eCommerce Marketing Strategy: Definitive How To Guide & Tips

Chapter 1

What is eCommerce Marketing

In this first chapter, I’ll define eCommerce marketing so you can better know how to carry it out. Just afterward, I’ll talk about eCommerce marketing channels. Next, I’ll provide some other valuable definitions so that you can master the topic like a pro. And by the end of this chapter, I’ll explain why eCommerce marketing is so important nowadays.

Ready? Let’s jump right in!

What is eCommerce marketing?

eCommerce marketing refers to whatever marketing method you use to promote your online store and make sales. Therefore, it implies both customer acquisition and customer retention. 

In other words, eCommerce marketing not only aims at driving traffic to your site, but it also converts your website visitors into new customers, enhances their post-purchase experience, and stimulates new purchases from existing customers.

Moreover, eCommerce marketing will help you improve your brand awareness through several channels, like social media platforms, emails, or search engines. It also enables you to strengthen relationships with existing customers. So, you’ll boost customer loyalty. This will help you increase online sales too. 

eCommerce marketing is a win-win solution. You’ll be able to promote your products and attract more visitors to your website. Meanwhile, consumers will have access to lots of information. It’s a new world of purchasing opportunities. Potential customers have more options to choose from. Thus, chances are they can get a better deal. 

eCommerce marketing can also be defined as the marketing actions you put into place to make sales by means of raising brand awareness about your products and enterprise online. Unbelievable as it may seem, traditional marketing strategies can also be applied in eCommerce marketing, though digitally.

In eCommerce marketing, you also have to come up with advertisements to guide your target audience toward your web page. You’ll need to generate high-quality digital content and use those channels your potential customers like to engage in. 

Not surprisingly, there is no one size fits all solution. You’ll have to use those eCommerce channels that work for your brand and products. I’ll tell you all about that in the next section. Carry on reading so that you can make an informed decision and select the eCommerce channels that best suit your target audience’s needs. 

eCommerce marketing channels

It’s crucial you figure out which eCommerce marketing channels will bring more visitors to your online store. Here are some of the most strategic eCommerce channels for your online business.

Search engines

Under any circumstances, should you underestimate the power and versatility of search engines like Google or Bing, among others. These channels allow you to target varied search intents as well as drive organic traffic to your website.

You must develop effective search techniques to attract a wider audience. This will help you boost your visibility and generate more revenue. A lot of your eCommerce website’s high-quality traffic comes from search engines. Thus, you should invest some of your budget in search engine optimization.  

Hopefully, your pages will appear among the top results on search engines. Thus, chances are you get more website visitors. And some of these might end up purchasing your products. However, SEO is a long-term strategy. So, it’s time-consuming. Still, it’s a successful channel you cannot leave behind. 

Social media

Social media is one of the best eCommerce marketing channels. Most people use social networks such as Instagram or Twitter daily. Thus, you must target your audience where they like to spend their time.

There exist a lot more social media platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. Which platforms to use will depend both on what you sell and who your target audience is. 

Engagement on social media is even higher than on search engines. So, you must find out where your target audience spends most of their time and use those social media platforms to engage with them. 

Yet, not all channels will work for your enterprise. Unless you have an endless budget, you’d better allocate your resources where they can serve you best. So, a social media analytics strategy is mandatory. 

When used properly, social media networks are tremendously valuable to eCommerce businesses. Make sure you carry out in-depth analysis and target your potential customers where they like to spend their time. 

Apart from increasing your brand awareness and visibility, some social media channels allow customers to buy straight away. Still, you must personalize your content to match your audience’s needs. And, it’s critical you engage frequently. Posting quality content is not enough. 

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing implies that you reward one or several affiliates for sending you quality visitors. You can also pay a commission for every sale they help you make. There exist many different affiliate programs. You’ll have to research and pick the one that suits you best. 

There are some popular affiliate networks where you can register as a business, such as LinkConnector, ShareASale, ClickBank, and RevenueWire, to name a few. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective channels, provided that you implement it properly.

