There are many types of digital marketing people use today, it can be tough to distinguish between them.
E-commerce marketing is a type of marketing that is done online through the use of electronic devices. This type of marketing is different from other marketing practices such as social media marketing, content marketing, search engine marketing, and email marketing.
Ecommerce marketing and digital marketing are not mutually exclusive. Ecommerce websites can use digital channels such as social media, email marketing, and paid advertising to promote a product and grow their business.
This guide will explore all of the eCommerce marketing options available today.
What Is Ecommerce Marketing?
Ecommerce marketing is the act of promoting a business that sells its product or service online. This can be done through various means such as SEO, SEM, social media marketing, email marketing, etc.
Marketers who want to encourage customers to buy their products online can use a variety of techniques, such as social media, digital content, search engines, and email campaigns. By using these tools, they can attract visitors to their website and help them make purchases.
before we begin discussing ecommerce marketing in more detail, lets first review the definition of ecommerce advertising and how it is equal to marketing for an ecommerce business.
Ecommerce marketing does the following:
- Drives traffic to your ecommerce website
- Puts your company in front of your target audience
- Makes it easy for people looking for the kind of products you sell to discover your website
- Converts website visitors into new customers
- Reengages people who’ve visited your website before in order to make them buy again
- Enhances the post-purchase experience to increase customer satisfaction and drive loyalty
- Reactivates current customers with well-timed, relevant offers and information so they enjoy shopping from you
- Stimulates more regular and bigger orders
Without ecommerce marketing, you wouldn’t make any sales. Although it is essential to have an ecommerce site, it is not enough. People need to be aware of your site before they spend money on it.
You need to remind your customers of your brand so they will keep coming back and spending money.
Ecommerce Advertising
Advertising that is related to eCommerce falls under the eCommerce marketing category. Using both advertising and eCommerce marketing together will help you reach your target audience more effectively and improve conversions and brand awareness.
As mentioned in our definition above, eCommerce marketing is about driving awareness and action toward your product or service.
Promoting your product through eCommerce advertising includesmethods such as paid search results, product listing ads, and banner ads. Display ads, banner ads, and rich media ads are all types of online or eCommerce marketing and selling.
The most important thing to remember is that eCommerce advertising is a very effective way to promote your product or service when you are developing your eCommerce marketing strategy.
Now, let’s resume our in-depth discussion about eCommerce marketing.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Many businesses create pages on social media sites to connect with their target audience and share content that is of interest to them.
As an eCommerce marketer, you can use social media to reach potential customers, but the campaigns you run might look different on each social network, and not every social network may be a good fit for your needs.
Your success on social media for your ecommerce website depends on your use of imagery to drive attention and traffic to your product pages. This is because ecommerce websites are highly visual, and you need to show off the product.
If you’re running an eCommerce business, Instagram is a great platform to use. You can post high-quality product photos and reach a wider audience than you would if you just had a product page.
You can make your social media posts more effective by including shoppable content, which allows visitors to make a purchase immediately. This can mean anything from ads placed within a social media feed to tags that take users straight to a shopping cart. The following methods can help make buying something easier by reducing the amount of effort required.
An eCommerce business is familiar with product reviews. If you already have a Facebook Business Page, you can share customer reviews and product praise on it. This is especially good for businesses that collect customer reviews across their online store. We’ll dive deeper into product reviews below.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing can be thought of as creating and distributing content that is relevant to your audience with the goal of improving your website’s ranking in search engines and answering questions related to your industry. If you are selling a product online, do you need articles and videos to generate sales? You sure do.
-Use images and videos to show off your products -Write blog posts that give an in-depth look at what you’re selling -Create social media posts that highlight specific items -Create email marketing campaigns that showcase your items There are several ways you can market your eCommerce store using content. You can use images and videos to show off your products, write blog posts that give an in-depth look at what you’re selling, create social media posts that highlight specific items, or create email marketing campaigns that showcase your items.
Optimize your product page copy.
To optimize your product pages, use short keywords that are directly related to the product, and include the product’s name in the keywords. If you sell wedding dresses and use the term “brown bridesmaid dress” on your product page, your page is more likely to come up on a Google search for that term.
Make sure that the titles of your pages, headers, and image alt text contain the right keywords so that search engines will return your store when the right query is made.
Write relevant blog posts.
If you manage an online wedding dress store, you can attract everyone involved in wedding preparations by writing blog posts about “how to plan a wedding.” This is especially useful for people who are just starting to plan their wedding, as they will be able to get all the information they need in one place.
The more engaged visitors are, the more likely you are to be able to convince them to take specific actions, like downloading a wedding planning checklist.
Create guest posts for external websites.
If you’re looking for a way to get your name and your products out there, guest posting is a great option. You can often do it for free, and you’ll reach an audience that’s interested in what you have to say. If you want your eCommerce site to have more domain authority, try submitting guest posts. This will show search engines that your site is reliable.
Include a keyword-driven FAQ section on your website.
If your audience is asking questions related to your product, it is your responsibility to answer them. An FAQ page with responses to high-volume, long-tail keyword searches can get users to your site. Constructing both traffic and authority simultaneously will lay a solid foundation for your eCommerce store’s success.
To find websites that rank for keywords related to your product, you will need to search for them. You don’t always have to make an entire post. If a website has a post that is relatable to your own content, you can offer to provide additional context by creating a video or infographic that links back to your website.
Put product-related videos on YouTube.
