Have you ever thought of how powerful are the eCommerce marketing strategies that we apply and how do they contribute to boosting your sales. A recent study has shown that about 20 percent of the retail sales across the globe has been done online. And this trend is expected to reach 95 percent in the next two decades. This stresses on the importance of having a very strong online presence employing several powerful marketing strategies to compete with similar businesses.
E-commerce is very distinct. Hence the same strategy that is applied to a particular market cannot be applied for a conventional storefront. Since the sales cycle of e-commerce is short, results are achieved by focussing on grabbing the attention of people rather than utilizing product research in order to create authority.
In order to effectively implement the strategies of e-commerce marketing to achieve both trac and sales of your online products, it's important to have a thorough understanding of what exactly it refers to.
What Is E-commerce Marketing?
ECommerce marketing in simpler terms is promoting your products online in the best way to get customers' attention to your online page or website. A successful marketing strategy uses technique focussing on product websites as well as the internet as a whole in order to create an awareness of your product. Successful execution of these strategies will result in enhanced website traffic which will turn into buyers thereby resulting in enhanced performance in sales and customer loyalty. One thing to remember is that this is not a one time set up and forever to go scenario, eCommerce marketing is a field that is constantly evolving and you need to be up to date with the current best practices and updates in algorithms. To benefit from an eCommerce marketing strategy, it’s important to adopt a multi-prong route which will include SEO, content marketing and optimization of websites.
What Are The Three Pillars Of ECommerce Marketing Strategy?
SEO
You need to make adequate investment in Search Engine Optimization to make sure that Google displays your products as well as the website.
Content Marketing
By making sure that you have high quality content on platforms that are of interest to your customers and indulge your audience.
Website Optimization
It’s important to take steps to improve the user interface and mobile experiences of your website to enable users to effortlessly go through your website and data.
What Are The Marketing Strategies That Help You Stand Out From Your Competitors?
Let’s discuss below some of the marketing strategies that help you stand out.
Content Marketing
E-commerce content marketing helps you build a very strong ROI. Be it a blog, a video or any content that’s being posted as part of marketing strategy, an original good quality content will help establish yourself as a leader in your field.
The very first step to perform in content marketing is to do a thorough research about your audience, understand their requirements on what type of contents they prefer. Upon understanding the same, you can create a high quality content and later promote it on social media platforms. This will bring your website in the forefront of the search results page thereby creating organic traffic and connecting with your audience.
Creating effective contents can consume time and requires careful study and planning of the strategy. This is not something that can be done quickly as and when required. If you think you or your team do not have sufficient expertise in doing research and building a successful strategy, you can work with digital marketing partners like BigLeap.
Social Media Marketing
Engaging with your audience is important. You can share announcements related to your brands. It can be launching new products, giveaways, awards, seeking feedbacks etc, It’s important to maintain consistency on your tone and style in social media. The same format used in social media can be used for your other marketing purposes as well. This will help you engage with your audience.
Email Marketing
Yet another efficient marketing strategy for ecommerce is Email Marketing which is supposed to offer a 4,400 percent ROI. This is one of the reasons why marketers adopt this strategy.
Collecting emails is the initial step in an email marketing campaign. This can be done in several ways by websites involving eCommerce like requesting for emails to receive some special deals or to download checklists or templates from your blogs.
This strategy will help you collect email addresses which can be used for sending appropriate emails which will in turn enable you to stay in touch with potential customers.
You can personalize and categorize your marketing campaigns. You can mention the client name and mention a product that might be of interest to them. Specific emails can be sent to them with respect to the ongoing trends, purchasing pattern, shipping habits or other interests which offer the most ROI.
Pay-Per Click
Pay-per-click or PPC ads include advertisements that can direct and land users directly to your targeted page. These ads are normally given on Google and Facebook even though the option is available on many social media platforms. The greatest advantage of PPC is that you need to pay for the advertisement only when somebody clicks on it.
The ads can be set to target the general audience where they searched for a particular product before and visited some page, then the ad may direct them to those pages instead of the targeted page given.
Mobile Optimization
It’s important to optimize your e-commerce website for mobile users due to the fact that the majority of the traffic to your website will be from mobile devices.
At the minimum, it’s important that your mobile web page should offer a similar experience to that of a webpage. This will enable users to add items to cart easily and perform orders with their device.
Invest in Search Engine Optimization
It’s evident that more than 50 percent of the online purchases result from search engines, it’s imperative that your business should show up in search results. It’s not only showing up on the search engine results page that matters, but also the position of your business in the results. The business that’s ranked #1 in search engine results are likely to receive close to 40 percent CTR while the third result earn 10.2 percent.
To position your business in the top 1, 2 and 3 places, you need to invest in SEO. Search Engine Optimizations includes various factors like On-page SEO, Off-page SEO as well as Technical SEO.
Humanize User Experience
Humanizing user experience is another strategy for connecting with your audience. This is implemented by posting photos of your employees on social media posts, or blogs (absolutely with their consent). This helps in building a closer picture of your company to your audience.
Re-Target Customers
A lead that has once been to your web page is more sure to convert to an order than somebody who hears about your business for the first time. Hence retargeting customers who have been to your business page before will surely help.
This can be done by sending mails as well as messages to check whether they are interested in certain products they had a look at before You can also mention the current market trends in the email or you can notify them about things that have been already added to the cart and did not proceed further. Also messages intimating sale as well as new product launch will do the job.
Influencer Marketing
The growth of social media platforms have resulted in another category of celebrity called influencer. Influencers associate with certain brands and work as brand ambassadors. Influencers generally have numerous followers which help them reach audiences on a faster rate. Some Of the popular social media platforms where you can benefit from influencer marketing are YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
SMS Campaign
86 percent of the world’s population has cell phone which means SMS or text messaging is a great option to communicate with especially where many promotional emails never find their way out of Spam folders, This can be made possible by collecting your client’s contact details with mobile phone numbers to forward promotional as well as support messages. This facility helps them get to know regular updates of their order, or a reminder to check out items already placed in the cart. You can also encourage purchasing by offering voucher codes for their next purchases or intimate them about launch of a new product. The only thing to keep in mind is to keep the message crip and clear and not to overdo it.
Live Chats
One of the quickest and easiest way to enable instant client support to your website is by using live chat windows. A study has also shown that 73.5 percent of the customers prefer these live chats and are highly satisfied with it.
Even though the main purpose of live chats is to enable quick customer service, they can also be used in marketing. Based on the user's navigation on the website, you can provide details about the respective products.
Who Can Help You Boost Your ECommerce Sales?
If you are looking for an advanced e-commerce marketing strategy where you depend on content marketing, search engine optimization, link building etc, you need an excellent partner who is an expert in these areas. This is where you need to choose BigLeap. We have experts on our team who can combine advanced design with brand knowledge in order to take your marketing strategy to new heights.