Ecommerce is a highly competitive market with an annual growth rate of 23%.
Due to the Covid 19 outbreak, consumers have rushed to purchase pretty much everything online, resulting in an addition of 36% of online shoppers from 28% before the pandemic. As with time, consumers are highly relying on online shopping; an estimation says that 95% of purchases will be made online by 2040. Thus, eCommerce is an opening opportunity for countless entrepreneurs.
But here’s the dark side for all those budding entrepreneurs.
The average eCommerce conversion rate remains 2.86% as of 2020. There has been a lot of exposure, but the profits still remain low. Thousands of people might visit your website but might exit it without making it to the final checkout. This concept has lead entrepreneurs into an increasing concern of growth requiring extreme efforts.
When you ask about promoting your eCommerce website, the only thing that can really help you is eCommerce marketing. Having a solid eCommerce marketing strategy and investing time and effort consistently will help you generate more sales for your eCommerce brand.
If your sales are getting stagnant, it's time for you to ramp up on your marketing efforts.
This blog combines a list of ten proven, highly reliable, effective, and tailor-made eCommerce marketing strategies that will incur traffic for your website and drive plenty of sales.
So if you don’t want to be a retailer struggling to close deals on the table, you should give it a read.
- Ecommerce Marketing - What Is The Buzz All About?
- Tips To Create A Strong eCommerce Marketing Strategy For Your Website
- Transform Your Social Media Marketing Journey Today With Statusbrew
You can directly jump to a section of your choice or keep scrolling.
Ecommerce Marketing - What Is The Buzz All About?
Wondering what to do when you have no sales on your eCommerce site? If you Google this question, you will get a ton of questionable advice. But here's the hard truth, most of these strategies can move the needle only a little bit.
An effective eCommerce marketing strategy to bring out sales immediately is providing your product at a discounted price.
But for long will you undercharge your product?
Once your product gets back to its original price, your customers might shift to your competitors, resulting in a revenue drop.
Image Source: WOOLWORTHS Facebook
One of the effective eCommerce marketing strategy that can run for long is making your product more than just a commodity for your customers. Fuel your product with experience so that your customers get a reason to come back to your eCommerce store for purchase.
You need to realize that your eCommerce website is not a physical store where people will simply notice your store and walk-in. You need to make efforts to make your customers know about your brand and make your presence felt.
Your brand should become a core growth lever for thoughtful experience for your customers; then, your pricing will no longer be a hindrance for your customers to buy from your website.
Additionally, it will also provide you with several benefits like customer loyalty and advocacy. All of these things will help grow your eCommerce business.
But, how do you establish credibility quickly that will be everlasting for your customers? You need to use the correct set of eCommerce marketing strategies combined with consistency.
Trying and testing all of the available methods online might consume a lot of time and effort, which might eventually slow your sales. So you just don’t need a set of random eCommerce marketing strategies; you need a set of smart eCommerce marketing strategies that will show results in the least possible time.
Tips To Create A Strong eCommerce Marketing Strategy
If your eCommerce website is not driving sales, it is of no use.
Increasing traffic on your website does not necessarily result in increased sales in direct proportion. You need to craft a well-planned sales funnel that will ensure maximum traffic to your eCommerce website is being converted.
You also have to ensure that your eCommerce website is driving the correct type of buyers. If you are selling stationery materials, you need millennial and gen z affluent buyers on your website who are more likely to buy your products.
There is no generic eCommerce marketing strategy that will work wonders for any and every eCommerce brand. If that would have been the case, then all of us would have opened eCommerce stores and become millionaires.
Let’s delve deeper to devise an eCommerce marketing strategy that will slay your marketing game.
1. eCommerce Content Marketing - Put Your Knowledge Into Words
Ecommerce brands can use content marketing to boost web presence and promote brand recognition. Content has a massive impact on the consumer mindset.
72% of marketers claim that content marketing has increased engagement and the number of leads.
Shopping is an engaging and fun activity for people. So while designing your eCommerce content marketing strategy, tap into users’ dynamic by creating engaging and interactive content. Understand your target audience and create customer-centric content.
On the flip side, if you keep creating content on your own, you would simply appear as a brand trying to boost engagement. To avoid that scenario, you also need to create User-Generated Content.
This can include testimonials and feedback implemented into call-to-actions, or loyal customer reviews, to name a few. The sole purpose of creating user-generated content is to drive new and relevant traffic from already existing customers to whom you have provided an incredible experience.
In other words, instead of hearing from the brand itself of how awesome you are, your future customers want to listen about the experience of shopping from your website from your previous customers. By doing so, you are not just building interest for new traffic; you also allow your existing users to become more than just shoppers for your brand.
Image Source: Quad-Lock Blog
Since such customers will contribute to your eCommerce content marketing at their own will and in their free time, it will increase their engagement and loyalty with your brand, thus decreasing their chances of moving towards your competitors.
