Marketing ecommerce essentials to make your business a success

Whether you’re planning to start an ecommerce website or already have an online business, here are some important marketing tips that will help you stay ahead of the pack. 

What is ecommerce marketing?

Ecommerce marketing is the way in which you market your website. It’s the things you do to increase traffic to your ecommerce store and convert viewers into customers. 

There are various methods you can use to get more people to your website, make them buy what you’re selling and come back to buy again. 

These methods involve promoting the items you’re selling so that people visit your website to buy them. 

The promotions involve keeping those customers so that they come back and buy products or use your services again.

Every business needs to have a good marketing strategy. You need to build awareness about your brand, increase online sales and build a loyal customer base.

How to build a sound marketing strategy

This involves:

• How your business plans to reach potential customers
• What your products and services are
• How you want to entice customers to buy your products and services instead of competitors’ products and services.
• Methods you use to keep those customers coming back for more.

Include the following in your marketing strategy:

1. A good idea of who your target market is.
2. Which marketing channels you plan to use to reach your target market.
3. A range of products and partner services that are exceptional or different from anything on the market.
4. Prices for your products and services that are realistic but will keep revenue coming in.
5. An ecommerce site where you sell your products on a variety of product pages.

Why digital marketing is a good idea

With an organised digital marketing strategy you have a better way of reaching your customers and keeping them. 

- You need to have done your research so that you know what your market is, who your target audience is and how they will respond to your product or service.

- You also need to track your results to see if your marketing plan is working.

- Keep abreast of trends, user behaviour, the conversion rate and what it costs you to attract your customers.

- Promote your online store through various online marketplaces, through email marketing, comparison shopping sites, affiliate networks, paid advertising and social media platforms. That’s social media marketing in a nutshell. 

10 marketing e-commerce essentials 

It’s important to understand all of the types of ecommerce marketing tools and strategies, a mini ecommerce marketing course that tells you how you can use them to grow your business and make it successful. We’ve pared them down to the top 10 ecommerce marketing strategy essentials. Take a look…

1.   Invest in SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the way that you make sure people can find your online store easily. If you use SEO the right way, you can get your website/online store to sit amongst the top 10 results in search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. 

You see, search engines use specific algorithms to find out who is searching for something. If you use the right SEO keywords, you can make sure that your business ranks high in those search engines. 

This is the way to use SEO to reach plenty of prospective customers. Make sure to use SEO to rank your website in one of the top positions in a search engine. 

Research has proved that 93% of people start by searching for something and when they do, they only consider about the first 5 results. They go no further than the first page of a search engine when they search.

Do detailed keyword research so that you include keywords – in your product descriptions, blog posts and page URLs.

Make sure that your website is structured so that each customer has a really good user experience and support while shopping.

Build backlinks from other popular ecommerce business websites to drive traffic that doesn’t cost you anything.

2.   Run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns

PPC ads are those ads commonly found in sponsored links on Google and Facebook (this also includes Instagram). They’re usually positioned at the top of the page, to give them a better chance of being read. They work so well because they’re targeting people who have been searching for a particular product and are ready to shop.

A PPC campaign involves paying an advertising fee for every time a person clicks on your public advert. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website. This type of advert leads to higher sales than other marketing methods.

To make your PPC ad effective you need to do the following:

• Make sure the ad is relevant by using the best possible SEO keywords. 
• Target the right audience. The ad must look good and be targeted at who you want to reach – nobody else.

3.   Use email marketing tactics

Email campaigns are another excellent marketing tool. Spam can stop an email from getting to your prospective customer’s inbox. Use a legitimate email address, be careful how you word your email and you're on your way to success. In fact, it could reach up to 90% of your customer base.

Emails can be very effective if you use them correctly. Statistics tell us that 87% of businesses use user generated content and content marketing in their marketing strategies.

If you regularly email your subscribers, they will get used to hearing from you, and you will hopefully build up a relationship with them. 

But the emails must follow the patterns listed below. Take a look at the different types of emails you can send:

• Email newsletters are mails you send out regularly to your subscribers. Emails of this kind help you build up a relationship with your subscribers. Hopefully these subscribers then become customers. 
• Direct emails:In addition to your newsletters, send direct emails to subscribers to tell them about a new product, promotions, sales etc. 
• Transactional emails:These are emails you send when the subscriber responds to an email, for instance, when the person buys something or asks a question. 

You would also send out this type of email if the person unsubscribes or abandons his/her Google shopping cart – see more about this below.

