Everything You Need to Know About Ecommerce Marketing
The ecommerce sector accounted for 18 percent of global retail sales in late 2021. Ecommerce is not new. In fact, it has existed for over 20 years now.
Today, there are over 2.1 billion online buyers in the world, with 27.2% of the global population buying goods and services online. These statistics show us that ecommerce has become an integral part of vendors’ and customers’ lives in the past 21 years.
If you are planning to get started with ecommerce marketing, but have no idea where to begin, this post is for you. By the end of this post, you will know what ecommerce is, its perks, how it works, and more.
All you Need to Know About Ecommerce Marketing
Ecommerce marketing is an online marketing model where product promotion and sales take place on the internet.
Stores that sell products online or through digital channels are called ecommerce stores.
The best example of an ecommerce store is Amazon. Starting in 1994 as a platform selling millions of books online, Amazon transformed into the ecommerce giant in a few years.
ecommerce marketing is a combination of every marketing technique that drives traffic to your website, landing pages, social media, Google My Business account, and other digital channels.
Definition of commerce
According to Lightspeed, the commerce platform refers to the modern technology used for managing retail and restaurant operations.
The commerce platform is used to link your online store with the land-based store to offer customers a more streamlined shopping experience.
Lightspeed is one such advanced commerce platform that covers multiple aspects of your business, including merchant services, data service, consumer service, and more.
Types of Ecommerce marketing
With an increasing number of people switching to online shopping services, now is the perfect time for businesses to embrace this strategy and make the most of it.
Here are the common types of ecommerce marketing tools to improve your digital presence. We have only listed the trending marketing techniques that can generate the best outcome for your business.
1. Content Marketing
Content is called king for a reason.
In 2018, 60% of B2C companies relied on content marketing for their online business growth.
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about content marketing? For most marketers, it is blogging and video marketing. These are two effective tools that can give your website a high rank in the search engine and build your audiences’ trust in your brand.
You publish articles, blogs, videos, infographics, statistics, and other informative content on your website and invite readers to go over your content. Your readers take a look at one of the blogs and are convinced to buy the product you are selling. They visit your landing page and make a purchase immediately.
That was the simplest way to explain how it works. The process is very complex, in reality. However, content marketing works wonders for nearly any type and size of business so long as you use it the right way.
Here are a few things that will make your content marketing strategy effective and profitable for your brand:
- High-quality blogs and articles (relevant to your niche)
- Infographics explaining your product uses in brief
- Guest posting for other websites
- Product videos (how-to, tutorials, product benefits, and features) on YouTube
- An FAQ section that answers your customers’ basic queries
There are many ways you can incorporate content marketing into your ecommerce marketing strategy.
For instance, if you have recently joined ecommerce, start with blogging. When you create a blog, you establish yourself as a leader in the industry. The higher you rank in the search engine, your website will be able to attract more visitors.
2. Influencer Marketing
“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.” — Seth Godin
Influencers have a large fan following and high engagement rates. That’s precisely why a large number of brands today are collaborating with influencers to sell products to their target audience.
Believe it or not, 49 percent of consumers depend on recommendations made by influencers. The renowned platform TikTok, created a 1 billion Creator Fund to fund influencers.
Celebrities charge a high commission fee for putting your brand on their stories and creating a video for your services, but the results are excellent.
The strategy is quite popular among women, adults, and teenagers. People are highly likely to get convinced by a celebrity’s post or story. If you have a limited budget, consider hiring micro-influencers. They have a decent number of followers and a good engagement rate.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Did you know that 80% of brands rely on affiliate marketing to generate qualified leads?
Affiliates are people who promote your products and services for commission. For every product they sell, they earn a small percentage of commission from the sales.
Affiliate marketing is like building your own marketing team without paying them unless they convert your leads into customers. The best part is that affiliates take interest in doing business with you since they get to keep a portion of the income from sales.
The more they sell, the higher the commission they earn. This marketing approach always works. Your affiliates might use their social accounts, websites, blogging sites, YouTube channels, and other digital platforms to sell your products.
They tap into the traditional marketing strategies and nearly every marketing channel that increases your sales.
4. SEO and SEM
If you want quick results, search engine marketing is your go-to marketing solution. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) brings organic traffic to your website.
It does not cost you anything, but you need to devote time to create a perfect SEO-optimized page that ranks on the first page of the search results.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves paid advertising. It is a Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model, in which your ads are displayed when a customer types your brand-relevant keywords in the search bar.
You can track the performance of your ads and set your budget for each ad campaign accordingly.
5. Social Media Marketing
Social media is the cheapest and most effective tool to connect with your audience and build their engagement. You can interact with them through informative and engaging content.
Post reels, photos of your brand, videos, reviews posted by customers, giveaways, and other contests. These are a few ways to engage your audience on your social accounts.
Instagram is mostly used for ecommerce marketing. You can post sharp images of your products along with a description, taking your ecommerce business beyond the product page.
Shoppable content is another trend in the social media marketing industry. It allows you to sell your product to your visitors from your Instagram shop.
Use Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and other social networking sites to market your ecommerce business. It is the easiest way to reach out to your target audience and keep them engaged with your brand.
Top 3 Tips to Improve your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy
The above methods are quite general. For these methods to work, you need to follow the right ecommerce marketing strategies. Here are a few tips for improving your online marketing:
1. Use Personalized Services
70% of customers feel irritated when they get an impersonal shopping experience online.
Personalization is key to your business’ growth. If you want to ramp up sales and grow your revenues drastically, you need to work on your marketing strategies.
What is personalization? How can you incorporate it into your business?
For starters, you should focus on selling relevant products to your customers. Consider their interests, preferences, and budget before offering a product to them.
Mass marketing does not work in this generation. You need to understand your customers’ pain points and sell products that solve their problems.
2. Use a Loyalty Program
Another thing that attracts online buyers is a loyalty program.
People love rewards and free products. Add your loyal customers to the VIP program in which they can score points for every purchase and buy any item from your store for free once they have collected sufficient points.
You could also offer rewards to customers who share your content on social media, buy from you repeatedly, or participate in your contests. There are plenty of ways to draw the attention of your target customers.
3. Post Reviews
Customers need honest and 100% authentic reviews that come from genuine buyers who have nothing to do with the success of your company. These reviews give your prospects a clear picture of your company’s performance, product quality, and other factors.
Encourage your customers to leave a review after shopping. Collect as many reviews as possible since it is these reviews that will generate organic traffic to your ecommerce store in the long run.
Conclusion
Ecommerce marketing offers you many ways to sell your products to a large number of customers and build a loyal audience over time. If implemented properly, these techniques can generate the best results for your online and physical store.
In the comments section below, let us know what tips you have implemented to improve your ecommerce marketing strategy.