Contact us anytime to know more - Abhishek P., Founder & CFO CISIN
Market conditions might seem ideal for success; however, you could end up squandering valuable funds on misguided marketing efforts that fail. For approximately 13 years, I have worked in the direct-to-consumer industry. Over this period, I have held roles at companies targeting mass appeal at lower costs and luxury brands.
What Is An E-Commerce Marketing Strategy?
An effective e-commerce strategy involves setting clear, specific objectives or goals and then researching, planning, and executing tools, channels, and tactics you will employ to reach them. Frameworks provide the basis of any effective marketing strategy, providing your e-commerce operations with the structure to add or delete elements as required.
Given the rapid pace of innovation and shifting customer satisfaction behaviors, our digital approach must remain fluid and flexible. An effective e-commerce marketing plan must involve multiple strategies that take account of both micro and macro elements to meet its goal.
Depending upon factors like competitor marketing activities and target market share, specific tactics may need to be employed to reach your goals within certain geographic regions or product groups.
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How To Develop An E-Commerce Marketing Strategy
When creating an e-commerce strategy for your online store, keep several key factors in mind when developing it. These elements are pivotal when setting budgets and assessing your goals over the short, medium, and long term. My number-one advice would be not to lose track of the customer conversion journey altogether. That means not getting too caught up in ROI calculations, conversion rates, or new customer acquisition metrics from every marketing ecommerce business tools or channel you employ.
Brand awareness campaigns can play an integral role in business expansion and brand recognition; however, their return on investment (ROI) may be difficult to calculate accurately. At times, it's easy to overlook that our original desire or intention for purchasing may have existed long before clicking an ad or using other marketing assets and resources.
If your only aim is e-commerce, long-term success may elude you unless you utilize tactics designed to create affinity, interest, and aspiration toward your brand among potential customer satisfaction. Such campaigns can also be more targeted. Second, I encourage you to visualize your conversion funnel. It is critical that everyone on your team clearly understands the desired results of any marketing tactic or channel used for promotion.
After an intensive brainstorming session, taking photos of your whiteboard can serve as a powerful visual aid to aid with implementation strategies and plans. Many marketers utilize multiple marketing platforms for different campaign goals at their funnel's top (awareness/discovery-focused) and bottom (conversion/sales-oriented).
Apply a consistent naming structure when describing each campaign you run - this will make discussing strategy with the internal team or external partners simpler and quicker. With these points in mind, let's examine the channels, tactics, and strategies often employed in modern marketing and advertising strategies for e-commerce businesses.
Also Read: A Guide to Starting an E-Commerce Business
Ecommerce Marketing Channels, Strategies & Tactics
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing encompasses an expansive spectrum of practices. Social media campaigns may utilize various channels. Facebook and Instagram may still reign supreme by 2022 in both the U.S.A. and the EU; other channels may also produce solid results.
Product and demographic considerations and creative assets used in campaigns can immensely impact results. I have read some interesting case studies about how TikTok has helped fashion and lifestyle brands thrive through it.
Pinterest has proven invaluable in helping homeware brands and retailers build customer loyalty through engaging images that resonate with other user interface, which they then pin and share. Organic posting can be successful for smaller posts that build brand recognition or engage audiences directly, but to reach customers that would normally miss organic postings without paid promotion strategies in place.
Paid social media campaigns often allow businesses to target specific audiences or, increasingly, large ones. AI platforms and machine learning algorithms may then use behavioral targeting techniques on potential customer behavior based on what they exhibit on a given social platform and in online activity data. Creative campaigns are increasingly important, with social media advertising expanding rapidly. Your content must engage potential customer base while they browse social networks; without this kind of engaging material, paid social marketing on social media channels won't reach its goals.
Understanding your target crowded market is also essential. Social media usage continues to surge, and some regions (notably APAC ) already boast successful channels specific to them. Social media marketing can be both engaging and effective. By taking advantage of various channels on social media to build awareness, conversion, and retargeting campaigns - ultimately building your own macro sales funnel for each platform!
Social media advertising comes with its own set of risks. To be effective with it and achieve desired goals, it is necessary to fully comprehend what to expect from various marketing campaigns and budgets.
Pay-Per-Click (Ppc)
PPC (pay-per-click) ads can be daunting to those unfamiliar with digital marketing tactics like PPC. Your business will incur costs every time an individual clicks on one of its campaign items. However, costs vary considerably between digital products and industries (insurance industries typically incur the highest click charges, while retail can often offer better value). When operating within niche or targeted markets, costs will usually remain very reasonable.