• Cold emails:Some companies send a cold email, that is not related to anything sent before or after. They use this type of email toto get a response or the subscriber's/customer's attention.

Some tips on email marketing:

-       When a customer buys something, send them a welcome email.

-       Send regular customers exclusive promotional codes in an email.

-       Make sure newsletters are regular, newsy and fun to read, full of tips, new products, etc.

-       During the Festive Season, send regular customers a personal note withing them well.

-       Ask for feedback in your emails, so that the subscriber can respond if he/she wants to. 

4.   Make it personal

Personalise your emails and make it personal in every blog and marketing tool you use. You'll find that if you personalise your customer’s experience, you will make him or her feel special every time you communicate.

Know your audience well so that you can respond to them in the way they wish to be communicated with.

Find out as much as you can about your subscriber or customer and then use this knowledge to communicate on a more personal level.  

5.   Focus on different marketplaces

People will find you more easily if you sell your best-selling products on popular online marketplaces (eg Amazon, eBay, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok etc). These platforms have vast audiences already, and being associated with them is really good for your business.

People are creatures of habit. So if they’re already using these marketplaces, they should be happy to add your product to their list of purchases. Just make sure you keep the price feasible.

The secret is to only sell your most popular products this way, so that you can introduce prospective customers to your online store, which features all the products that you offer. 

6.   Create a content marketing programme

One of the best ways to connect to your customers is to write blogs that detail the latest trends about particular products and also educates them about your products. You’ll also find that you will rank better in search engines if you do this, because you’ll be using SEO keywords in your blogs. It’s a win-win situation!

Other great content marketing tools:

• Make sure that your blog is easily accessible from your ecommerce store and that it relates directly to your e-commerce brands and your ecommerce site.
• Build your community further by starting a podcast! 
• Educate through long-form relatable content about your brand and products. Make this valuable content accessible, instructive and easy to read.

7.   Upsell your products

It makes sense. If you’ve managed to get your regular customer interested enough to purchase your product, then why not super-size it? Offer a discount for a bigger version of the product, or offer another product to go with it! 

Let’s say you’re selling kids’ clothes and the customer has bought a T-shirt for her toddler. Offer 2 at a great price. And offer a pair of shorts to go with them!

When you upsell, remember the following:

• Make sure that whatever you upsell relates to the original product. So, in our example, that’s 2 T-shirts at a better price, and shorts to go with them.
• Know what is affordable for your customer. If you know your audience, you won’t oversell to somebody who can’t afford what you’re offering.
• If you’re offering your customer a more expensive product, make sure it lives up to expectations so that he or she won’t mind paying more for it.

8.   Stop people abandoning their shopping carts

Yes, there is a way to stop customers from abandoning their shopping carts halfway. Make sure that your website is optimised so that you can target this type of customer the moment he/she leaves a shopping cart without purchasing anything.

We already chatted about abandoned carts when we discussed email marketing. This is when you send a subscriber an email asking him or her to reconsider a purchase.

Make it a personalised email; use your customer’s name. Perhaps offer a little discount or free shipping as incentive. 

The customer may feel bad for abandoning the cart and follow through. Or perhaps he or she got side-tracked and didn’t finish what they really intended to do? 

Either way, you can try your best to convince them to go through with the purchase. 

Be clever when you write. Convince them that they need what they’d started out purchasing – tell them about the benefits of the product and they will remember the reason they wanted it in the first place!

9.  Make it easy for customers to get what they want

The easier you make the shopping journey, the more likely your customers will purchase something. So make the journey simple and fun, so that they enjoy buying your brand on your website. If you’re not sure how to do this, take a look at well-loved similar sites and follow their lead.

Things to watch out for:

• Make the pictures enticing.
• Make the descriptions easy to read and inviting.
• Make sure the entire website is easy to navigate and that it’s really simple to find each product category.

10. Engage online visitors with live chat

People love to communicate, and live chat is a wonderful way to make them feel that your business cares about them. Research has shown that live chat can be almost three times more likely to end in a sale. 

If you’re doing live chat, and it’s not through a ‘bot’ that just answers a series of set questions, you’ll be able to communicate directly with your customer, allay fears, answer questions and sort out problems.

We can help maake your business grow

We want to help you discover your business strength. One of our key focuses is to show other small businesses how to improve their sales and marketing strategies. To do this, you need to be able to identify and benchmark your business’ current performance. 

We have devised a questionnaire to help you improve your performance in Sales and Marketing while optimising your operations.

Take our 3-minute questionnaire and discover how to take your business to the next level.

Watch out for more innovative methods and an online course to make your small business grow!