At the heart of a successful e-commerce brand lies an exceptional product. This truth underscores the importance of maintaining a well-structured website as a pivotal platform for customer engagement and potential sales.
Whether your online business is in its infancy or has built a robust customer base, the most effective strategies remain in a state of constant evolution. Therefore, it’s crucial to stay updated with the latest shifts in e-commerce marketing strategies and consistently refine your marketing plan.
Due to the rapid advances being made, it is hard to know which strategies will be the most effective at any point in time. It would be best if you kept on top of this with regular research. However, we have put together this set of key marketing strategies currently working well for e-commerce companies.
Content Creation
Great content on your website relies on quality and originality that engages prospective customers and opens the way for them to consider purchasing. When creating content, go for excellence and provide value over quantity. Triple-check everything for good grammar and a smooth flow of ideas. Ask yourself if the piece is compelling with an exciting introduction, practical knowledge, and a conclusion that brings it all together. Set a schedule for how often you post new content, e.g., every fortnight or monthly.
Content creation, if done correctly, can be an ongoing revenue driver. But there is more. It would be best to have several pages on your website to cover the essentials, such as information that a potential buyer wants. It would be best to have a homepage that stands out and introduces your company and products. An “About Us” page can describe the values of the company and the story of why and how it started. You can include a “Meet the team” section with good-quality photographs of an enthusiastic group or individuals with job titles. Another page should cover practical aspects like shipping costs and warranties.
Provide a page that displays your top products. Pictures should be accompanied by descriptions of the products’ key features in easy-to-understand language. Make it clear why your product is superior. Note that you should use original photos in good or natural lighting without a flash, and the subject matter should be shown at a good angle. Poor-quality images will make consumers doubt your professionalism.
Extend the richness of your website with videos. These can demonstrate how a product works or explain the unique features that make this the customer’s best option. Here is how to make a video for a website.
Lead Generation
Your business can build up tons of leads using various methods. However, not every prospect is likely to convert into a paying customer. It is costly to acquire customer leads, and you need to use more direct means to ensure a constant flow of new information from your product’s potential buyers. Companies calculate the cost of customer acquisition using a formula that divides the total spend on marketing by how many new customers they got over the same period. To keep this cost low or within norms for your industry, it often pays to get B2B lead Generation companies to assist with lead generation, customer profiling, and data cleansing. Some leads are not yet ready to turn into customers but must be nurtured until they are. Such services will provide better returns on investment (ROI) for your marketing spend.
Other ways to generate leads include:
- Use of social media like Facebook
- Free trials
- Discount Coupons
- Hosting online events, such as webinars
- Gated content
- Chatbots
- Blogs
- Newsletters
- Opt-ins
Social Media Marketing
E-commerce social media marketing is an effective way to increase the traffic to your website. This should be done across various platforms to attract more interest and get consumers to engage with your company. It will allow you to speak to more consumers in different formats, depending on individual social media habits. All of this leads to more sales and a higher conversion rate.
Stick to one style of communication that best reflects your brand, and ensure that any employees involved in social media marketing adhere to the tone you selected. This allows your company’s personality to shine through and increases brand recognition. Social media marketing efforts should demonstrate your authority in your field and build consumer trust.
Remember to analyze how each channel performs. This can be done by using a web analytics tool. You can also do surveys where you ask users directly. Questions you want to answer are:
- Why a user did not convert. What point on your website caused potential customers to click out of your site?
- Which aspects of your website led them to convert? Which call to action convinced them?
- Which aspects of your website increased user engagement and got their attention?
Email Marketing
Email marketing has been around for a while and has proved itself as a great way to reach customers. You should use email marketing (along with other strategies) as an essential weapon in your arsenal to connect with potential buyers of your products.
Email content is essential if you want it to be effective. With all your marketing efforts, one aim is to increase brand recognition by engaging consumers. The information must be helpful to the recipients of your emails and should also be personalized by using their names and offering products they have displayed interest. Promotions and discounts contained in emails can boost sales. The email subject line should pique interest so that consumers open and read it. It must not be longer than 65 characters. Again, you will want to monitor the effectiveness of your email marketing and compare metrics such as the unsubscribe rate.
Don’t have clutter in your layout; allow plenty of white space to frame your message. Stick to the traditional email fonts and avoid using fancy fonts. The most commonly used fonts for email are Verdana, Times New Roman, and Arial.
Optimize your email settings for mobile users, as 42% of recipients read their emails on their smartphones. Failure to do so will increase the number of unsubscribes. It could also make your brand look unprofessional.
Use emails to create a connection with consumers. Make them aware of your company values, new product promotions, unique features of products, and online events. This is an opportunity to socialize with consumers and draw them closer to buying from your company.
Set up triggered emails for users to your website who added items to their shopping cart and then abandoned it.
E-Commerce Search Engine Optimisation
Your e-commerce website must be optimized for search engine optimization (SEO). It needs to be visible to users doing an online search. An algorithm determines which sites appear at the top of the screen during a search. The best way to work with this rule-based scenario is to use rich, organic content and blog keywords that will flag your site.
Create content around your products, e.g., fishing gear, with expert articles that gives visitors to your site helpful information on fishing and tackle topics and gives them a great user experience (UX).
SEO is the most effective ROI booster for e-commerce. It is also the e-commerce marketing strategy that costs the least.
Search engine marketing, or SEM, includes SEO and PPC (pay-per-click). We will discuss PPC next. However, SEO and PPC are two sides of the coin, making up SEM, with PPC being paid for traffic while SEO drives organic traffic to your website. A good marketing strategy will employ both SEO and PPC.
E-Commerce Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
When a user clicks on your advertisement, you pay for that click to the company that allowed you to place content on their site, i.e., the landing page. PPC also requires keywords that are used to increase the ranking of your website on a search engine. The higher your website’s ranking on Google search, the more trustworthy your business is.
Choosing the right keywords requires a keyword search for different types of keywords. Brand keywords incorporate versions of your brand or product name. Competitor terms, also known as competitor bidding on PPC, allow you to enter a competitor’s space, grow your brand recognition, and show consumers what unique features your products have, thus giving them an alternative company for their purchases. Generic keywords like ‘fishing rods’ will attract more users looking for these items. These keywords help the new business to establish its brand or new product, as well as open up new markets. Related terms are indirectly linked to your products and help you garner attention from users who use less-common words when searching for the products you sell.
There are several marketing strategies you can use to boost sales. You also want the best marketing budget investment, contributing to a higher ROI. That is why knowing which strategies are currently the most effective is essential.
