What is e-commerce marketing?
Marketing a business online is all about creating awareness and driving action from potential customers.
E-commerce marketing typically refers to driving conversions of goods or services that can be delivered digitally. However, in a fully integrated strategy, e-commerce marketing can use any channel to attract and facilitate meeting an objective.
The Purpose of eCommerce Marketing
Marketers promote their eCommerce stores using various strategies to drive traffic there. The goal of eCommerce marketing is to convert site visitors into customers who will buy again, in order to increase sales.
There are two primary ways to market eCommerce businesses – directly to customers, and indirectly through search engines and other online platforms.
Direct marketing involves promoting activities that encourage customers to buy products, while indirect marketing involves activities that aim for intangible benefits, such as brand awareness or customer loyalty.
You need to both create and carry out a successful eCommerce marketing plan.
Developing a Solid eCommerce Marketing Plan
An eCommerce marketing plan involves setting goals that can be measured and taking steps that can be taken to achieve those goals in a set period of time.
When setting goals, it is important to make sure that they are achievable. This will help ensure that you are successful in reaching them, whether they are related to driving traffic or increasing sales. When goal-setting, it can be helpful to use the SMART goal framework to make sure your goals are well-defined.
After you have figured out what the business goals are, create marketing plans that are specific and measurable for each goal. For example, you may want to start building authority in your niche to attract potential customers and increase sales.
It is important to have a clear plan for how you want your business to grow, as well as a timeline of when you want to implement different marketing campaigns and measure their success.
Know Your Target Audience: Why It’s Important and How to Do It
If you want to launch a successful eCommerce marketing campaign, you need to understand your target audience.
You can do so by gathering key information about your target audience:
- Demographics. This information includes the age range, gender breakdown, salary, and location of your target audience.
- Psychographics. Psychological attributes consist of interests, lifestyle choices, and opinions.
The information you provide will help you create a buyer persona, which is a fictional representation of your target consumer. Looking through product forums and customer reviews can help you better understand your ideal buyers.
The more buyer personas you have, the easier it is to brainstorm effective strategies and tactics for optimal conversions.
The next step is to brainstorm eCommerce marketing tactics that best appeal to the people that you have identified as your target market.
There are two types of customers that frequent a healthy, low-calorie juice bar. Customer A (Tim) is 16 years old and loves skateboarding, and Customer B (Tina) is 23 years old and just started their first full-time job.
A great way to get Tim’s attention would be to post fun and energetic challenge videos on Instagram or TikTok. Tina would be more inclined to buy your drink if you presented its health benefits.
After creating potential marketing strategies for each persona, you need to try them out with an actual audience. There are a few ways to analyze customer feedback, such as social analytics, surveys, focus groups, or trial and error.
Top 5 eCommerce Marketing Strategies
There are a variety of eCommerce marketing strategies you can use to achieve your desired conversions and sales. Try out a few and see which ones work best for your business.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a marketing tactic that improves a website’s visibility on search engines. It is a popular eCommerce marketing tactic.
It is very difficult to get a high position in search engine results pages because there are so many websites. SEO can help to increase traffic to your store and sales by making your store more visible online.
The following are some factors that search engines’ algorithms consider when compiling search results:
- User experience. Since search engines generally don’t recommend slow and unsafe websites to their users, optimize your website for speed, and implement an SSL security in it.
- Relevance. This factor relates to how your website content aligns with the search query. Implement relevant keywords throughout your online store and produce high-quality content to improve its searchability.
- Authority. Search engines will only recommend credible websites. You can collaborate with other websites in your industry and build backlinks to build credibility.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is based on creating and sharing information that is valuable and relevant to a specific audience. The responsibilities of the job include creating blog posts and social media content, as well as conducting email marketing.
Content marketing is an effective way to build trust and establish your brand as an industry leader. It lets you communicate directly with consumers. The higher quality your content is, the more likely it is to maintain a loyal customer base.
3. Use Google Shopping
This Google service features products from sellers who have chosen to be featured on it. The offers are displayed according to keyword relevancy and other search behavior.
4. Social Media Marketing
The goal of social media marketing is to educate an audience about a brand and its products. It involves creating high-quality content, engaging your followers, running ads, and analyzing insights to leverage social media.
Social media platforms provide an opportunity to build a direct relationship with customers, allowing companies to foster loyalty and trust. This marketing plan is also cost-effective, similar to content marketing.
5. Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing is an approach that integrates different marketing channels in order to provide a consistent and smooth customer experience.
sentence 1- Customers can convert to sales on any channel used, whether it be the eCommerce website, social networking channels, or a physical store. sentence 2- It is easy for customers to convert to sales on any channel used, for example the eCommerce website, social networking channels, or a physical store.
Creating content marketing to reach the right audience
For years, experts have said that content is king. This phrase makes marketers’ eyes roll.
Creating original content is still a key technique to reaching customers. Backlinko’s recent study found that the average word count for pages ranking on the first page of Google is 1,447 words. Search engines prioritize websites that pay attention to organic content as part of their marketing mix.
While it’s important to keep search engines in mind when creating content, it’s also important to remember that they are not the only audience for your content. As more consumers have shifted their shopping habits to online channels, e-commerce marketing has become an effective way to reach a larger audience and build a list of qualified leads. Useful and interesting content will engage your audience without feeling like an advertisement.