You can’t reach everyone you’re interested in on your own. Still, affiliate marketing will help you reach a wider audience and convert them. You’ll increase your online reach by targeting relevant audiences through blogs, publications, and other online platforms. 

Your affiliates or sales associates will help you generate more leads, promote your products, send traffic to your website, and much more. Afterward, you’ll have to pay them for their services based on whatever agreement you initially made with them. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? 

Referral marketing

Likewise, referral marketing is a fantastic way to raise brand awareness. Not only does it help you bring traffic to your website. But it will also allow you to increase your ranking on search engines.

Referral marketing involves rewarding existing customers for telling others about your brand, products, and services. You’ll have to give them something in exchange, such as coupon code offers, discounts, free products, or cash rewards, to name a few. 

It comes as no surprise that referral marketing is tremendously beneficial. Whether through customer testimonials, social proof, or product reviews, it’ll boost your visibility. Not to mention that people trust what other people say more than what brands say of themselves. 

Referral marketing is pretty simple to launch, and it’s a low-cost channel. Ads are far more expensive. Besides, referral marketing is great for PR, customer loyalty, brand awareness, brand mentions, trust, and much more. 

However, it’s vital you make it a win-win. Keep it simple and make it easy to find. For example, you can promote your referral program on social media. There are multiple ways of referral programs; choose the right one for your business. It’ll be wise if you personalize it too. There is no one size fits all solution. You’ll have to research and do what’s best for your brand.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing’s primary goal is to persuade your target audience to take the desired action. For instance, visiting your website, sharing their email address, or making a purchase. 

There are several forms of direct marketing, including brochures, catalogs, flyers, newsletters, text messages, emails, phone calls, online display ads, postcards, coupons, etc. 

Direct marketing is among the most successful channels since you only target those audience segments which might be interested in your products or services. Besides, it is personalized. Thus it’s cost-effective, and it’s got a high ROI rate. It’s trackable and measurable too. 

Among its many advantages, it fosters brand loyalty, makes direct marketing campaigns trackable, and enables personalized communication. In this type of marketing, there are no third parties involved.

If done well, direct marketing can end up being tremendously efficient. It’ll help you reach potential customers quite fast. And you can customize your strategies based on your customers’ needs. 

Content marketing

eCommerce content marketing is a long-term strategy you can significantly benefit from. It’ll help you drive quality traffic to your website, among many other things. However, you must produce high-quality content. 

There’s lots of content available online. Make sure yours is interesting. Come up with content that solves your customers’ pain points. In other words, provide relevant content. 

You’ve got several content formats to choose from, like blogs, infographics, guides, video content, whitepapers, etc. You can also create content so as to show your expertise. Make content that’s engaging for your niche target audience.

The advantages of content marketing are endless. Yet, it’ll take a while till it starts paying off. You can produce varied content to target customers through different stages of the buying journey. You can also benefit from boosting your website’s SEO. 

Email marketing 

eCommerce email marketing consists of using emails to promote your products/services to both existing and potential customers. Not surprisingly, email marketing is a pretty effective channel.

It can help you increase engagement and strengthen customer loyalty. You can leverage email marketing to share information and boost sales. It’s also beneficial to raise brand awareness, credibility, and trustworthiness. And it can help you increase your website traffic. 

What’s more, you can use email marketing for cross-selling, up-selling, and re-engaging passive clients. Therefore, email marketing can help you attract new customers and retain existing ones. 

Options are endless; just make sure you personalize your campaigns for different audience segments. As always, it’s better if you target those who are interested with relevant content. Chances are they’ll complete the desired action you want them to perform. 

PPC

As the name suggests, PPC implies you’ll have to pay an ad publisher each time a user clicks on your ad. You can promote your online store and products through paid ads. 

More often than not, eCommerce ads appear on search engines like Google. You can also find them displayed on social media networks, such as Facebook. Besides, PPC ads can also be shown on websites like YouTube. 

When used properly, PPC can greatly impact your overall business results. Customers that come from eCommerce PPC ads are more likely to make a purchase. They are somehow more interested than those coming from an organic link.