With over a billion active users, there is a good chance that your target audience is using YouTube. It’s also the second-largest search engine behind Google. You can find a large audience that is captive on YouTube. The best way to determine what topics to cover in your videos is to look at what keywords people are searching for that are related to your product. Once you know what those are, you can make videos that are both related to your product and helpful to your audience.
This is also a great option for creating tutorial videos that show current customers how to use your product. These videos can demonstrate to people how best to use your product, enhancing customer satisfaction and creating long-term relationships with website visitors.
What is Ecommerce Marketing?
If you don’t market your ecommerce store, it might as well not exist. The only way to get customers and generate sales is through marketing activities.
Ready to get started? Looking to start your ecommerce marketing strategy? Sendinblue has all the tools you need. Our free plan allows you to use transactional and promotional email campaigns, SMS, automation, and live chat. There are also plugins for major ecommerce platforms that make it easy to link Sendinblue to your online store.
In order to keep your ecommerce marketing at its best, make sure to download our 2022 holiday marketing calendar! This text provides readers with a calendar of important dates and marketing tips for each month.
What Is an Ecommerce Marketing Strategy?
Your ecommerce marketing strategy outlines the actions you’ll take to promote your online store and generate more sales. The strategy is a long-term vision for where your ecommerce business is going. It is dependent on your understanding of the market, present consumer trends, research on brands and values, and the product itself.
Ask yourself:
- What are your sales expectations?
- How big is your market?
- What target group do you want to reach?
- Where are they? — both geographically and online?
- How do you want your product to be perceived?
- What are your competitors doing?
The questions below will help you decide which marketing tactics, from the ones above, will best fit your needs and abilities.
The best ecommerce marketing strategies vary depending on the product or service being offered.
There is no one definitive answer for the best way to succeed in ecommerce due to the vastness of the industry, the many different types of products and businesses, and the different groups of people that are targeted. Every seller and product is different so a selling strategy that works for one, might not work for another.
How to Write an Ecommerce Marketing Plan
Your ecommerce marketing plan is a schedule of the activities you have included in your strategy. It lays out a plan for how you will achieve your ecommerce marketing goals.
When starting out, keep it simple. Choose a few marketing tactics that fit your brand and that you can set up easily. Try a couple of different tactics and analyze the results to see what works best for your company.
What does a marketing plan for ecommerce look like?
Following is a description of various marketing activities during the first year that will result in increased brand awareness, customer attraction, and customer retention.
- Run a brand awareness campaign on Facebook to drive traffic
- Do retargeting Facebook ads to convert site visitors
- Set up lead generation e.g. email signup forms or website registration
- Create an automated email sequence — welcome, information about the brand and products, nurturing to purchase
- Work with social media influencers to popularize your brand
- Improve SEO on site
- Add paid search activities — Google Shopping, PPC to catch people who might go to the competition
- Engage existing customers through email to keep them interested with content and offers
- Target lookalike audiences based on your best clients on Facebook
- Prepare for important ecommerce events when your target market expects promotions — Black Friday, the holiday marketing season, Mother’s/ Father’s/ Valentine’s Day, back to school, summer vacation, spring break, national holidays, etc.
- Test various marketing campaigns to see what works for your product and ideal customers. Reuse what works and don’t waste money on what doesn’t.
10 of the Best Ecommerce Marketing Strategies
Here are some tips that will help you with your ecommerce marketing strategy.
Define your target audience and market
You can’t craft the perfect marketing strategy without first understanding your audience. Only then can you figure out the right voice, messaging, channels, and offers.
See what your competitors are doing
There is no need to reinvent the wheel, some of it is probably working. But look for what can be done better too. This can become your competitive advantage.
Set targets based on benchmarks
If you don’t have any data to base your projections on, look to industry benchmarks instead. This will give you a direction to work in.
Research marketing tools that can help you
You’ve seen that ecommerce marketing encompasses a lot, which can be daunting. There are things that can help you with the tactics, and they are not very expensive.
Add more marketing channels as you find your ground
When you feel that your initial marketing campaign is running smoothly, you can begin to look into other avenues and strategies. For example, you could add a live chat feature to your website if you have a dedicated customer service representative.
Automate as much as possible
For small businesses to grow, they need a steady stream of sales coming in without requiring constant effort. The more you can run hands-off, the better. Automated marketing tactics like bulk emails, automated workflows, notifications, and lead scoring can be very useful.
Personalize your communication
Advertisements, emails, text messages, and live chat are much more effective when they are personalized and relevant. Customers appreciate feeling understood, rather than receiving another generic message.
Measure your ecommerce marketing results, refine and reuse what works
You can only tell if an ecommerce marketing strategy is effective if you track the ROI. The campaigns that don’t have the desired outcome are not worth investing in. For the ones that work, try to use them for a bigger audience and repeat.
Build loyalty into your strategy
Customer loyalty is beneficial to businesses as it increases profits, promotes a positive brand image, and attracts new customers who have been referred by satisfied customers. You should start working on it as soon as possible because it will have a long-term impact. The loyalty tiers, automations, and behavior insights provided by CRM will help you improve your customer relations.
Focus on profitability, not just sales
If you’re always spending money to get new customers, you might not be making any profit. Sales that happen one time are generally more expensive for the customer because of advertising prices, in addition to more returns and exchanges happening (since new customers often don’t know their size, etc.). It’s cheaper to drive repeat sales to current customers.
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