The global impact of COVID-19 forced businesses to move online. The digitally-driven world encourages more consumers to purchase goods from websites.
While this presented an opportunity for online sellers, it came with a major challenge: how to compete with thousands of online businesses and drive sales?
Between picking a suitable ecommerce marketplace to sell products on or creating your own website and storefront, actually generating consistent sales is one of the trickiest, and most crucial, parts of ecommerce.
People selling products on giant ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon also struggle to convert customers. So, how can you drive top-of-funnel traffic and boost sales? Ecommerce marketing is the answer!
What Is Ecommerce Marketing?
The term ‘ecommerce marketing’ refers to any technique businesses utilize to promote their store and drive more sales! E-comm marketing aims to acquire new customers and encourages old ones to purchase again (become repeat purchasers).
Simply put, it is the core of ecommerce, and your business would fail to generate sales without it.
Note that customers can make or break your business. Your online store’s growth depends entirely on them. Therefore, you need to figure out their pain points, offer a solution in the form of a product, and make it easy and convenient for them to shop with you.
An effective marketing strategy will increase customer satisfaction, reduce loyalty, and boost your business overall.
If you think acquiring new customers is difficult, you can satisfy your current ones and transform them into repeat customers. This will encourage positive word of mouth, reviews, and new customers will likely pay attention to your brand.
Here’s when ecommerce marketing comes into play. It:
- Directs traffic to your website or storefront
- Makes it easy for individuals to browse your product selection
- Places your store and products in front of the most relevant target audience
Types of Ecommerce Marketing
You might have spent a pretty penny to set up your new website, but what good are all your efforts if no one visits it?
People need to find you and recognize your brand authority before they choose to spend their money purchasing from you.
Even more, you need to remind them of your company time and time again to boost revenue and make a long-lasting impression.
A closer look into different types of ecommerce marketing will help you understand how it all works. Although there are several ecommerce marketing types, we’ve listed the most popular ones below.
Ecommerce SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to making your website visible and discoverable in search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Google, etc.
Around 61% of B2B marketers state that SEO and organic traffic generate more sales than any marketing technique.
SEO requires adding relevant keywords to your website copy that your customers are likely to use when searching for your products and services. An SEO expert conducts proper research to find relevant keywords and edits your site copy and product descriptions accordingly.
This way, when a customer searches for something, the search engine recognizes you have exactly what they’re looking for and ranks your website near the top search results.
For instance, if you sell tie-dye T-shirts, your potential customers may not be searching “tie-dye T-shirts.” Instead, they’ll come up with variations like, “cute tie-dye T-shirts,” “best-selling tie-dye T-shirts”, “tie-dye shirts for festivals”, and so on.
When your website is optimized for several relevant keywords, it’ll likely rank higher organically, and you’ll end up making sales while reducing marketing expenses.
Generally, Ecommerce SEO is done on the home, product, and FAQ page.
Note that you should also include a blog on your website. Almost every professional site includes one, and for good reason: it boosts SEO, especially the more pages and content you have!
You can include helpful relevant articles to attract your target audience to your site.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is yet another popular and affordable ecommerce marketing technique. Because it isn’t controlled by platforms like Google, Facebook, or Amazon, it makes it cheaper. More elements are in your control.
You have full control over how you want to draft the email and the overall appearance. All you need to do is pick an email marketing service provider and proceed by building your email list.
Although marketers use several tactics to build an email list, exit intent pop-ups are the most widely utilized. When a customer intends to leave your website, a pop-up is one of the best ways to grab their attention. You can also capture emails through specific opt-in pages where people can exchange their email address for something of perceived value.
Including an enticing deal or a discount might convince your customers into entering their email address.
Several email types are meant to target customers. Common forms include:
- Welcome email. Sent right after a customer subscribes to your services or purchases a product from your store.
- Abandoned cart email. Gives customers a reminder about the items left in their shopping cart.
- Newsletter. Updates customers about your brand, products, and market trends.
- Transactional emails. Confirms order, password resets, and tracks shipping updates.
- Win back email. Aims to activate an idle customer who hasn’t placed an order for a specific period of time (typically more than 3 months)
Marketers use a plethora of email types to stay ahead of competitors to make a lasting impression on customers and site visitors.
Social Media Marketing
Data reveals that around 91.9% of marketers are predicted to use social media for marketing purposes. With over 4.62 billion people using social media, you have a chance to double down on your marketing (SMM) efforts.
From Facebook to Twitter and Instagram to Pinterest, several social media channels present an opportunity to reach your target audience and be more discoverable.
You can run ads and campaigns or build your social media pages organically to establish a presence through different forms of content. Social media marketing can be organic – posting updates on your page – or paid – running ads to promote your brand.
Whichever method you pick, you’re reaching out to your audience by the end of the day. In fact, your ideal customer is already there on social media; you have to take adequate steps to reach them.
You can also pay a social media influencer to step up your marketing game. This oftentimes drives quick sales as followers of social media influencers are quick to purchase products their favorite person recommends.
Wrapping Things Up
Ecommerce is a vast industry with countless niches, product types, business models, etc. The many choices make it slightly overwhelming to enter, and it feels impossible to pick the best practice. What works for one retailer might not work for another.
One thing is certain, however – investing in ecommerce marketing boosts sales. Yes, the process isn’t a walk in the park, but it significantly impacts your business.
So, which ecommerce marketing method do you plan on implementing for your store?