However, you’ll better set your budget and understand how PPC works before running a campaign. You should also track and measure your results so as to make any necessary changes. The best part? PPC drives fast results. 

Word of mouth

Word of mouth marketing can have a tremendous positive impact on eCommerce. When users share their satisfaction with a particular brand, they can help the brand in question increase not only loyalty and sales but also boost its brand awareness.

Organic social callouts and online reviews are vital to promoting your products or services. You can even have a community of advocates or brand ambassadors. People trust other people’s opinions. Thus, the benefits of word of mouth are endless.

Moreover, word of mouth can make your marketing message go viral. You’ll get more trust from your target audience. Therefore, chances are they take the desired action you want them to perform. 

You can ask your customers to provide honest ratings and reviews. But you can also arrange a referral program and reward them for sending you potential customers. 

Not surprisingly, you’ll have to post relevant content and engage with your target audience. Social media presence goes hand in hand with word of mouth. Still, the latter is a channel worth trying. 

Influencer marketing 

Influencer marketing means you can partner with an influencer whose audience you are interested in. More often than not, what the influencer does is promote your products or services so that you can increase your profits.

This is a highly effective channel since a lot of social media users rely on the recommendations made by their favorite influencers. However, working with well-known influencers is expensive.

So, many eCommerce brands collaborate with micro-influencers who have a smaller but more targeted audience. Whatever your preferences are, make sure you partner with influencers whose target audience you are interested in. 

Nowadays, there’s a lot of competition. Still, influencers can help you get noticed and increase your brand awareness. Make sure you display creative content. You can also benefit from contests and giveaways. Most importantly, do not forget to check the effectiveness of your influencer’s campaigns. 

Now that we’ve discussed the most important eCommerce channels let’s define eCommerce!

What is eCommerce?

eCommerce, also known as internet commerce or electronic commerce, consists of buying and selling goods or services online. It also covers the transfer of money and data needed to complete buying and selling transactions on the internet. 

As you may well already know, there are several types of eCommerce: business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B), consumer to consumer (C2C), consumer to business (C2B), and direct to consumer (D2C). 

B2C is when an enterprise sells either goods or services to an individual. B2B takes place when a brand sells its products/services to another brand. Not surprisingly, C2C is when a consumer sells goods or services to another consumer. 

C2B happens when an individual sells their products/services to an organization or business. And finally, D2C is when a company sells its products or services directly to the end consumer without any distributor taking part.

What does buyer persona mean?

A buyer persona is a research-based description of your ideal target customers. However, it is a fictional representation based on your existing and ideal customers. It matters because it can help you create marketing campaigns tailored to your audience’s needs.

A buyer persona is also known as an audience persona, a marketing persona, and a customer persona. In order to create a buyer persona, you’ll need to research your audience demographics, behavior patterns, interests, goals, pain points, and more.

Remember that the more detailed your buyer persona is, the better. This will help you attract more valuable visitors to your website as well as increase sales. Creating buyer personas helps you to better understand your customer’s needs. 

What’s an eCommerce strategy?

An eCommerce strategy will help you measure the success of your eCommerce activities. In fact, an eCommerce strategy is somehow the roadmap you’ll follow so as to reach your goals. It has to be documented and updated as time goes by. 

A proper eCommerce marketing strategy needs to be based on thorough market research. You should also learn about what your competitors are doing. And most importantly, it’s vital you create your buyer persona. All this will help you plan strategies to achieve long-term success.

eCommerce marketing strategies not only cover an individual tactic. They are the combination of various tactics and marketing efforts. These need to be documented so that everybody in the marketing team knows them and is aware of the actions to be taken. 

eCommerce marketing strategies need to be trackable through specific metrics based on your overall marketing goals. This matters quite a lot to optimize your strategy if need be. You’ll also need to define your KPIs. 

An eCommerce marketing strategy needs to focus on your buyer persona needs and pain points so as to be effective. Not surprisingly, this will allow you to guide them through each stage of the buyer’s journey. 

Whatever your strategy is – increase website traffic, brand awareness, conversions, etc.- make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

What’s an eCommerce plan?

