6 Tips to Build the Perfect Ecommerce Marketing Strategy
While ecommerce is a broad term that refers to purchasing, selling, and delivering goods and services through the internet, ecommerce marketing is the process of attracting visitors to your online store, turning these visitors into paying customers, and maintaining relationships even after the purchase.
To maximize their ecommerce ROI, brands must know how to finetune their marketing strategy to attract the audience they seek. So, if you’ve been struggling with converting visitors to customers, then the ideas and techniques covered in this article will help you get started.
How to Make Ecommerce Marketing Work for you
Check out these 6 tips you need to know to promote your business and improve your chances of success.
1. Facebook or Instagram Ads
When it comes to brand awareness, social media can uniquely impact your business. As potential buyers come into contact with your profile feed, posts, product pages, and promotions, they become more aware of your products and services, which can increase traffic to your online store or website.
Potential social media sites include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Quora, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube. However, not every social networking platform will help you achieve your goals.
Your product or service will determine which social media sites are most effective. Once you’ve determined the right platform(s) for your product or services, you can improve your brand’s exposure by creating advertisements on these social media platforms.
Social media marketing is free unless you use sponsored ads or hire someone to manage these platforms for you. Should you choose to DIY your social media marketing, here’s what you need to consider.
- A solid strategy is more than just slapping together some nice-looking designs. Use professional, high-resolution photos and videos. Post the finest quality content as much as possible. Experts recommend uploading new posts and updates about three times a day.
- Create shoppable content and streamline the purchasing process, making users buy right away! This can range from strategically placed display adverts within a social feed to additional tags that directly link viewers to a shopping cart. This technique assists you in removing hiccups during the purchasing process.
- Collect information about your target audience, then use that information to create optimized content. Target the proper audience by conducting hashtag research. Correct and related hashtags should be used to ensure that your ads appear in the right searches. This allows you to enhance engagement, organically increase your following, and create and maintain client relationships!
- Be active and be seen! Engage with your followers by following them back, liking their posts, and responding to comments or direct messages. Run a contest with the use of mentions and hashtags. You can also send samples to online influencers to post on their accounts.
Social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram, can be a huge generator of sales and conversions if done correctly. The platforms have evolved to the point where they've practically become another digital storefront for your products and services.
2. Loyalty Programs
After a sale is made, marketing does not end. You should continue to engage, nurture, and delight your audience once they become your customers. The goal is to assist your clients after the sale to increase their loyalty.
Why? According to Harvard Business Review, building brand recognition and attracting new clients is more expensive than retaining existing customers.
Create a program that rewards your most loyal customers to encourage them to return. Through appropriate incentives or discounts, they will continue doing business with you.
Building a client loyalty program requires time and effort, but it pays off in terms of retention, referrals, and user-generated content (UGC). It can encourage your customers to share their positive experiences via ratings, reviews, testimonials, and word-of-mouth marketing.
As a result, your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) will increase, benefitting the entire business. Who doesn't want that?
Let’s take Amazon Prime as an example of a post-purchase loyalty program. Prime customers spend a lot more on Amazon than non-Prime customers. More than half of Prime members shop on Amazon at least once a week!
Note that there are a few things to keep in mind when creating a loyalty program for your ecommerce business. Consider broadening how customers can demonstrate loyalty—repeat purchases, social media mentions, or sharing your content.
Consider how you'll recognize their loyalty, whether with reward points, discount vouchers, or other unique benefits such as prizes.
2. Content Marketing
When you hear the term “content marketing”, you might think of activities like blogging and promoting videos. But, is that all?
Not quite! Content marketing refers to the process of producing high-quality, incredibly valuable information and then disseminating it to a larger audience. It includes blogs, podcasts, video clips, webinars, infographics, lookbooks, and more.
Do you really need articles or videos to create sales if you're selling a product online? Of course! Here are a few examples of how you may utilize content to promote your ecommerce store.
- Blog posts - If you own an online store selling flower stands or bouquets, creating blog posts about "how to style a wedding" might appeal to anyone participating in event planning, regardless of where they are in the process. With this, you can turn readers into leads.
- Optimization - Use concise, product-driven keywords that incorporate the product's name to optimize your product pages. For example, if you sell flowers, a Google search for "bridal bouquet" is more likely to bring up product pages similar to yours if that term is mentioned on the page. Also, make sure that your page titles, headers, and picture captions include the proper keywords so that search engines can find your ecommerce store.
- User-generated content (UGC) - In exchange for a reward, encourage followers to create their own content. To do so, request photographs and videos of your current customers using your items, as well as success stories, and post all of this content on your product pages. Feature customers on your channel in exchange for content, as it helps to develop a relationship between the audience and the company. This will boost engagement and conversions while establishing trust within the brand's online audience. It’s true! People may not always believe what you say about your products, but they will believe what real customers say about them.
In content marketing, the key is to deliver the most appropriate content that can lead to increased brand loyalty. Great content marketing leads not only to engagement but also to long-term relationship-building.
4. Cross-Sell and Upsell your Products
You're probably aware of the power of upselling and what it can do. Many online companies employ cross-selling and upselling to increase their average order value (AOV), but only a few try to develop ideas to increase it even more.
So, what are the ways to do this? Increase AOV by offering expedited shipping for orders 50% more than the current AOV. Provide discount codes to encourage larger purchases. Display the most recently viewed or added goods to the user's cart. You can also show products that are comparable or complementary.
Remember: The more exposure, the better!
5. Cart Recovery Campaigns
Shopping carts are abandoned all the time for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean you've lost a potential conversion. Reduce shopping cart abandonment through a clear and straightforward return policy, money-back guarantees, shipping alternatives, and rapid access to customer assistance.
This free whitepaper “Consumer Returns During and After Covid-19” has the latest insights into consumer return behaviors.
If a visitor abandons their shopping cart without making a purchase, it is your job to contact them and give solutions.
How? By implementing a well-crafted email campaign. It can make the difference between a lost customer and a successful sale!
Consider sending a courteous email to remind your website visitors to complete the checkout process. You can also assist with any questions they may have or propose other similar products to get them back to your store.
Statistics suggest that abandoned cart emails have a significant impact. Customers who receive multiple abandoned reminder cart emails are more likely to complete their transaction than customers who only receive one!
Did you know? Around 83% of consumers are willing to provide personal information to provide a more personalized experience. Therefore, always retarget clients who have abandoned carts with personalized communications.
6. Conquer Different Platforms
It is always a great idea to expand your business to sites with a lot of traffic.
For example, you can grow your business on Amazon. Since Amazon has a lot of traffic, you can find new clients here. By investing in Amazon advertising, you can direct more traffic to your product page, leading to even more sales! These advertisements will increase the exposure of your products and help you appear in more searches.
Pro tip: Since Amazon has a variety of ad forms, including search ads and display ads, you can experiment with each to see which works best for your business.
Conclusion
Many factors can lead to unsuccessful transactions, such as complex checkout procedures, cart abandonment, lack of personalization, concerns about review genuineness, lack of support, etc.
If your customers have been experiencing these, all you need to do is put in the time and effort to find the right strategy. Committing to the abovementioned ecommerce marketing strategies can help you build (or rebuild) your business.
So, what are you waiting for? Pump up your drive and determination to start now!