeatedly, to keep your jewelry business in the forefront of their mind for when they are ready to buy. Since customers start with an online search, jewelry stores with well-developed SEO, SEM and PPC strategies appear at the top of the page making them much more likely to connect immediately with potential customers.
- Relationship Building — Social media is a dominant communications platform for many consumer demographics. More and more, customers and prospects want to interact with jewelry stores on their terms and on their preferred social media platform. As a result, businesses that engage in effective social media marketing practices can build loyal, long-standing relationships with current and prospective new customers.
In general, jewelry stores of every size can achieve remarkable benefits through the effective use of digital marketing. Likewise, digital marketing costs can be tailored for your specific jewelry store, stripping away many of the traditional barriers to entry. With so many benefits available for virtually any budget, it’s obvious why jewelers are succeeding with digital marketing.
How much does digital marketing cost?
The good news is there a digital marketing strategy for every budget. The flexibility of digital marketing strategies yields benefits for every jewelry business, small and large. With such a diverse range of methods and strategies, it is impossible to provide a one-size-fits-all price for digital marketing.
Instead, it’s useful to study the digital marketing spend in different business levels, as small jewelers will spend less than larger jewelry stores. For example:
- Basic Digital Marketing — Startups and small businesses tend to have a small budget available for digital marketing. Sometimes, there’s no budget for digital marketing. These jewelry stores focus on low-cost methods that leverage their website, blog and social media channels to drive revenue at a low price point. The cost for basic digital marketing can be several hundred dollars per month.
- Intermediate Digital Marketing — Jewelers that are medium-sized generally have established revenue streams with the capacity to spend more on digital marketing. SEO, SEM, PPC and email marketing start becoming more prevalent here. The cost for intermediate digital marketing can be as much as several thousand dollars per month.
- Advanced Digital Marketing — Large or enterprise jewelry businesses use digital marketing comprehensively, and often in a global way. These jewelers largely have developed strategies across most digital marketing channels. These jewelers often spend substantial resources developing a digital marketing strategy across all available channels. The cost for advanced digital marketing can be upwards of tens of thousands of dollars per month.
As explained above, the cost of digital marketing varies greatly based on jewelry business size, goals and revenue. Smaller jewelry stores will often start with a basic strategy and develop intermediate or advanced methods later on. At the end of the day, just about every jewelry store can create and implement a digital marketing strategy that meets their needs and budget.
How do I create and implement a digital marketing strategy?
The process of creating and implementing digital marketing strategy includes many steps and necessary considerations. Within this framework, time and resources must be devoted to planning and creation. Information, analytics, and research collected while planning and creating you digital marketing strategy can have an enormous impact on implementation.
It is true that every jewelry store has unique needs and goals. Likewise, the creation and implementation of a digital marketing strategy will change from jeweler to jeweler. But in common practice, many jewelry stores employ a similar process for creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy, as outlined below.
- What are your marketing goals? What do you want to accomplish?
The first step is to identify your specific jewelry business goals — such as generating leads, driving sales, increasing subscribers, or building brand recognition - How will customers make a purchase digitally? What is your sales process for digital sales?
It is critical that you understand the customers path to purchase. To get the most benefit from digital marketing, you need to know the exact steps a customer must take to make a digital purchase from your jewelry store. - Who is your ideal customer? What demographics are you targeting?
Most social media platforms today have robust targeting and demographics. The ability to describe and refine your ideal audience with demographics and segmentation creates a strong target demographic. Refined buyer personas also help identify the ideal customers to purchase your jewelry business goods or services. - Which digital marketing channels are most likely to reach your target demographic?
Once you have a strong target demographic, it’s important to choose the best digital marketing channels to reach those ideal customers. Look at the statistics for the channels you are considering to see the demographics that utilizes each channel. For example, if you are targeting women, Pinterest’s audience is 82% female. - What does success look like for you? How will you know your digital marketing is successful?
To accurately evaluate a digital marketing strategy, you should establish clear benchmarks for success before the campaign begins and measure your progress along the way. You need to know what a successful campaign is for your jewelry store. Success for you could mean increasing subscribers by 10% or getting 6 inquiries from your landing page. - Make Necessary Adjustments — After creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy for your jewelry business, it is important to monitor progress toward goals and make adjustments to your advertising as needed.
An effective digital marketing strategy for jewelers must take into the account the individual needs and goals of your jewelry store. Accordingly, a digital marketing strategy that works for a small mom and pop jewelry store is most likely not going to be successful for a global brand. The good news is that digital marketing offers a wide range of methods, channels, and strategies for jewelers. Jewelry businesses of any size can leverage digital marketing to great effect.
Digital marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses many, many different types of marketing online. We have been fortunate to have worked with numerous jewelers in the last 27 years. We would be delighted to help you sell even more jewelry now and for many years to come. To see if Creative Pro Marketing is a good fit for your jewelry business, please call 888-448-6998 or email hello@creativepromarketing.com.
