According to Nasdaq, the percentage of online transactions around the world has been increasing over the years.
This is reason enough for businesses to embrace e-commerce and to come up with ideal marketing channels to double down on their marketing efforts. After all, as more people purchase online, more online seller-competitions will emerge.
As a business owner, you need to have a game plan to ensure that your current and potential customers can easily find their way to your products without much hustle.
E-commerce marketing in simple terms refers to placing products and services online with the intention of selling them. It is commercial transactions that are done over the internet.
Below are two important points to consider when doing e-commerce marketing:
- Your audience dynamics
The more you know about your audience, the easier it becomes for you to create compelling marketing materials.
Among other things, you need to pay attention to their pain points and how your products/services can address them.
When you talk about your audience’s pain points, they are reminded of the frustrating circumstance they’ve gone through, prompting them to take action on your offer so they can avoid having the same experience.
This is why creating a buyer persona is an important step before you even start marketing your products. With it, you have a solid grasp of who your audiences are and what makes them tick. A buyer persona basically identifies your audience needs through interacting with the individuals themselves. This way you know what solutions and strategies to offer.
- The positioning/angle you use when promoting your products
You may have an awesome product, but if the angle you use when presenting it is poorly thought out, then its perceived value would suffer.
In addition, the efficacy of your marketing materials to convert your web visitors into paying customers also decreases.
To better illustrate the point, consider this: Do you think flooding your audience with the message “buy the product now” is as effective as reminding them of their problems and highlighting how they can get rid of their frustrations once they use your product?
If you’re selling baby rompers, would targeting fathers be more effective than targeting mothers?
And if your e-commerce store is all about car seat covers, would it be a better angle to target mothers as opposed to marketing them to fathers?
At this point, I hope you can see how important your angle/positioning is.
To come up with a compelling angle, be sure to think about your customers. Always revert to your buyer persona to be sure the marketing method you’re about to implement highly resonates with them.
E-commerce marketing strategies you can use
Below are some of the strategies that have been tested by seasoned e-commerce entrepreneurs over time, that you can use to grow your business.
- Email marketing
At its core, email marketing is about sending commercial messages to prospective or existing clients through email. The emails are often sent to groups of people.
To get started with email marketing, you need to have an email opt-in form so you can capture your web visitors’ email addresses.
As your email list grows, you can start segmenting it so you can send them more personalized messages that resonate more specifically with them.
You don’t always need to sell them something in your email, you can educate, add value, and share product updates. That way, you won’t come off as someone who’s shoving your product(s) down their throat.
Tips
- Use a reliable platform like a reliable email marketing software
- Write compelling email subject lines and bodies so your emails do not get ignored or spammed
- Influencer marketing
With influencer marketing, even if you don’t have an email list and your business has just been recently launched, you can still generate a lot of online views and sales.
The gist of the strategy is pretty straightforward:
Step 1: Look for an influencer in your industry.
Step 2: Reach out and ask them to promote your product to their audience.
Step 3: Offer something of value in exchange so they’ll consider your offer.
Step 4: Your product is promoted to thousands of people that are relevant to your niche.
Step 5: You get a lot of sales from the influencer’s audience.
The best part is, since your product is shown together with an influencer, your brand gets an instant credibility boost.
Influencer marketing is such a reliable e-commerce digital marketing method.
Tips
- Make sure that the influencer is relevant
- Check the engagement the influencer gets
- Content marketing
When it comes to content marketing, publishing and sharing value-packed content is key.
Educating your audience and sharing valuable tips that can help improve their lives is an almost sure-fire way of building your relationship with them.
That’s what content marketing does and that’s why it’s very effective.
You don’t even need to stick to one type of content. You can use articles, videos, and infographics, among other content types.
Tips
- Provide incredible value
- Track your performance
- Social media marketing
From a top-level view, social media marketing uses social media platforms to promote your products and services.
From that definition alone, we can see how broad and far-reaching social media marketing is. You can run paid social media ads, publish social media posts, and even run an outreach campaign through these social media platforms.
The millions of active monthly users are what make social media platforms ideal for promoting your products. If you have a well-thought-out, meaningful, and creative marketing strategy, your posts are bound to reach your prospective customers.
Tips:
- Transition your audience’s mind frame
- Choose the right social media platform
- Coupon marketing
Giving out vouchers, coupons, or codes for your audience to redeem can do wonders for your e-commerce business.
Not only can it help to bring in more sales, but you can also generate more leads, audience engagement, and brand visibility, among other things. This is especially the case around holidays or special events.
The best part of running a successful coupon marketing campaign is that it’s insanely easy with the help of reliable e-commerce software.
Tips
- Start small and track results
- Make an enticing offer
- Paid Ads
When it comes to e-commerce advertising, some e-commerce store owners avoid using paid ads because of the cost.
It’s true that paid ads can be quite costly. In fact, depending on how aggressive you want to be, you might find yourself spending thousands of dollars daily for your ads.
Having said that, however, it’s worth mentioning that the immediate results you can get from paid ads are nothing short of a miracle. You can turn on your campaign at night, and see massive audience engagement, and even sales, when you wake up in the morning.
Tips
- Make your Ad creatives “pop” with creative colors, catchy images, words, and backgrounds that will catch your audience’s attention
- Be mindful of your target audience
This article originally appeared on The Blue Print