An eCommerce plan refers to a document that enterprises use to stay focused on achieving a predetermined set of goals. There is no standard format for an eCommerce plan, most plans cover a set of goals, how to achieve them, the financial situation, the distribution channels,  the marketing tools, and more. In other words, it is somehow a framework for your business. 

An eCommerce plan will help you have a better understanding of your business. You’ll also benefit from identifying resources and learning about your competitors. You can also use your marketing plan to develop your road plan for the future as well as find out new opportunities. As you see, the benefits are endless. 

More often than not, an eCommerce business plan includes:

• An executive summary.
• A business description.
• Market research & SWOT analysis.
• Your products or services description.
• Customer analysis.
• Your marketing plan.
• Budget.

Therefore, any eCommerce shop can benefit from creating a business plan. Not surprisingly, it’ll differ from one brand to another. But, creating yours, it’s of vital importance. 

Why is eCommerce marketing so important?

There are one thousand reasons why eCommerce marketing is important these days. Whether you like it or not, everything is becoming more and more digital. Today’s buyers have high expectations. So, you’d better meet them if you want to make the most out of your business. 

On top of that, eCommerce marketing matters since it’ll help you cut down on your costs, and it entails fewer risks. You’ll also benefit from being open 24/7 as well as having access to global reach. Not to mention that eCommerce will help you get better market opportunities.

You’ll be able to boost customer satisfaction due to offering a more personalized shopping experience. It is pretty easy to launch your eCommerce business compared to traditional approaches. And, it’s somehow more secure and convenient. 

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Now that you’ve learned about eCommerce marketing basics, it’s time we move on and delve into more advanced information. In the next chapter, I’ll explain the types of eCommerce marketing. Keep reading to find out more and beat your competitors!

Chapter 2

Types of eCommerce marketing

In this chapter, I’ll deal with the most well-known types of eCommerce marketing. Whether to use one type of eCommerce marketing or another or them all will depend on your online store and the goals you want to accomplish.

Attracting and keeping the attention of your online customers is not that easy. There’s too much competition these days. What I mean is that it’s more difficult to succeed unless you take part in eCommerce marketing and use platforms properly. 

Here are the top eCommerce marketing types available nowadays. Learning about their characteristics, benefits, and challenges will help you make informed decisions regarding what type or types will work better for your brand. 

Let’s have a closer look at them!

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization mainly consists of improving your website so that you can boost its visibility when online users search for your products/services on search engines.

Not surprisingly, SEO is key to eCommerce marketing because when people search for a product on the internet, they generally have the intention to purchase it. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) combines both SEO efforts and paid advertising strategies. 

Therefore, you must do your best to improve your ranking on search engines like Google. Still, you can also benefit from implementing PPC campaigns in Google Adwords, among others.

SEO is often one of the primary sources of traffic for eCommerce stores. Thus, it’s critical you understand how SEO works and how users behave on your website so that you can carry out any necessary changes to provide a better user experience and boost your sales. 

Digital Advertising

Digital advertising or online advertising consists of promoting your brand, products, and services through digital channels. It aims at helping consumers through every stage of the buying funnel, from awareness to purchase and follow-up. 

It comes as no surprise then that digital advertising is critical to eCommerce marketing. In digital advertising, it’s vital that you segment your campaigns based on your target audience’s interests. 

A key benefit of digital advertising is that you can evaluate your campaigns’ performance in real-time and introduce changes accordingly. Not to mention that you can research your target audience’s habits, interests, and demographics to create better ads. 

As you may well already know, there exist four main types of digital ads. They are search, display, social and influencer ads. As it happens with any other type of eCommerce marketing, you should use those who work best for your business. 

Growth Marketing

Growth marketing is a marketing approach that goes beyond paid traffic. It aims at optimizing the funnel by means of targeted testing. Therefore, it’s full-funnel, data-driven, and scalable, among many other things.

Not surprisingly, growth marketing’s main goal is business growth. It’s a holistic approach that employs both paid and non-paid marketing tactics. What’s more, it aims at growing your customers’ lifetime value and boosting your sales. 

