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With the boom in E-commerce, many store owners are investing more to market online to boost their website traffic. Above all, for more sales. You may have put together a basic strategy but it can still be difficult for you to choose which marketing tactics to use.
In this high-level guide, we hope to help you to have a clearer idea of how you can best put each strategy into action for the success of your E-Commerce business.
What is E-Commerce Marketing?
E-Commerce Marketing is when you use any tactic to promote your online store traffic and convert them into paying customers. It also applies to getting new customers and encouraging existing customers to continue to buy from you.
Benefits of E-Commerce Marketing
- Drive more website traffic to your online store
- Position your business in front of your target customers
- Allow people who are looking for the type of products or services that you sell to find your website easily
- Convert website visitors to new customers
- Re-engage customers to encourage them to buy again
- Improve after-purchase experience to boost customer happiness and build loyalty
- Retain current customers with timely, relevant offers and valuable information
- Promote bigger and more frequent orders
As shown above, you will need E-commerce Marketing to have sales. To have your E-Commerce store alone is not enough. You will need E-Commerce Marketing for potential customers to first find your business before they buy from you.
Additionally, you must frequently remind them of your brand to ensure they keep visiting your online store and buying from you.
Types of E-Commerce Marketing Channels
Basically, you can carry out E-Commerce Marketing in all the below digital marketing channels. Not to mention, offline and traditional ones:-
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Google, Bing, etc.
- Social Media Marketing – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
- Email Marketing
- SMS
- Your Website
- Content Marketing – Blogs
- 3rd Party Digital Media – Digital Press or Magazines, Podcasts, etc.
- Offline Marketing – Newspapers, TV advertisements, etc.
Without delay, let us now take a look at the Top 10 E-Commerce Marketing strategies that most E-Commerce marketers are using.
1. E-Commerce SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows your website to be more visible and easily discovered by search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. The process will need you to add relevant keywords to your website that your potential customers are using to search for products or services that your business offer. When the search engine realizes that you have what it is looking for, it places you high in the list of results. As a general guideline, you should add these keywords to your Home page, Product pages, and FAQ pages. Additionally, starting a blog may also help improve your SEO when your topics answer the questions that your potential customers are asking. For instance, “How to iron a linen dress”.
By doing SEO, you can attract customers who are very likely to make a purchase, such as those who are looking for “women dress”. It is also an opportunity for your business to win over new customers. Although, SEO is a free way of promoting your e-commerce company. It is a long-term strategy that will take continuous time and effort. For example in the Fashion industry, it may take at least 6 months and even years to see the results. If your company has limited manpower, you may want to consider getting a 3rd Party SEO agency should you decide to use SEO as part of your E-Commerce Marketing plan.
2. Email Marketing
While some digital marketers may debate that Email Marketing is not as effective as it used to be, it is still an important E-Commerce Marketing strategy to promote your online Store. Unlike channels like Facebook or Google, it is owned by you. This makes it more affordable and reliable.
Firstly, you need to choose an Email Marketing service such as Hubspot or Mailchimp. Some E-Commerce Platforms even have an Email Marketing function integrated. After that, you can start building your email list and send out marketing emails to your subscribers and customers. The main features of the Email Marketing service should allow you to send out the below emails:-
- Transactions emails: password resets, order confirmations, tracking updates, etc.
- Automated emails: triggered by a predefined condition that can be related to customer behavior, preferences, or demographic such as birthday email, welcome email
- Personalized emails: customized to customer segments either by Demographic, Behavioral, Geographic, or Psychologic with appropriate offers. For example, a welcome offer for first-time customers, VIP offers for VIP customers, abandoned carts, etc.
Especially with Personalized emails, you will need to study the data for your customer segments for Email Marketing to work for you.
3. Optimize Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate Optimization refers to the actions you do to convert as many website visitors as you can. You have put a lot of effort and/or money into getting traffic, so you expect sales to come from it. Without revenue, traffic is nothing.
You can use a variety of strategies on your website to increase sales. For example, you can use the below tactics to have higher engagement and build brand trust with your customers:
- Live Chat
- Push notifications
- Review requests
4. SMS Marketing
SMS marketing refers to using text messages for promotions. It is a good option when you need to send time-limited offers, alerts, or updates. Besides the traditional text messages, we can also send these messages through WhatsApp or Telegram. In fact, some E-Commerce platforms allow the integration of messaging apps as part of their functions.
You can consider using an automatic SMS that sends out a special offer on customers’ birthdays or for shipping updates on their orders.
Just remember to always get consent from your customers or subscribers before you use SMS Marketing. Furthermore, with the rising number of SMS scams, some countries may have strict regulations on SMS Marketing.
5. Social Media Marketing
It is now a norm for many brands and businesses to use popular Social Media Networks such as Facebook, Instagram, etc to connect with their target audience. You can post company updates, new product launches, and any topic that is relevant to your target audience.
But, not every social network is a good fit for your E-Commerce Marketing needs.
If you are selling products, Instagram will be a good platform for you to feature your products with captivating photos and videos. You can also use the Shop feature on both Facebook and Instagram as an extra online sales channel to sell your products.
Additionally, you can also run advertisements for your Social Media page or partner with Social Media Influencers to reach out to more audiences.
6. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Paid Online Advertisements
Besides running advertisements on Social Media Networks, you can also choose to advertise on search engines. Google makes up 92.48% market share worldwide, and 95.69% market share in Singapore. Hence, many digital marketers use Google in their E-Commerce Marketing plans. The popular type of Google advertisements are:-
- Google Search Ads (Pay per click) – show your website listing at the top of the search results when users search and click on your advertisement using the keywords you have chosen.
- Google Display Ads – banner ads shown on videos, articles, websites, apps under Google Display Network, and Google-owned properties (such as YouTube and Gmail).
- Google Shopping – it is a shopping site whereby you can list your products for free. But you should know that the rankings are typically based on relevance and the search keywords that users use. You can run a Shopping Ad for your products to show up on top.
7. Content Marketing
In essence, Content Marketing is an approach whereby you create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage users. For example, they can be in the form of your product pages and blog articles on your websites. Or even as guest posts on external websites. Content Marketing is low in cost and can help boost your website ranking. However similar to SEO, it will take some to see the results.
8. Affiliate Marketing
An Affiliate Program is an agreement in which you pay another business or influencers (‘the affiliate’) a commission when they send traffic or sales for your business. Usually, the affiliates will publish web content, social media posts, or blogs where they talk about your products or just list them as top picks in a particular category.
9. PR and Digital Media
If you are a new E-Commerce store, it will be beneficial for your business to be featured in press releases or publications both online and offline. It can be an interview with the founder, gift ideas, a product feature headline, etc… You can increase your brand awareness by tapping into their network of subscribers.
10. Partnerships
This may be surprising but you can partner with other companies to extend the reach of your brand to their audience too. This can be an effective E-Commerce Marketing Strategy, especially for the lifestyle industry since the target audience usually overlaps. One good way of the partnership is to create a special cross-brand offer for the customers of both companies.
How to choose the best E-Commerce Marketing strategies for your business
Before you decide on which E-Commerce Marketing strategy to use, ask yourself the following questions:-
- What are your sales targets?
- What is your market size?
- Who are your target customers in terms of demographic?
- Where are your target customers located, both online and physically?
- What kind of brand image do you want your product to have?
- What your competitors are doing to boost their sales?
Your answers will be the guidelines to help you pick the best tactic that fit your business goals.
However, E-Commerce is growing every day with more businesses entering the online market. Often, you may find that you may have to adjust your marketing plan from time to time. What works for a specific product last month may not work for a similar product this month.
To conclude, there is no right answer to which is the best E-Commerce Marketing strategy.
You will need to test different approaches to craft the success of your online business.
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