Ecommerce is an increasingly competitive industry, and this has only been exacerbated further by the coronavirus pandemic. With the lockdowns and confinements taking place worldwide, shoppers are turning more and more to buying online.
This has created both opportunities and threats for E-Tailers. The potential market size of online shoppers has increased dramatically. But competition among E-Tailers has also become fiercer. This means that to be successful, E-Tailers must deploy a range of effective digital marketing strategies to make their business stand out.
This short article outlines some proven digital marketing strategies for E-Tailers to strengthen their brands and bring in leads.
What do you want people to do?
Before we launch into how to get your business in front of potential buyers, think about what you want people to do. For E-Tailers selling broadline, volume products, the most obvious goal is to get traffic to your website and for them to “buy now” without the need for too much consideration. The key aspects of that conversion are product, price, and the ability to read positive customer reviews.
For E-Tailers selling more value-based products or high-ticket items with a long consideration phase, it is important to be clear about objectives. Expecting customers to buy a high-end sauna, for example, after a single visit to a website is unrealistic.
In this instance, it is important to help the potential buyer through the consideration phase by offering calls to action such as free trials, demonstrations, call-backs, or virtual tours, depending on the product in question. This will help progress the buyer by offering validation at different stages.
Paid Channels
Google Ads are the bread and butter of search engine advertising (SEA). Not only can they be configured to focus on an E-Tailers main keywords and products, but the target audience can be tightly targeted. Budgets can be pre-set and planned, and Google’s dashboard allows for constant tweaking and refining depending on the results.
In short, Google Ads are a must.
Depending on your business segment, it is also wise to consider other paid platforms. For B2C E-Tailers, Instagram and Facebook are two obvious social networks to consider using for paid advertising. This will depend on your target demographic, but detailed profiling is possible on both platforms to ensure that advertising budgets are always optimized.
For B2B E-Tailers, LinkedIn is the most logical solution to get visibility with buyers and influencers in your target organizations. In addition to standard paid advertising, LinkedIn also offers the ability to send sponsored InMail messages to individual contacts. To do so, it is possible to define those contacts on an account or industry-based level or the individual’s job title or function.
Think carefully about your pitch because people receive a lot of this cold approach every day, so success depends on being concise and offering a demonstrable value from the outset while using an omni channel approach to maximize brand saturation and exposure.
Landing pages
Paid advertising campaigns will all need to feature a strong call to action, ultimately bringing people to where you want them to land.
Sometimes it will make sense to take people directly to the product page to buy. But if you are running a special offer for a higher value product or a package deal, for example, optimized landing pages can be a great way to improve the conversion rate of your paid ads.
Landing pages are specifically designed to focus the reader on one single call to action. This can be anything from “buy now” to “try it out” or “request a demo.” But for the page to convert well and steer your potential buyers to a positive next step, the call to action needs to be clear and attractive. Use a button to make it stand out and catch the viewer’s eye.
You can also measure the conversion rate of landing pages by analysing and evaluating the page visitors alongside the number of people that click the call-to-action button. This will help you refine the landing pages and your ads to ensure you are getting the right traffic and catering the customer journey to the page; and that the call to action is sufficiently compelling.
Search engine optimization
There are also organic ways of bringing traffic to your website. One of these is to start a blog to create SEO-optimized content to bring people to your site.
Aim to publish as much content as possible to get your website near the top of potential buyers’ search results but try to aim for at least two blogs every week as a baseline.
Identify a couple of priority keywords for each article and use them several times to capture the attention of search engines. Also, optimize your title, meta description, and subtitles for maximum effectiveness. Articles of around 500-1000 words are perfect and can be spun up in a short space of time.
Tools such as Semji are perfect for getting the key aspects of your article optimized quickly and easily.
Organic social media
Organic social media is another “free” way of getting your company in the feeds of potential buyers.
Keep your posts short and sweet, and use around 2-3 hashtags in each post to show up in more users’ feeds. Using imagery in your post makes it statistically much more likely to convert, and simple but effective banners and graphics can be created for free with tools such as Canva. Look to our related guide for more tips on social commerce and marketing.
Email marketing
Last but by no means least, good old-fashioned email marketing can still be effective. Take into account local data privacy laws but encouraging your visitors and customers to subscribe to a newsletter or product updates is an effective tool for generating sales.
To optimize conversion rates, make emails crisp and concise with a single click-through to a landing page or product page. Keep your subject line short and to-the-point, and experiment with A/B tests to measure the effectiveness of different tactics to keep your SMS and email marketing fresh, and improve your conversion ratesa cross the board.
Need Even More Tips?
Digital marketing for ecommerce isn’t rocket science. The more tools that you have in the shed, all the better. Looking for even more tips. We’ve got you covered in this related guide: These Email Marketing Statistics Prove This Niche is Very Much Alive.