Growth marketing focuses on experimenting and innovating as well as engaging with customers. Thanks to growth marketing, you’ll be able to improve your brand awareness, ROI, customer acquisition, and more. 

Social Media

Social media marketing entails using social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok to promote your brand, products, and services. You must create interesting content for your customers and prospects, and you’ll also have to interact with them.

Social media marketing can help you drive referral traffic to your website. Still, there are platforms that allow users to make a purchase directly without having to drive them to your page. 

Some social media platforms allow eCommerce brands to tag products on their stories, posts, and pages, making it way simpler to make a purchase. Make sure you research and find out where your customers live online. 

These are the platforms you should use. Besides, you can also check where your competitors are more active. Chances are, those channels will work for your online business too. 

Social media marketing won’t only help you boost your sales. You can also leverage its use to collect insights about your industry, strengthen customer relationships, increase brand awareness, etc. 

On top of that, you can benefit from implementing both organic social media marketing and paid social media advertising. You can even take part in influencer marketing, which I’ll explain more in detail below. 

Content Marketing 

Content marketing is a strategic long-term marketing approach that consists of creating and distributing high-quality content online. More often than not, it aims at entertaining, informing, attracting, and converting users by means of sharing valuable and relevant content.

Content marketing implies communication without hard-selling. If you create valuable content, you’ll be able to get more loyal customers. Even if it’s hard to stand out on the internet these days, content marketing it’s of vital importance. 

Content marketing will help you increase your brand visibility, build loyalty and trust, drive high-quality traffic to your website, strengthen customer relationships, and much more. 

As for eCommerce, you can create how-to videos, become an authority online, include images of the products you are selling, etc. Thanks to content marketing, you’ll be able to increase conversions and revenue in the long term. 

It’s also great for search engine optimization. In other words, the benefits are endless. Still, make sure the content you create is relevant to your audience. Only high-quality pieces will help you succeed. 

Email Marketing

eCommerce email marketing is a marketing approach you can use to promote your products to existing and potential customers. It’s extremely effective, efficient, affordable, and highly profitable when done right.

You can customize your emails to blow up user engagement, boost sales and build customer loyalty. eCommerce email marketing covers cross-selling, upselling, mailing list segmentation, user onboarding, and much more. 

How you make use of email marketing is up to you. Obviously, it’ll depend on your goals, target audience, marketing objectives, etc. 

Email marketing is not only cost-effective, but it’s also a fantastic way to engage with your customers. It’s key you monitor your email marketing campaigns and make changes if need be. Make sure you share relevant quality content as well as promotions and announcements based on your target audience’s interests. 

You don’t have to, and definitely shouldn’t, send the same emails to all your contacts. Rather, you should customize them and share only information they might be interested in. 

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is a strategy whose goal is to reach your target audience on their smartphones, tablets, and any other mobile devices they may have. You can reach them via websites, emails, SMS, MMS, social media, and mobile apps.

Mobile marketing is highly effective. It allows you to target your audience where they feel more comfortable. Moreover, you can reach them in real-time and at any point in their customer lifecycle.  

Indeed, mobile marketing allows you to create personalized promotions. You can even use location services to tailor your mobile marketing and SMS marketing campaigns. You can leverage the use of SMS marketing to communicate offers and share updates and reminders to customers you have permission to message. 

It is thanks to mobile marketing that you’ll be able to acquire, engage and retain users across various platforms. There is no doubt that mobile marketing is vital for eCommerce brands. The average person spends lots of time on their phones. There’s no better place to reach them than where they are comfortable. 

Public Relations

Public relations consists of managing your brand’s reputation. So, it’s critical for eCommerce marketing communications. PR is not only necessary to get positive views about your products or online store. It’s also vital in the event of something negative happening so that you can lessen the damage to your reputation.

It takes ages to build a positive reputation. However, you can lose everything in a moment. It is for this reason that a PR strategy is mandatory. Besides, you can use PR to keep your target audience engaged and interested.

