Ecommerce marketing is the practice of driving traffic to online stores, converting the visitors to customers, and retaining the customers. Ecommerce marketing is done via digital channels such as search engines, email campaigns, digital content, and social media.
Marketing your new online store can be a daunting task. Especially if you’re doing this all by yourself. You simultaneously try to keep your cost low, maintain decent profit, handle daily business real-life challenges and yet also try to put your store out there. It takes a lot of will-power to drive your store to success.
Market leaders such as Amazon have created challenges for small players. Challenges such as 2-day shipping, purchase payment plans, and highly competitive pricing. The onset of stiff competition has also led to rising digital marketing costs.
Marketing in today’s eCommerce market requires effective and efficient strategies. Your search engine optimization, conversion funnel, checkout process, email campaign, PPC advertising, and others all have to be in synergy to deliver good consistent results.
There is no such thing as perfection. There’s no holy grail strategy. Just like any other skill, you need to constantly practice till you find what works best for you. Just remember to ensure cohesion in all your campaigns.
For instance, your social media ad banners should match your email campaign banners. Your Google Shopping ads should match your PPC ads.
This article discusses the most effective eCommerce marketing strategies you should implement for your online store. It also discusses the significance of each strategy in the marketing funnel and general tips on how to grow your online store.
What is eCommerce marketing?
Ecommerce marketing is the practice of promoting your online store via inbound marketing, search engine optimization, and other marketing methods to increase website traffic, brand presence, and sales. This includes driving awareness with social networks, search engines, digital media content, and e-mail, as well as driving website actions with conversion rate optimization(CRO).
Ecommerce marketing uses lots of digital marketing techniques to convert visitors into customers.
Best eCommerce marketing strategies
Ecommerce marketing requires a multichannel approach to sales. This provides a seamless customer experience regardless of where the customer is shopping from – mobile, desktop or physical store.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) for eCommerce is a long term strategy to drive more traffic to your online store by increasing your organic(free and unpaid) traffic from search engines. According to a survey by databox, 70% of eCommerce business owners who participated in the survey stated that SEO is better than PPC for generating sales.
To achieve this you need to optimize your online store content with on-site strategies like mobile optimization, outbound links, URL structure, meta descriptions, keyword tags, internal linking, keyword density, site speed, and more.
Rank #1 on Google with these Search Engine Optimization strategies.
More so, ensure your content is long-form and high quality. As for an online store, implement the SEO techniques on your product and category pages. Having a regularly updated blog is also very important.
2. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising
Pay Per Click Advertising is the promotion of an online store on search engines, social media networks, and other websites. PPC ads work well because the target audience is shoppers who are ready to buy.
PPC campaign is done by bidding on search terms related to your business to drive more traffic and sales. These ads are placed above and below the organic results on search engines and are a great way to quickly generate site traffic.
3. Email marketing
According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing has the highest return on investment for small businesses. Email marketing remains one of the most important and effective ways for your business to connect and build lasting relationships with customers.
Automating eCommerce email marketing strategies with software is one of the best ways to attract, engage and retain current customers.
When it comes to eCommerce email marketing automation, a series of three emails perform better than a single email. According to Ominsend, they recorded 90% more orders for welcome emails, 63% more for abandoned cart emails, and 75% more for customer reactivation.
More so, marketing emails and newsletters can alert subscribers about upcoming promotions, share product news, and provide purchase incentives.
4. Social media marketing
Do you know about 3.5 billion users actively use social media? I have a friend who sells wholesale perfume oils. 100% percent of her marketing budget is spent on social media advertising – Facebook and Instagram precisely. it has proved to be a tremendous success for her business.
Many of us are active on social media. Effective social media marketing can increase your following, customer engagement, brand reputation, and much more. Social media marketing is quite effective for eCommerce businesses that also sell locally.
Ecommerce social media marketing can be done in two ways – paid and organic.
Paid social media involves creating custom media (images, videos) ads. The business pays to promote ads to a target audience based on their demographics, geolocation, interests, shopping behavior, and so on.
Organic social media involves creating content on your brand’s social media page so that users can engage with your brand in their news feeds.
Organic and paid social media should be used together to see which works more effectively. However, I’d advise small businesses to focus more on paid social media for a start.
5. Display marketing
The Google Display Network (GDN) reaches 90% of internet users and 2 million websites across the world via blogs, websites, and Google products. The network enables advertisers to create banner ads and serve them across the web.
The GDN is a fantastic way to reach internet users with targeted advertising based on their location, demography, and other preferences.
6. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is the practice of partnering with other websites to promote your products. These partners called affiliates earn a commission for promoting the products.
The affiliates promote the product on their platform using links or banners to refer customers. The commission is paid by the eCommerce retailer after a successful sale.
Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative passive income because it’s very scalable with little to no financial risk.
7. Remarketing
For most websites, approximately 2% of websites convert on the first visit. Remarketing is also known as retargeting is a form of online advertising where online ads target consumers based on previous internet actions. Remarketing allows you to target web users who have visited your site or engaged with your products.
This is a good way to remind your bounced traffic about your product or business. Retargeting can be quite effective by targeting specific customers with specific ads hereby convert their traffic into sales.
These ads are generally spent on a cost-per-impression basis and are a fantastic strategy for targeted digital marketing, as you know the users have actually already engaged with your site.
8. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a kind of social media marketing where influencers, people, and organizations who have expert knowledge or social influence in their field perform endorsements and product placements.
Users tend to follow expert opinions when making a buying decision. They consult search engines, peers, online reviews, experts, and celebrity endorsements to make informed decisions.
Joining an influencer marketing network provides the opportunity to connect with micro-influencers in your niche for promotion and endorsements. Influencers will typically charge eCommerce stores upfront fees to promote their store or product on their social media platforms.
9. Reviews
Over 80% of online consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust their peers. Furthermore, 88% of users incorporate reviews in their purchasing decision.
Reviews are important! Endeavor to implement ratings and reviews into your eCommerce marketing strategy. Images and videos of customer reviews will also beneficial.
10. Guest post
A guest post is a post you write for another website that is important to their audience. You can guest blog for other businesses or directories to get backlinks and create awareness to your eCommerce store. Make sure you target high quality, high authority publications with an engaged readership.
Make sure to add 1-2 links to your website. However, don’t over-patronize your readers only discuss your store when it makes sense to do so. Guest blogging requires hard work, but it is an excellent method to build backlinks to your site.
Conclusion
There are more opportunities to earn money with an online shop than ever before. Your marketing tactics and conversion funnel requirement to be top of mind and fit the needs of the requiring and evolving consumer. Marketing your online shop does not have to be shrouded in secret.
By carrying out a few of the ecommerce marketing tactics above and getting each one to an ROI baseline, you can afford to scale, get your items in front of more people, and produce more earnings this year.