This approach focuses on the quality of something rather than the quantity.
Planning creative content production
Brands cannot mass produce quality content. The goal is to create stories that motivate customers to take action and that they will remember. 43% of B2B marketers have a formalized content marketing strategy, but the channel still needs to be planned for strategically.
One in five B2B marketers operate without a strategy.
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Steps to planning an effective content strategy
- Conduct keyword research. Use data to understand what the customer wants and needs, and plan content that can be integrated into e-commerce marketing campaigns. Free tools such as the Google Adwords planner can add value to owned media planning as well as paid.
- Plan content that is relevant to the customer’s needs. Research what questions they ask at the start of the purchase process, why they need a product or service, what their pain points are, and plan a mix of content to address it. Remember, this is both for SEO and more recently, voice search, but also to direct the customer through a conversion.
- Review content types, how they can be created and ways to repurpose across the digital experience. Create the strategy to be relevant throughout the funnel and at each stage of the customer lifecycle e.g. ‘how to’ videos, useful blogs, podcasts, UGC etc.
- Optimize existing content and pages. Review common entry pages, product pages and FAQs so that they support the SEO strategy but also the conversion rate optimization (CRO) process.
- Integrate social media content. Sell the lifestyle of how others are using the product or service to persuade a conversion. User-generated content is key to reaching a new audience, social proofing, and building loyalty.
Eliciting action through social commerce
In other words, social commerce is a type of e-commerce that uses social media to market products.
Brands can sell products directly to consumers through social media platforms. The process of finding and buying a product or service online is entirely contained within the same platform or website. Not only does this make buying things easier, but it also lets people talk to people they trust to help them make decisions about what to buy.
. . and is distinguished from social media marketing, which refers to the use of social media platforms to drive traffic to another site where the purchase takes place.” Social commerce refers to the act of selling products directly through social media networks, as opposed to social media marketing, which refers to using social media platforms to drive traffic to another site where the purchase takes place. It differs from social media marketing as you’re not redirecting users to an online store, but offering them the ability to checkout directly within the network they’re using at that moment.” Back in 2020, social commerce was estimated to be worth $89.4 billion with projections to grow to $604.5 billion in the next seven years.
Facebook has mentioned that a majority of shoppers, 81%, look into products on Instagram and Facebook combined before making a purchase.
Why is social commerce so important?
Social commerce is a term used to describe the use of social media platforms to facilitate online transactions. It is considered an important marketing technique because it allows businesses to connect with potential customers on a more personal level, creating a social and digital experience.
The majority of users (87%) use social media as a platform to help make informed shopping decisions. About 30% of people who see a product on social media go on to buy it.
The reason for its efficiency? Social commerce takes the best aspects of shopping with others and getting a second opinion and combines them into one.
Social commerce also helps to remove additional steps in a conversion process to help improve CRO.
Actionable considerations for social commerce:
- Use social commerce for immediate feedback. Use data from polls and product interaction to help direct product development, campaign feedback, or service delivery.
- Hyper-target customers based on real data. Social data is in abundance, so advertising can be highly targeted and specific, raising the e-commerce marketing bar.
- Listen to the audience. Social commerce allows direct interaction, so social listening is a must. Feed this information back into the strategy.
- Encourage UCG. Ask for reviews, share them, and embed UGC as a strategic asset.
AI in e-commerce marketing
Artificial intelligence is not a new concept to ecommerce marketers, but in recent years it has stepped up its game.
Customers are now proficient in interacting with chatbots, responding to intelligent recommendations, and remarketing campaigns. This means that they are comfortable using these tools and expect a high level of service from them. Businesses that are thinking ahead are using customer analysis tools, smart inventory management, and omnichannel strategies across multiple channels. This means that campaigns and e-commerce marketing can be very effective if they are results-focused.
The way your customers interact with your brand can be changed drastically through the use of machine learning, propensity modeling, and AI. By impacting the reach, act, convert, and engage stages of the customer lifecycle, you can easily change the way customers see and use your brand.
Creating a personalized experience through machine learning, propensity modeling, and AI
For some sectors, marketing technology can help with conversions, for example by allowing customers to try products on virtually or by giving them product recommendations. In some industries, such as financial services, the ROI of marketing is determined by offering a personalized experience that is driven by data.
fewer people buy loans and mortgages online because they are more complex products that require a more seamless multi-touch approach. Machine learning can help to guide customers through an e-commerce experience by predicting what they are looking for and providing relevant results.
Keeping it personal (and intelligent)
Today, people want companies to provide a more personal and integrated experience, but they are also more aware of data security. People don’t want to be spammed with ads for things they don’t want or need. They want companies to use the data they provide to only send them ads or offers for products or services that are relevant to them. The majority of millennials are annoyed with brands that send them irrelevant emails.
If you want customers to be truly engaged, your strategy needs to include everything from planning to executing data-driven e-commerce marketing campaigns. There are several eCommerce marketing strategies that can be employed to generate traffic and sales for your online store. By optimizing your website for search engines, using social media to connect with potential customers, and utilizing email marketing to reach a wider audience, you can create a successful online marketing campaign.
The effectiveness of your eCommerce strategies and tactics depend on your marketing goals and target market.
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