Ecommerce marketing is now an umbrella term for the various digital marketing strategies used to promote an online business through social media, search engines, email, etc.
With a huge increase in the volume of eCommerce businesses on the internet, the market has become highly competitive. Well-planned and executed digital marketing strategies can only provide an online presence for your website amid this competition. Here are some of the most common eCommerce marketing strategies that have been proven to be successful in increasing customer traffic and conversion rates to your eCommerce website.
Improve Social Media Presence
Social media is a powerful platform where you can promote and market the products available on your eCommerce website. You should have well-managed social media pages for Facebook, Instagram, etc. Social media users can be easily persuaded with vibrant photos and videos of relevant products. You may also improve social media engagement by hosting giveaways, providing discounts and offers, etc on your page. These offers should be promoted on social media with flamboyant photos and videos. You should also consistently post engaging content on your social pages to ensure a consistent media presence.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook is a very effective platform for social engagement and eCommerce marketing. It has many beneficial features like the Facebook Store, where you can advertise your products and sell them. You can integrate your Facebook store directly with your eCommerce store for easy business.
Instagram Marketing
Instagram is one of the fast-growing social media platforms with 500 million daily active users. You can build a large following on your Instagram page by regularly posting attractive and engaging product photos, videos, offers, etc. Appropriate hashtags should also be used strategically to make sure that you find your specific target audience. You may add your eCommerce products and offers to your Instagram posts and stores to provide a direct path to online purchases. You can also improve your Instagram presence and attract more customers by running contests, giveaways, and gifting other rewards to top engaging customers.
Youtube Marketing
With around 1.5 billion users, youtube is a very beneficial platform for eCommerce businesses. You can market your products, offers, discounts, big sales, and announcements by sharing quality video content through youtube. Being the third most visited platform, you can build brand awareness and also generate relevant leads to your eCommerce store. You can also run ads on youtube to boost the traffic to your store. Running youtube search ads will make sure that your video is first listed for relevant searches so that people will engage with your video easily. But while running in-stream ads, You have to gain audience interest very quickly. They can skip your video ad after five seconds. Thus, you should display the most interesting and peculiar aspect within this time, so that they will continue watching the ad. Developing a curiosity quickly is the key to the success of in-stream ads.
Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest is the best for showcasing product images. You can have more traffic and sales to your eCommerce store as customers are very comfortable planning their purchase with the pin and save concept. Pinterest provides the highest average order value (AOV) at 50 dollars and is one of the best sources of traffic for eCommerce stores.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is an organic marketing strategy that improves your website’s search result ranking for relevant searches. When you rank higher in search results, there is more chance for users to click your link and navigate within your website. In order to perform SEO techniques, you need to have an idea about the competitive keywords related to your business.
Google provides a tool called Google Keyword Planner that helps you to perform thorough keyword research and choose the specific keywords that can improve your search engine results page (SERP) ranking. But the best thing to do is to think of yourself as a user. The on-page content which includes titles, descriptions, blogs, images, and every piece of content should have a language that the customer generally uses while searching for related products. You should provide maximum product information and also publish blogs and other articles related to the products that most people search for. These are all different leads to your eCommerce business.
Running Google Ads
You can try out Google Ads for search engine marketing so that you can improve your ranking on the search engine results pages. An advantage of running Google Ads is that your website will be displayed on the top spot for relevant searches, beating other websites with organic SEO results. Google Ads provides you with real-time results and you can manage and adjust your ad strategies based on performance.
There are mainly three types of Google ads – paid search ads, display ads, and product listing ads. As we have discussed, paid search ads will appear at the top of the search engine results without any image. Being the first result that appears before the user, paid search ads have a higher conversion rate.
Display or banner ads are mostly seen in popular websites, apps, etc. Display ads can be used to follow the users based on their browsing history. They can also be displayed according to the theme of the content that the user is viewing. Display ads are the best to create brand awareness and retarget the users based on their interests.
