The Ultimate Guide To Mastering eCommerce Marketing

Having an eCommerce website isn’t going to bring desired revenue every month. There is a lot more that goes into running an online store.

As the eCommerce industry is growing day after day, the competition keeps getting more demanding. Working hard would be an incomplete answer. But working hard in the correct direction is complete with an appropriately devised strategy.

Understand what you can do as an eCommerce brand to get your potential customers to visit your website. You need not be an eCommerce marketing expert to grow your business from $0 to $1 million in sales. As an e-commerce brand, you should continue to create better customer experiences that meet the increased customer expectations.

An eCommerce business needs marketing to survive in the market.

The three steps to increase your revenue with a perfect eCommerce marketing plan:

1. Get fans and followers
2. Engage with them
3. Turn them into your customers

Read further to dive deeper into how your eCommerce brand can leverage the power of social media to increase your sales funnel. Let’s jump in!

• What Is eCommerce Marketing?
• Why Is Marketing Important For An eCommerce Company?
• Trends In eCommerce Marketing
• Types Of eCommerce Marketing
• Role Of Social Media In eCommerce Marketing
• Tips To Supercharge Your eCommerce Marketing
• Let's Wrap Up
• Fuel Your Brand's Social Media Presence With Statusbrew

You can directly jump to a section of your choice or keep scrolling.

What Is eCommerce Marketing?

Ecommerce marketing refers to the adoption and implementation of strategic methods to create and increase awareness about your online store, website, product, and services. The actionable goal of eCommerce marketing is to get your target customers to know about your product and make them visit your website so that they can end up buying from you.

Image Source: Fibre2Fashion Facebook

A variety of tactics are used to drive traffic to your eCommerce site to promote and sell products and services. These tactics include social media marketing, discounts, public relations, and eCommerce content marketing.

A successful eCommerce marketing strategy utilizes a balance of different marketing channels. Be it a Facebook Ad campaign or Google Ads; everything works together to unify your brand’s image, promote your key campaign and make your customer’s journey as easy and engaging as possible.

Learn more about How To Create a Customer Journey Map For eCommerce

Why Is Marketing Important For An eCommerce Company?

Imagine you own a wonderful product that’s ideal for the market you are targeting. But no one in your target audience knows about it; hence no one will buy it.

If no one buys your product, then your company will come in trouble. Thus, it is essential to let your target market know about your product and educate them about its use case.

Ecommerce marketing exactly does that for your business. It helps you spread the word so that the more people know about your product & brand.

Currently, 25.6% of the world’s population buy online, and the number is said to rise to over 2.14 billion in 2021!

Thus, a large part of the success of an eCommerce brand depends on the internet. To get the higher attention of visitors, you must be present in all formats of online marketing. With thousands of e-commerce websites already available on the internet, the competition gets tougher to stand out from the rest.

Trends In eCommerce Marketing

Ecommerce brands today are striving hard to survive the fierce competition and to satisfy customer requirements at the same time. For marketing your eCommerce brand correctly, you need to remain on your toes. What might work for you today, might not work tomorrow. Hence, it is essential to stay updated with the latest trends in eCommerce marketing and what your competitors are working on to stay abreast in the market.

Scroll below to learn what are the latest trends that are dominating eCommerce marketing in 2021.

Mobile Devices Have Changed The World

48.33% of the world's population owns a smartphone today.

Mobile transactions are increasing by a significant number every year. People spend more time on their smartphones than their desktops today.

Image Source : Sticker Mule

Anyone hardly logs in to their desktop to purchase online. Customers find it convenient to open the mobile app of an eCommerce portal and buy whatever they want. They can buy anytime and anywhere with a click. Hence, if you’re going to make your business mobile responsive, there is no better time than now.

Omnichannel Presence To Improve Your Customer Experience

Today’s customers are highly informed.

88% of customers check products online before purchasing something. And this number is going to increase in 2021

Your eCommerce brand needs to provide a seamless experience regardless of the device or channel to tap more customers.

Customers have a plethora of choices today for completing their purchase, and your brand cannot afford to miss on more of these choices. You cannot bear the risk of investing in one channel while ignoring the potential of others. As a retailer, you need to attract, engage and serve your customers through omnichannel presence to leave no stone unturned in approaching your customers.

Learn more about Why Omnichannel Marketing For eCommerce Is Essential (+3 Best Practices)

Invest In Social Media To Attract Customers

Social media has transformed the way we buy things on the internet now. People are captivated by what they see online and on social media. With the increase in social media usage, one thing is for sure; that social media trend space is a must-watch for any brand or business.