User-generated eCommerce content marketing can make the world go around you. So invest wisely in it!
2. Influencer Marketing - Target Larger Audience Base With Collaboration
Have you ever seen someone achieve exceptional results by using a product that eventually ended up with you buying the same product with the aim to feel the same effects? Well, that's what influencer marketing is all about. There is a lot of hype about it, but what for?
Influencer marketing is a form of collaboration to leverage the influencer’s pre-existing audience base to grow your own. For every $1 spent on influencer marketing, your brand can expect an average return of $18.
Do your groundwork about analyzing the nature of the audience an influencer has before collaborating. Determine if their audience is an ideal customer for your eCommerce brand or not. Also, keep a watch on the social media platforms used by the influencers, and the platform where most of your target audience is integrated.
Integrate influencer marketing in your eCommerce marketing strategy to market your product, and you will see a boost in your ROI for sure! Getting your brand’s approval from someone who is already an expert in your niche is one of the best ways to drive profit by increasing brand awareness.
Also, you don’t need Lionel Messi to promote your brand.
Joining the scene recently is the concept of Micro-Influencers, who are influencers with a small but niche-specific following base.
It might seem counter-intuitive to use influencers with a small following; but a recent study has shown that most influencers with a large number of followers have lesser engagements on their posts.
So quality hardly promises with quantity, even in the field of influencer marketing.
3. Social Media Marketing Mixed With ROI - For Enhanced Growth
Social media platforms have an unmatched level of traffic. Still, a vast number of businesses haven’t tapped the full potential of this platform, and eCommerce business is one of them.
Most eCommerce businesses aren’t aware of the power of social networks for bringing in prospects and customers. Reports show that the number of social commerce buyers will accelerate to 90.4 million in 2021. Hence your brands should evolve their social eCommerce marketing strategy to meet the needs of the consumer mindset in 2021.
Social media marketing doesn’t mean that you need to create buzz on all platforms. Do your research and find out the platform where your target audience spends most of their time.
If your brand is spread across several social media platforms, posting the same message will saturate your audience’s interest. Hence, focus on creating channel-specific content. Embrace and adopt the new social media trends to thrive in 2021.
Image Source: Anaconda Store Facebook
Strike a conversation with your audience rather than posting content of your interest. Ask your audience what they would like to see on your social platforms through polls and quizzes. Present those content to your audience combined with a taste of authenticity. Follow your eCommerce marketing strategy consistently to generate significant results.
To get an idea of which content marketing effort is working best for your brand, tie them to the direct results it produces. You need to understand which eCommerce marketing strategy is promoting engagement and which one is driving conversions. In the end, choose the one that best suits your goal but do not overdo any eCommerce marketing strategy to avoid being monotonous.
Understand the Best Practices For Social Media For eCommerce Brands
4. Optimize Your Product Page - Show Up First In Front Of Customers
SEO is an evergreen pillar of eCommerce marketing strategy for boosting website traffic and driving sales. Studies show that 95 percent of web traffic goes to websites on Page 1 of Google Search. And this is what happens when your eCommerce website is SEO optimized. When buyers search for products online, your store page appears at the top of the search result.
Image Source: Pela Case
Below is a SEO checklist that you should follow to double your eCommerce website traffic.
- Identify the Right Keywords that your buyers mostly use to search for products that you sell and integrate them mindfully on your product page.
- Create Quality, Rich Product Descriptions by including the points that will challenge you to think about what your customer would love to read.
- Write an Attractive Page Title that will not only rank your website but also boost the click rate.
- Frame a short, concise, and entirely Unique Meta Description that includes keywords.
- Make product URLs Keyword-Friendly making it easy for your customers to search for products with just URLs.
- Add Headings and Subheadings to make content on your product page easily skimmable for your customers.
- Add Relevant Product Reviews and Ratings to assure your new visitors.
- Decrease the Product Page Loading Period as eCommerce conversions tend to reduce with slow loading pages.
- Distribute and promote your product page to rank faster and get more exposure.
- Don’t Expect SEO Ranking to be Easy and expect faster results. Creating content that ranks top on Google search is tough work. Google isn't in a hurry to move your product page to the top; it might take some time.
5. Narrow Down On Your Buyer Persona - To Increase Product Value
Creating a buyer persona allows your brand to align marketing efforts more effectively to attract and sell to the right prospect.
A buyer persona should never be about the buyers to whom you could sell; instead, it should be about the ones to whom you want to sell.
You might have ten different buyers to whom you wish to sell your product. But how many buyer personas should you really create?
Suppose you are stuck in this dilemma, remind yourself why e-commerce brands create a buyer persona in the first place. The goal remains to serve the best potential buyers while keeping the primary message of your brand focused on your value proposition.