Product listing ads are the shopping ads that come directly in the search engine results. If someone is searching for a phone back case, a collection of cases will be displayed. You can set the product listing ads to appear for relevant searches so that when users click the ads, they will be directed towards the product page in your eCommerce store.
Content Marketing
Most online businesses restrict content marketing to generating quality blog and video content and promoting them. Well, this is not the case with eCommerce stores. Ecommerce stores can be benefitted a lot through these content marketing strategies. Apart from writing relevant blog posts and uploading relevant videos on youtube, your product pages should be optimized with popular and relevant keywords. For example, if you are selling perfumes and essential oils online, and someone searches for ‘lavender essential oil’, you should have the same keyword included among the content on your lavender product page. Now, the search engine will show your website in the first we results, as the content seems relevant. This way, you will be able to attract potential customers to the website very easily. You may also generate backlinks and guest posts on other blogs and websites, to improve awareness and SEO strength.
While content creation enriches your website value, content marketing deals with generating content that can promote your eCommerce business. For this, you should brainstorm with your team to come up with different types of engaging content for your page and social media channels. Including user feedback tools on your website will help to understand their general queries, doubts, and requirements. You should also identify specific areas of your website content that interests the users and produce more related content to continue their engagement. Linking the new content to the user-interest areas will improve your website authority. Anyway, the content that you use should be 80 percent informative and 20 percent promotional.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a traditional form of marketing that is still a powerful tool for eCommerce marketing. Automated email campaigns can be used to target a group of users who share common interests and tastes. There are two ways in which eCommerce businesses can use email marketing – shopping cart abandonment and post-purchase follow-up.
Very often a potential customer may fail to complete a purchase from your eCommerce platform. In such cases, you may send a polite reminder email to them to complete the purchase or look for other related products that they might like. This way, you will be able to gain their interest back to your eCommerce website.
You may also send post-purchase follow-up emails to customers after a few days of the purchase. You may ask for feedback on the purchase experience, product experience, or ask to post their valuable reviews on your product page. When you follow up on the purchase well, they will also find value in being your customer and will rely on your eCommerce store for their future purchases. You should also send email updates about the matters concerning their existing product, and more products based on their interest.
Optimizing For Mobile
Almost half of the global online purchases happen from mobile phones. Thus, it is important for your eCommerce website to have a mobile responsive design. You should optimize the product images to the appropriate size and format so that they load very quickly and are easy to zoom in. You should also design bigger buttons for purchase, add to cart, etc and display the same in a user-friendly manner. You must take the role of a mobile visitor while developing a responsive design.
Use Chatbots
You should include live chats on your eCommerce store to interact with your visitors in real-time. A chat session can be initiated a few seconds after the user indulges with the page. This enables you to have live conversations with customers and solve their queries while they are planning to buy something. Live chats are very beneficial especially to address customer concerns and provide immediate details about their orders.
Retargeting
Retargeting is the process of finding potential customers who have previously visited your eCommerce store before, and displaying ads while they are browsing. This will urge them to visit your store again and make a purchase. To make the retargeting campaign effective, the ads you display should be specific. You should analyze whether the visitor was checking out or looking for a specific product. If yes, the display ads should have the product image and should navigate to the particular product page. This will improve both the user experience and the possibility of more purchases.
Reduce Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment is a serious issue for almost every eCommerce business. Studies suggest that almost 69 percent of carts are abandoned. As we have discussed above, the best technique to reduce cart abandonment is to start an email recovery campaign that convinces the visitors to return to the store and complete their purchases. Apart from doing it plainly, you may use creative content along with other product suggestions in the email.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is done with the help of people or businesses, generally called affiliates, who help to sell eCommerce products with a commission. Almost 80 percent of brands perform affiliate marketing by selling their products through eCommerce platforms. Affiliates use strategies like content marketing, paid marketing, and other means to promote products and drive traffic to the products pages on your eCommerce website. They function as a marketing team that you have across the globe.
Running an eCommerce store, you surely need to come up with relevant digital marketing strategies to improve your business. So, make sure you gear up your growth and boost your online presence.
You will be now interested to know about how to reduce card abandonment to improve your sales. Read here:
