The recent drastic increase in e-commerce stores made it challenging for business owners to stand out. A recent study shows that there will be more than 218 million online shoppers in the US alone in 2023. This means your business has the potential to grow, but the competition will be more intense.
An effective e-commerce marketing strategy can help you stand out among your competitors online. It can help establish brand awareness, improve average order value, promote customer loyalty, and generate online sales.
This can also help to ensure your business runs successfully for a long time. Therefore, an e-commerce business must establish a solid marketing tactic for its online store.
Key Takeaways
- E-commerce marketing drives awareness and conversion to an online business. It attracts prospects and converts them into consumers, increasing your sales.
- It takes more than just launching your e-commerce website to attract buyers. People have to discover your brand.
- Your interaction with potential customers is critical in ensuring their satisfaction and encouraging them to keep doing business with you.
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What is e-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing is the practice of generating brand awareness and conversion for an online business. It aims to generate traffic to your e-commerce store, convert that traffic into new customers, and retain those customers.
Additionally, it uses various marketing channels like search engines, social media, email campaigns, and digital content to attract visitors, drive customer loyalty, and generate sales. Taking advantage of different platforms helps you reach a wider audience and make them aware of your brand.
Types of E-commerce Marketing
Learning digital marketing can be daunting as you must know many things. Many e-commerce businesses still need help finding their way around.
Furthermore, you must understand the common marketing channels and how they are used to create an effective e-commerce marketing strategy. This way, you can determine which approach works for your brand.
Social media marketing
Brands, contractors, professionals, and businesses create social media pages to connect with their audiences. They post content that gets the attention of the audience.
As an e-commerce marketer, you must use your creativity to drive attention and traffic to your pages. To attract an audience, post visually engaging content, especially on Instagram and Facebook. These social media platforms allow you to post product photography and expand its reach beyond its purchase page.
Suppose you need help editing or managing photos and other content for your social media. In that case, you may use several free online tools, such as Canva and Pablo. They have templates, ideas, and other features you can apply to your content.
Recently, TikTok has emerged as a powerful platform for e-commerce businesses to gain visibility and drive sales. With entertaining content, the app enables creative entrepreneurs to engage customers with captivating product reels.
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing includes paid advertising and search engine optimization (SEO). This type of e-commerce marketing can help you appear prominently on search engine results and drive traffic to your online store.
SEO focuses on driving organic traffic from search engines to your e-commerce website. Keyword research is vital in this process as it allows your web pages to appear on search engines when a user searches for a specific product or uses a search term related to your brand.
Additionally, posting relevant content and optimizing your website speed page is vital. You must also optimize your meta descriptions and page title with keywords for Google search. Google considers these factors in ranking your website in search engine results pages (SERP).
On the other hand, paid advertising includes pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, product-specific ad campaigns, and display campaigns, which allow you to pay to appear at the top of search engine result pages. This method guarantees that your target audience will see your product or brand when they search terms that match your campaign.
Content marketing
Content marketing is creating content online to establish credibility and boost brand awareness. The main objective of content marketing is to provide information to potential customers, helping to encourage them to purchase your products.
Blogging and video marketing are the most common types of content to boost a website's ranking on search engines. However, if you are selling products online, you need content that generates transactions.
Optimize your landing pages and product page copy for keywords that incorporate the product's name. Also, write relevant and valuable blog posts and guest posts to educate your target audience and, at the same time, promote your products. Remember to include a keyword-driven FAQ section on your e-commerce website.
Email marketing
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Email marketing sends a commercial message to your intended audience to inform them about your offer and products. It is an effective channel for e-commerce websites and creates the potential for a massive return on investment (ROI).
It is because many people use email, and unlike social media, there are no algorithms to deal with. And your emails most likely reach your potential customers. Ensure your target customers confirm their subscription and send value-packed content to avoid going to spam.
Furthermore, email marketing is a strategy you can easily automate. That means your emails will be sent to your subscribers automatically. However, you must be meticulous with your email list to maintain trust among your leads.