A variety of safeguards are in place to ensure that your expenditures do not surpass what is reasonable. Competition between advertisers for keywords or products helps dictate bid costs per click - more clicks available equals greater costs. Google Ads and Shopping Ads lead Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns; other search engines, websites, and advertising networks also offer PPC advertisements.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) can take many forms, from banner ads and YouTube videos to search-based campaigns that display whenever someone uses one of your target keywords in a search engine. Your product catalog provides keyword data for shopping campaigns. Here, you can determine what search terms Google should display in your shopping ads; your product titles, images, and descriptions (along with any selling or sale prices) will ultimately decide your site's success and volume of clicks.
PPC ads can be an extremely effective means of conversion and awareness building. As your strategy unfolds, however, you will have to experiment and determine what works for your business. PPC/Google Shopping experiences can be an incredibly useful and integral market strategy for new e-commerce stores competing in highly competitive niche markets.
Search Engine Optimization (Seo).
Search engine optimization (SEO) should be part of everyone's e-commerce plan . SEO services tend to be free; however, their implementation takes both time and effort. E-commerce SEO often presents challenges because pages' word counts are much lower than content-focused or brochureware websites.
Identifying keywords frequently searched on search engines related to your product is vitally important when publishing content or products online. Your team should incorporate these strategies as best practices when publishing material online.
As a rule of thumb, I recommend that any early-stage website promotion effort focus on three elements. These factors include:
Understanding Core Ranking Signals
Are You Familiar With Google Ranking Factors to Determine Page Position? (Key Ranking Factors of Page Ranking for Pages in Search Results (Third Party Data Provided by Moz)).
Google's internal teams and employees do not know how to rank these factors.
However, some of the most widely utilized best practices include:
- Ensure you use HTTPS site-wide
- The page should load as quickly and efficiently across all devices. It should also be elegantly designed so the content doesn't jump around or "jaky" while elements are loading. (See this useful guide on Cumulative layout shift).
- Make sure you have no code or redirections in place that prevents crawlers from indexing your HTML pages.
Technical Seo
Does Your Site Meet Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) Requires Technical Capabilities for Success
Some of this was already touched upon; setting goals with your tech team will pay dividends over time.
Developers should understand how their work affects SEO; it will make implementation much simpler than going back in later and making adjustments to content.
Technical SEO costs incurred directly by e-commerce developers may include both in-house and outsourced efforts. Changes made to satisfy search engines will ultimately benefit users as well, creating a better customer experience on your website for all visitors. Are you aware of Google's key ranking factors for evaluating page positions?
Google's internal teams and employees do not know how to rank these factors. However, the following are among the most frequently implemented best practices:
Security, loading speed, and accessibility of sites should always be prioritized.
Off-Page Tactics
Does your knowledge extend to off-page strategies like link-building with other authoritative websites? SEO goes far beyond content production on websites alone.
Building backlinks is one way of increasing domain authority, which will, in turn, help your page rank higher in SERPs.
Crm & Data-Driven Campaigns
Many businesses utilize customer relationship management software (CRM or database) as part of their e-commerce customer relations efforts, collecting information about and gathering insight about each shopper who purchases online.
Remember that customers trust your products and brand; they've already spent money and put faith in what you offer them.
Why can't you attempt it again?
By staying connected and rewarding past customers, you can increase customer lifetime value metrics while simultaneously building an audience of loyal clients that remain.
This tactic can improve both ROI and brand or product awareness among potential consumers, keeping it top of mind whenever they require similar purchases in the future. Plus, this strategy typically costs much less than tactics geared at acquiring new customers!
Various macro marketing strategies are enhanced by CRM/customer data that don't revolve around digital platforms, particularly if your storefront includes physical retail locations and your e-commerce site.
Content Marketing
Content marketing refers to producing compelling pieces of written and visual media content for existing and potential customer behavior, typically long-form articles on an important issue such as an "evergreen" or cornerstone piece of information.
These posts are optimized for SEO by strategically using keywords and image tagging techniques, providing useful information, and remaining fresh over time. They typically center around timeless topics, providing important knowledge that remains current. Content marketing can be an efficient e-commerce strategy as there is limited opportunity to add wordy text or images during the purchasing flow on an e-commerce website.
Content pages provide you with a way to host or link to other forms of media that allow customers to learn more about your brand, products, and ethics. Podcasts, embedded video, or other forms of media provide customers with additional knowledge that helps them better comprehend your products or ethics.
Content marketing efforts for e-commerce brands typically occur via their blog/news pages. However, some brands also publish newsletters as part of email marketing campaign strategies or allow longer-form content to be posted on these pages. Search engines will view you as an authority in your subject area, which should help position your content, gain users' trust, and establish rapport.
Any content-based marketing strategy must remember this to ensure its content is semantically correct and optimized for relevant keywords.
Content creation will likely fail to deliver the desired results when pitted against competing sites and sites that already rank well organically in SERPs.
Email And Sms Marketing
Recently, email and SMS campaigns have evolved significantly. Consumers may now hesitate to opt in due to stringent privacy regulations (for more details, see below), while batch sending/blasting practices appear to have taken their final bow, according to many.