Social media will continue to dominate the market ecosystem for upcoming years. Hence, only the brands that leverage social media to its deepest will succeed in attracting a vast customer base. Social media is here to stay to rapidly increase the involvement of customers with brands across the globe.

Facebook and Instagram have also added a “Buy” button to their platform that turns out to be an excellent approach to sell on these platforms. Learn about How To Sell On Facebook and Instagram

Convey Huge Amount Of Information In A Short Time Using Video Marketing

A picture says a thousand words, but a video depicts an entire story.

A marketer always finds new and attractive ways to engage with their audience. An essential aspect of your eCommerce marketing plan is understanding your audiences and creating content that they can relate to irrespective of the platform you use.

A video is a place where brand positioning and audience engagement meets. Video marketing gives your customers a deeper insight into your brand than just text and images.

52% of marketing professionals name video as the content with the highest ROI. Customers relate more to content that they can see with their eyes.

Customers react better to video reviews and product overviews than any other kind of textual content.

Types Of eCommerce Marketing

eCommerce marketing involves a lot of strategies to leverage and fulfill the purposes. Below are the top 10 types of eCommerce marketing that are worth using in your overall eCommerce marketing plan.

1. Establish authority, build trust, and provide helpful information to your customers using eCommerce Content Marketing
2. Establish a strong brand name that constantly grows your company value using Brand Marketing
3. Stir up conversations about a new product and generate more traffic using Buzz Marketing
4. Gain website traffic and rank your eCommerce store on the first few pages of your customers Google Search using Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5. Add more value to your main product by offering a free item along with it using Augmented Marketing
6. Improve brand awareness and engage with your audience using different platforms in Social Media Marketing
7. Have a complete image of your customer and provide them a product they prefer using Behavioural Marketing
8. Enhance relationships with your current customers and acquire new customers using Email Marketing for e-commerce
9. Set up your business online and promote yourself to make your business virtually available, even if you don’t have physical stores using Cloud Marketing
10. Improve lead generation and create targeted advertisements using Google Ads & PPC campaigns

Bonus: For a profitable eCommerce marketing strategy, you need not apply all these marketing approaches to your brand. Take a holistic approach to eCommerce marketing by coordinating between all the different strategies for the success of your brand. The beauty of an eCommerce marketing plan lies in testing, learning, and iterating quickly to find what works best.

Role Of Social Media In eCommerce Marketing

Social media hosts users of all ages, which means that social media has the can help attract potential customers in huge numbers. If you want to outstand your competitors and stay in the long run, you need to start being active on social media.

You might not even know what percentage of your target audience spends time on social media. Your offerings on social media could attract a large magnet of traffic and sales. Social media combined with a synchronus eCommerce marketing strategy will bring growth opportunities for your brand. The goal of social media and an eCommerce marketing plan is focused on building relationships and showing expertise in your field.

For any eCommerce brand, the ultimate goal is to acquire new customers. Social media helps your brand to grow organically and through ads. Read below to understand how social media can scale your business to achieve better sales numbers.

It's Where Your Customers Spend Most of Their Time

Your customers are on their phones using social media all the time. And you need to be where your customers are and connect with them.

You also need to understand why your audience uses social media so much and what they are actually looking for. People want to access useful information, which is not already present on the internet. Ensure you make this a key component of your eCommerce content marketing strategy.

And then you need to provide them with precisely what they have been looking for. The audience will keep constantly coming to your social media only if you offer them what no one else provides.

Social Proof Has Become An Inevitable Part Of The Buying Process

In today’s digital-savvy world, having social proof has become mandatory if eCommerce brands want to grow. Social proof is the best way to increase your audience base and get more people to know about you and your brand. Your chances to get discovered becomes multiplied when your audience shares your products on their Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest pages.

Image Source: FabFitFun Instagram

Social proof has become a new marketing goal for eCommerce brands. If you own a great product and are waiting to be discovered, social proof is what can give you a kickstart. Social proof helps new people learn about your product and remind your existing customers that they made a smart choice.

Brings Inbound Leads

With every new post that you put on your social media, you increase your chances of being discovered by your potential customers. Hence, if you keep posting consistently, you will generate more traffic, which means more people recognize your brand.

And when that happens, people come to know about your eCommerce brand and eventually buy your product. By building your social media, your brand is discovered by people from every corner of the world. Thus, there is no limit to reach on social media.

However, without social media, your inbound traffic is limited to your acquaintances and close circles only.

Tips To Supercharge Your eCommerce Marketing

3.78 billion social media users are spread worldwide in 2021, which forms 48% of the world’s population. And 54% of these social media users use it to research products that they want to buy. So if you are in the notion that social media isn't the right choice for your business, you are missing out on a ton of customers who purchase online.