E-commerce marketers use email marketing to send follow-up emails, such as when a user purchases a product in your online store and agrees to receive your emails.
Also, you can use email marketing to reduce cart abandonment. Sending abandoned cart emails to remind visitors to complete the checkout process or assisting them can encourage them to revisit your online store.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing refers to using people or businesses to help you sell a product online for a commission. This is a common strategy used by bloggers who market Amazon products or websites that offer SEO tools and hosting services.
This practice is effective and practical for small businesses because they only pay when they get sales.
Affiliates promote products through old-fashioned marketing campaigns. They often use content marketing, paid advertising, and other marketing channels to generate traffic to your product pages.
Influencer marketing
Due to the number of social media users, influencer marketing has become an excellent channel for e-commerce. Influencer marketing uses people or brands your target audience considers experts in the field.
Many e-commerce brands use Instagram accounts with a large following, a celebrity, or a community that their target audience follows. Influencers establish communities of people that trust them. So getting attention around your product through a sponsored post or recommendation is easy for them.
SMS marketing
SMS marketing is a practice that e-commerce businesses use to send promotions and offers to customers through text messages. It can effectively complement social media marketing, allowing you to reach current and potential customers with targeted and compelling messaging.
Common types of SMS marketing are personalized promotions, remarketing, surveys, and offers or discounts. Unlike email campaigns, SMS messages are shorter and faster as subscribers receive notifications on their phones once they get a text.
Local marketing
E-commerce businesses need to pay more attention to local marketing. This way, you can promote products in a specific area where most of your target audience is located. Also, it allows you to give incentives to your potential customer base.
Local marketing can be a great channel if it is done right. However, you must know the current trends in local marketing to determine which strategy works for your business.
How To Build a Successful E-commerce Marketing Strategy
Creating an e-commerce marketing strategy from scratch can be challenging, especially for beginners. There are several things to consider and learn.
As you prepare for your e-commerce future, remember the following items while creating your business plan.
1. Create an executive summary
An executive summary is crucial in creating a marketing strategy to give you and your leaders an overview of the project. It should summarize the essential things in your marketing strategy, including your business's purpose, desired results, and project suggestions.
2. Set your goals
Set clear and specific goals for your business. Your primary focus should be creating realistic and achievable goals before you set stretch goals to encourage your team to do more and grow your business.
Even if your business is already up and running, it’s never too late to re-evaluate your objectives — don’t be hesitant to adjust strategies for optimal success. Whatever your starting point may have been, you can continually refocus without feeling ashamed or limited by what you originally planned.
3. Create your mission statement
When establishing your e-commerce marketing plan, you must determine your company's purpose. Creating a mission statement for your business will help you direct it to your goals.
Your mission statement must explain why your brand exists. It must describe its purpose and overall intention. Also, it serves to communicate your business purpose and direction to your team and customers.
4. Identify your target audience
Knowing your target audience is vital when creating an e-commerce marketing strategy. You must clearly understand your target market, such as understanding their characteristics and knowing their location.
You will only efficiently use your money and marketing efforts if you target high-converting and qualified leads. So ensure you know your target audience's age range, geographic location, gender breakdown, purchasing power, and online shopping behavior.
5. Analyze your situation
Perform a detailed assessment of the company's current situation, the competition, your website's user experience, and the overall marketing strategy. This will help you make better, more informed decisions, eventually giving better results.
6. Establish a pricing and positioning strategy
Make sure your pricing and positioning provide real value to your target audience and boost customer loyalty. Avoid forcing new products on your target customers that they might consider overpriced. This will lead you to lose proposition, especially since it is now easier to compare prices.
Also, test and refine your product's life cycle to ensure you provide your customers with quality products.
7. Identify your distribution and order fulfillment needs
In an e-commerce business, knowing the distribution and order fulfillment requirements is vital. Regardless if you do the packing and shipping yourself, manage a small team, or use a third-party fulfillment shop, you have to know if your fulfillment processes meet the demand of your marketing push.
E-commerce Marketing Strategies and Tips
An e-commerce marketing campaign is vital to the success of your online business. You can apply several e-commerce marketing tactics to attract visitors to your e-commerce site.
Here are some of the best e-commerce marketing strategies you can use for your campaign.
Provide a personalized customer experience
Personalization can go a long way in establishing a relationship with potential customers. This practice is about finding ways to meet the unique needs of every individual in your marketing strategy.
This effective marketing tactic increases conversion rate and drives online sales. Eighty percent of customers are more likely to purchase a product when a business provides a personalized customer experience.
Personalize your website visitors' experience using behavioral data. Determine their preferences and past actions and use them to provide a unique experience, such as recommending better products based on their previous purchases.
Furthermore, consider your customer's location to create an experience catered to their location. For instance, someone in Maine may be looking for coats in October, while your customer from southern California may need new bathing suits.
Maximize user-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content (UGC) is content created and published by customers. It is about looking for ways for your customers to share about your business and their experiences.
It is also an excellent way to generate social proof and attract new customers. Potential consumers are encouraged to purchase your products or services when they see that people like your brand.
Tools like Archive.com can help you detect content that your brand is tagged in. This way, you can easily find what customers say about your products and their experience.
Some practical ways to drive UGC are through social media hashtags, competitions, and review platforms. These strategies are more cost-effective than allotting a budget to TV commercials and billboards.
Pro Tip: When sharing user-generated content, give credit to the original creator. Tag them directly to the post, or you may ask them how they want to be credited. Keep in mind to always give credit where credit is due.
Upsell your products
You may have heard of the line "Would you like to upsize your order?". It is an example of upselling, encouraging customers to get a more premium product.
Upselling and cross-selling are more effective for several businesses than getting a new customer. Sometimes, customers need to learn there are premium products available. You can boost your sales and retain your customers by recommending an upgraded product that fits their needs better.
There are two primary factors to consider when upselling to boost sales:
- Ensure that the products you recommend are related to the original product
- Be sensitive to your customer's expected price range
Launch a Facebook store
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Facebook is a practical platform for e-commerce marketing. It recently released its Facebook Shops feature, which has been used by businesses to allow their target customers to discover them and buy their products on the social media platform.
Through your Facebook store, you can quickly start making sales. Also, your Facebook store can integrate easily with your Shopify account. Therefore, you don't have to keep a separate inventory.
Additionally, you may leverage the store traffic objective once you launch your Facebook store. This feature allows you to create and publish localized Facebook ads to users nearby and generate foot traffic to your physical store.
Lessen abandoned carts
Every time a visitor abandons their shipping cart without buying anything, you lose money. Many visitors add items to their shopping carts but leave them during checkout. And this is a challenge you should address.
An email recovery campaign is an easy and effective marketing idea to reduce abandoned carts. This tactic can convince visitors to revisit your store and complete their original purchase.
Create an appealing email that entices your visitors to revisit their carts by reminding them of items they added.
Establish a loyalty program
Encourage your customers to continue purchasing in your shop by giving them an incentive. Giving your loyal customers relevant offers and discounts will encourage them to keep doing business with you.
Establishing a loyalty program may take some planning and work. However, it pays off in UGC, repeat customers, referrals, and retention.
When building a loyalty program, consider different ways how your customer can show their loyalty. It can be through repeat purchases, sharing your content, or mentions on social media.
However, managing a loyalty program on social media platforms can take time due to the number of users. But with tools like Archive AI, you can save time and effort as it can help you automate your marketing and detect content where customers mention your brand.
Also, consider how you will pay off their loyalty. It can be through points, exclusive perks, or discount codes.
Take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth is a powerful traditional marketing tool. It is because people follow advice from friends, family members, and someone like them. As consumers have become more doubtful of marketing campaigns from companies, word-of-mouth is necessary for your business.
There are several forms of word-of-mouth marketing in e-commerce. These include:
- Reviews — Customer reviews help alleviate the mistrust of customers in your company, as these come from people who are not invested in your business' success. They are usually honest and authentic about your product and their experience.
Moreover, reviews can be a marketing tool as customers mention your products and convince others to do business with you. Therefore, encourage customers to leave reviews on your website or social media accounts. - Referral marketing — This is when customers tell their family members, friends, and co-workers to buy from you. This naturally happens if they like your product. However, you can ensure this will happen more frequently through a referral program. Ask your customers to refer others and offer them a discount, a free item, or cash.
- Testimonials — Customer testimonials are excellent proof of how great your product is. You may ask customers for an interview and ask them questions about your product, the buying process, customer support, product delivery, and their overall experience of doing business with you.
- Case studies — Case studies enable you to share your customers' success in a way that influences your prospects' emotions. They are supposed to relate to your buyer persona. To do this, interview customers who represent your target audience and show their life before your product and how it has improved.
In leveraging word-of-mouth marketing, ensure you give your customers an excellent experience, which will happen organically.
Optimize your e-commerce website
Your e-commerce website must be responsive, viewable, and easy to navigate on any device. Ensure that people can visit your website anywhere and your content is easy to read and navigate.
A poorly designed store can be one of the reasons why you are losing customers, as it appears untrustworthy. Your website needs a clear value proposition, smooth navigation, and fonts that are easy to read.
Practice conversion rate optimization (CRO) to optimize your website to boost lead generation, on-site conversions, and sales. You can achieve this through content improvements, workflow enhancements, and split testing.
Invest in live chat
Investing in live chat is a great idea to enhance your customer service. Customer service is the direct interaction between you and a consumer making a purchase. This interaction is crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction and promoting repeat business.
Depending on your business size, you may have an actual person available to chat with customers who visit your store. It also allows you to engage with your customers and address any issues.
Whether you use a bot or a human, live chat is effective as visitors browse your online store, so they get answers immediately. This tactic also reduces any objections during the checkout process.
Retarget
Retargeting is a strategy that tracks previous customers. It shows them ads while browsing the internet to convince them to return to your website. This marketing tactic allows for recapturing customers or potential leads if they leave your store without purchasing a product.
Suppose a visitor abandons a shopping cart without preceding the checkout process. In that case, you may retarget them by showing an ad for the recently viewed product on another website they are visiting. By displaying your ads again, it will increase your chances for better conversion rates and meet your marketing goals.
Strengthen Your E-Commerce Marketing Strategy With Archive
When operating an e-commerce business, it is crucial to establish an effective digital marketing campaign. A well-crafted strategy will make your brand and product appear in front of your target audience, resulting in lead generation and increased sales. Therefore, you must plan your marketing campaign carefully.
As part of digital marketing, ensuring your social media account has appealing content is best. Archive has one of the best tools to organize your content and ensure your account is well-positioned to drive traffic and generate leads.
Make your social media account appealing and attract new customers to your online store. Visit Archive today and learn how to manage your social media content.
FAQs on Creating a Successful E-commerce Marketing Strategy
How can Google Shopping help my e-commerce business?
As an e-commerce business, you may use Google Shopping to increase organic traffic and product sales. You may also use it to promote your brand or product to get them quickly in front of people searching for it.
How can customers benefit from e-commerce?
E-commerce offers a significant benefit to customers. It allows them to purchase a product or service from any supplier worldwide without going to a physical store. They have more choices and freedom to browse digital catalogs without the stress of traveling to different stores.
How do you stay up-to-date with e-commerce marketing trends and best practices?
Being updated with marketing trends and practices is crucial in e-commerce. Fortunately, there are several ways to stay updated with digital marketing trends. These include subscribing to marketing blogs and newsletters, setting Google Alerts, watching videos of marketing advice, listening to marketing podcasts, or seeking inspiration from top brands.