Email marketing software has become a more strategic and targeted form of promotion, offering opportunities to promote events such as product launches or updates while remaining connected to your customers. It provides the ability to keep in contact and grow relationships between the parties involved. Email marketing or EMS software advisors allows for audience segmentation in various ways, making it possible to send relevant information directly to its intended recipients - this might involve including multiple languages in an international campaign, for instance, or just including currency symbols and prices when appropriate.
Attention should be paid when creating marketing email designs and using creative assets in marketing email campaigns. HTML and CSS can be utilized, but creating HTML email campaigns differs significantly from developing websites. Gmail does not permit all custom fonts because its designers want the design to remain uniform. At the same time, Outlook renders messages differently for its various versions.
Err on the side of caution by using only images in your email campaign. Imagine, for instance, an end user's email client doesn't support downloading images automatically. In that situation, all your end-users see in their inbox is the subject line and no additional content besides an image link!
Before sending out any email campaign, testing for display anomalies and broken links is essential. There are excellent ecommerce tools available that allow you to check it on popular devices and email clients; investing in one could significantly enhance email marketing software strategies. Email automation can also be an extremely valuable asset when running an e-commerce campaign, sending subscribers messages based on actions they take or CRM rules. Over time, you've received at least one abandoned cart email. But once you consider automation for more than cart abandonment alone, its applications become clear. Create multi-tiered welcome campaigns that utilize automation technology to build trust between potential customer expectations and your product or service, inducing them to place their first order with you.
Influencer Marketing And Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing entails paying a commission to third-party websites in exchange for referral traffic that leads to online sales channels.
Influencer marketing has recently become the go-to example of affiliate marketing, thanks to influencers' vast reach and the power they wield to increase awareness and reach; we've all heard tales about famous people making or breaking an organization almost immediately through influencers' influencer marketing techniques.
Influencer marketing has also undergone considerable development over time. Social media platforms and consumers have increasingly demanded transparency regarding endorsements paid for by influencers on social media; this amplifies the message when product posts organically via user-generated content (UGC), or testimonials reach wide audiences.
Affiliate processes may help monetize influencer marketing. However, this is just one channel for publishers looking for ways to monetize digital content produced due to declining print media sales. Many publishers do not want ads appearing on their sites to preserve credibility and brand integrity.
Working with brands and retailers to monetize products they review can be an excellent way to generate extra income in addition to core revenues.
Affiliate campaigns also extend into Comparison Shopping Sites ("CSS"). With this channel, products from different stores are displayed, and you may earn commission based on the traffic they drive to your website.
Affiliate and pay-per-click campaigns are among the many examples where individuals or teams of affiliates and PPC specialists can profit by earning commission on every sale they refer back to retailers.
Content Personalization
Many e-commerce websites have struggled for years to provide an optimal consumer experience on their ecommerce platforms. Yet, most popular e-commerce platforms already include many marketing tools and integrations that enhance this goal.
Proper execution of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to dynamically adapt content on an e-commerce website to user experience browsing habits in real time is vitally important. Sounds incredible? For instance, using AI/ML techniques such as BayesNet for real-time dynamic adaptation could enable this feat!
However, things can quickly deteriorate into chaos.
Are You Searching for Similar Products Within an Aggregation Category or Brand or Color Schemes, with All Possible Variants Being Offered (ACV)? Each one could prove important.
Personalizing e-commerce business experience is a powerful tool to enhance customer journey. For websites with many SKUs, for instance, incentives such as promotions may exist for specific products; knowing your users prefer certain ones could significantly increase the conversion rate for promotional offers.
These same personalization data can also prove extremely useful when running off-site campaigns such as email blasts or social media retargeting; their targeting can closely reflect the previous behavior of visitors on-site.
Retention, Cross-Selling, And Post-Purchase Marketing
Many e-commerce strategies fail to address the post-purchase process sufficiently. Instead, most strategies focus on acquiring customers or increasing customer retention rather than on what happens once an order has been completed and checkout completed successfully.
Many of the items outlined can be used as part of post-purchase campaigns; email or SMS messaging asking customers for feedback would likely be most successful.
Consider how you can reengage them into your buying funnel; when would be an appropriate time and place for this email campaign without appearing spammy?
Your approach depends on your business model; aftercare and maintenance could include offering repair service after a specific amount of time has elapsed and sending personalized messages regarding similar products purchased or press articles about that specific product.
Customer happiness will make repeat sales much simpler. It could even lead to them advocating your product among their networks or social media circles.
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Conclusion:
Rearrange your tools for eCommerce business marketing. Replace ineffective equipment with more suitable versions; to be successful in eCommerce sector, you must adapt.
Every challenge in e-commerce marketing presents an opportunity for success, beginning with drawing online shoppers into your store and engaging them. When closing sales, consistency in marketing, customer service, and delivery strategies ensures their success.
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