Find The Right Platform For Your Business

Spend time figuring out which is the social media platform where your customers spend most of their time. If you are just starting with eCommerce marketing, then the ideal choice would be Facebook. The reason is that three-quarters of social media sales actually come from Facebook, and you don’t even need a huge marketing budget to get started with Facebook.

Image Source: Passion Planner Facebook

However, depending on your brand you might find other platforms that will be more efficient for you, like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google Business page. While selecting a social media platform, the primary goal is to understand where your customers are looking to solve their problem, precisely what your product or services provide.

The idea here is not to use just one social media platform as part of your eCommerce marketing. With time you will have to experiment with different platforms to expand your audience reach. But Facebook is an excellent platform to get started as this is where most of your customers spend their time.

Facebook marketing will help you understand your consumer behavior, like what your customers are looking for, what are they shopping for, or are they just looking for some product information. All of these points will help you structure your eCommerce marketing strategy and devise an effective content marketing strategy.

Get to know which are the Top Social Media Platforms for an eCommerce Business

Maintain Brand Consistency

Brand consistency refers to the process of communicating the message to your audience that perfectly aligns with your core brand values and the foundation of your brand. The social media platforms that you will be using for your eCommerce marketing should match your core brand. The same voice, tone, and message should be at the center of your eCommerce marketing strategy, be it any platform.

It is consistency that attracts an audience, and by developing brand consistency, you will be attracting an audience to your brand. Consistency helps your audience to build trust with your brand. Hence, ensure that the message you are spreading through different social media platforms should align with your brand’s core value.

Ensuring brand consistency will give your audience a similar experience irrespective of the platform they use. Brand consistency creates an emotional connection with your brand so that they witness a similar experience and communication message even if they are visiting your website or social media page.

The Home decore brand Wayfair ensures brand consistency by designing the featured section in same colour palatte as it's logo. The brands like The Business of Fashion and Bed Bath & Beyond maintain its brand consistency by crafting all of its marketing communication messaging in the same color and font as its product, packing with the play of other creative elements. So users can know who has designed the message without looking at the brand name.

Image Source: Wayfair Instagram

Image Source: Bed Bath & Beyond Instagram

Create A Content Strategy And Follow It Diligently

78% of the consumers perceive a relationship between themselves and a brand using the content that they consume on their page.

Content marketing is one of the most successful online marketing strategies. Consumers interact with that brand online which interests them the most. Hence, create a content strategy that your customers want to read.

While following eCommerce content marketing, make sure you are being constant along the way. Choose the correct time to publish out your post on different social media channels. Figure out at what time of the day most of your users spend time on social media and then post during that to get more engagements.

Try to create content at the same time so that your customers get used to it. Once they get used to it, they will soon start looking for and wait for your content. This helps in building brand trust as well.

Consistency is the key when you are growing your social media platform. Make sure you are posting, engaging, spending time that is necessary to get these people engaged with you. There is a lot of sales to be made on social media, primarily for the eCommerce business, so make sure you are spending your time wisely here.

It’s More Than Just Selling

The sole reason why most of the eCommerce comes on social media is to increase their sales. To make your brand authentic, try to be more than just a brand to your audience. As a part of your eCommerce content marketing effort, offer value to your audience in the form of content. Connect with your audience on a human level through your messages. Make them feel that you are more than just a brand for them. This is what will differentiate your business from the rest.

Hang In There

Do you know the reason why most eCommerce business fails to flourish? It is because they give up too soon.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Google.

It will take some time to see the results of the efforts that you have been putting into your eCommerce marketing. If you built your social media pages today, you would not get plenty of sales overnight. You will have to show up quality content to your audience consistently, and this way, you will be building a sales funnel of loyal customers for your brand that won’t just buy once but will keep visiting your website again and again. In this way, you will be building up your brand and get to expand your business into different corners of the globe.

Let’s Wrap Up

Social media has refined the online sales process for several eCommerce brands. It's not just about selling products and services online. It's about first understanding your user’s needs and then pitching to them in a way that would address their pain points. Ecommerce businesses that better understand this concept have more chances to implement their sales strategy effectively and drive better sales using the online channel.

Fuel Your Brand’s Social Media Presence With Statusbrew

Managing your brand’s social media presence can be complicated and time-consuming once the responsibilities of managing multiple profiles & engagements start adding up.

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Not just that, you get to measure your post performance and share actionable insights with your teammates. Sounds interesting? Start your social media journey today by booking a free demo today using the below link.

Try Statusbrew

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