If you target too many customers simultaneously, you will be diverging from your buyer persona, which might not prove fruitful in your business’s near future. Targeting such a wide range of buyers will lead to decreasing value of your product since they are not the ideal consumer to understand the actual value of your product.
6. Video Marketing - To Connect And Communicate, No Matter The Distance
84% of users say that branded video has convinced them to buy a product.
Video content helps grab user’s attention and engage with them quickly. The pandemic has resulted in increased usage and success of video marketing as an integral part of eCommerce marketing strategy. Videos form compelling and interactive content for brands to connect with their audience.
Image Source: THE ICONIC Instagram
Create short videos to hook in your audience quickly. To provide a profound piece of genuine value, consider going for a long-form video. Shoppable Videos allow users to tap on a product within a video to purchase it. Platforms like Amazon and YouTube have offered shoppable video formats and has seen massive growth.
7. Customer Service - It's All About Making Customers Happy
64% of customers say that customer service of a brand is a more important factor than price.
Customer service includes all the interactions between an eCommerce brand and its customer, which shapes their relationship for future collaborations. It involves everything right from your e-commerce website design to delivering the product at the customer’s door. However, customer service doesn't end after shipping the product.
As an eCommerce brand, you need not just attract new customers but also nurture your relationship with previous customers. You need to create such an experience that the next time your buyers think of buying a product, they immidiately think of your business.
To develop such a relationship with your customers, give them a call after the delivery and ask how their shopping experience has been, any suggestions or feedback, and if they are enjoying using the product. Don't get disheartened if you had one wrong customer whom you couldn't provide a memorable experience.
Remember: With every new purchase, you get a chance to redeem yourself on the floors of customer service.
8. Voice Commerce - Type Less And Speak More
Almost 5.5 million people make purchases with their smart speakers on a regular basis.
Voice Commerce is a niche of eCommerce in which customers make use of smart speakers such as Amazon Echo or Google Home to shop online.
Voice commerce has no longer been a niche and is all set to become one of the biggest eCommerce marketing trends of 2021. Hence, your eCommerce website should be optimized to accommodate this trend.
Image Source: IndianRetailer.com
Users nowdays also ask a query about the product through the voice search feature on your phones. Most of these queries are lengthy and conversational. For your product page to appear in front of your customer’s search, it should contain a clear, concise, and complete answer to your customer’s query. Hence, your website & listings should be optimized for complete sentences and long-tail keywords. Make the content on your website conversational so that it remains optimized for voice searches.
9. Retargeting Campaign - Bring Back Qualified Leads To Your Store
Retargeting is like a second chance to create a first impression.
97% of first-time visitors to e-commerce websites leave without making a purchase.
That doesn't mean that they cannot return. However, they won't come back to your website on their own. You need to make efforts in the right direction to get them back.
Retargeting is dropping a reminder into your customer's minds after they have shown interest in your brand. Every time an Ad about your brand shows up, it will trigger a reminder in your customer’s minds that they should go back again to your website and continue from where they had left in the first place.
Remember: Retargeting works well as long as you don't overdo it, which should not end up irritating your customers.
You already have made the first effort to bring in customers to your website once. Now using a retargeting campaign, you are bringing them back to your site. Create and frame ads for your retargeting campaign such that it reminds your customer’s how you are solving their problem.
Learn how your brand can Drive More Product Sales via Facebook Dynamic Ads
10. Personalization - Engage With Each Customer On A Personal Level
77% of companies that delivered personalized experience saw revenue growth the following year.
A common question in the minds of eCommerce brands remains how to win customer loyalty? The answer is simple: Understand the unique needs of your customer.
With the increase in the number of eCommerce brands, the expectations of your customer have also increased proportionally which leads them to want an appropriately targeted and highly personalized solution.
Start by collecting data from your eCommerce website. Get to know how your customers arrive at your website ( through Google, social media platforms, etc.), Items they put in their shopping cart and leave without purchasing, what products and categories they spend most of their time browsing through.
Combine all of this information, and you know how to strike a conversation with your customers based on this data. Now you have got a step closer to understanding your customers better.
Transform Your Social Media Marketing Journey Today With Statusbrew
Your eCommerce marketing strategy will consist of a bunch of activities to be carried out successfully. But you need not do each of these tasks on your own. Automate and centralize your efforts as much as you can to experience results quickly.
As a social media marketing aid, Statusbrew centralizes all your social activities at a single place to make benefit-driven results for your eCommerce brand. You get to increase engagement with your audience by automating inboxes from several social channels. You save time in replying to customer queries by making use of pre-saved and personalized replies.
You get to do more in less time by automating your publishing workflow. In this manner, you reach out to your target audience within their timezone and whenever they stay active on social media. You also get to make smarter handpicked choices by understanding several content performances.
But this isn't all. There's a lot more inside the store. Do you want to discuss this? Hop on a call with us by booking a free demo today using the link below.
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