As you may well already know, PR campaigns differ from marketing campaigns. PR’s primary goal is to tell your brand’s story and show off your human side. Marketing campaigns are about promoting your products and services. 

PR allows you to contact journalists, bloggers, and publications and convince them to tell your brand story. Even if it’s not at all easy, you can get your message shared by one of these. So it’s worth trying. But, make sure you only contact relevant people who share content in your niche. 

Affiliate Marketing

eCommerce affiliate marketing is when advertisers get a commission for promoting your products or services. Affiliates share content on a blog, social media platform, podcast, or website and are rewarded in exchange. In other words, affiliates get a commission for making recommendations. 

These days, eCommerce affiliate marketing is a really popular tactic among marketers. What’s more, it’s beneficial to both brands and affiliates. There exist different types of programs. Some are based on purchases, others on driving traffic to your website, and there are even some programs based on customer acquisition. 

Affiliate marketing is great for scaling your business and broadening your audience. Besides, it’s easy to execute, and there’s low risk. However, it takes time to reap the rewards, and you have no full control of what’s happening. And as I mentioned earlier, you’ll have to pay a commission to affiliate marketers. 

Local Marketing 

Local marketing or location-based marketing consists of optimizing your website and online advertising to drive local traffic. It aims at creating awareness about your business in local regions. In other words, you attract potential customers from the local market.

eCommerce can significantly benefit from local marketing. However, you’ll have to enhance your website so that it is mobile-friendly. It also helps if you localize your business ads.

This tactic can end up being really effective for eCommerce businesses. Make sure you engage with local customers and create content and promotions that are relevant to them. Local marketing is extremely targeted. 

You can organize events and take part in local activities so as to improve local brand awareness. Chances are you’ll boost the number of local customers as well as sales. 

Brand Marketing 

Your eCommerce brand is not only your brand name and logo but also how people perceive you. Brand marketing refers to how you promote your brand, products, and services as a whole; and how people see them.

Brand marketing’s main goal is to provide an effective and personalized brand communication that combines your brand identity, values, and personality. It’s a long-term strategy that impacts the entire online store. 

You must be consistent so that consumers recognize your brand. That’s precisely how they’ll become loyal customers. Well-branded eCommerce websites have more chances to succeed.

Video Marketing

The vast majority of people watch videos online on a regular basis. Thus, video marketing is an excellent way to promote your brand and products. You can leverage video marketing to show potential customers how to use your products. 

You can also use videos to attract customers and engage with your target audience. Most importantly, you can create videos to showcase your products and show what differentiates you from your competitors. 

Video marketing is tremendously effective for eCommerce businesses. You can use videos to describe your product’s features, share customer reviews, show your product in action, explain how to use them, and more. 

Therefore, you can create different types of videos, such as marketing videos, product tutorials, set-up or installation videos, animated videos, expert reviews, live videos, etc. 

The best part, videos can be shared across platforms. Thus, you can use them to make your content go viral. Do not forget to include a CTA in your videos, and you might also benefit from adding a script too. 

Influencer Marketing 

Influencer marketing is when eCommerce brands collaborate with influencers to either market their products or increase their brand awareness. Influencer marketing is highly effective since you’ll have access to an engaged audience. In other words, you’ll be targeting only those who are interested in your products or services.

Still, you must partner with the right influencers. There exist at least four types of influencers, nano-influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, and celebrities. Not surprisingly, not all eCommerce brands can afford celebrities to promote their products. So, take into account your budget before choosing who to collaborate with.

Another factor to consider is the channels they use, their audience, their niche, etc. What I’m trying to say is that you must research before starting a relationship with influencers. Influencer marketing is vital for engagement. You’ll also get more website traffic. 

Behavioral Marketing

Behavioral marketing is when you use behavioral targeting for your eCommerce marketing campaigns. Basically, you collect relevant data from your target audience’s browsing habits and use it to create relevant ads, customize your emails and personalize your website copy, among many other things.

Not surprisingly, customer segmentation will help you improve conversions. Thus, eCommerce brands will benefit from this type of marketing. You can leverage the usage of cookies and pixels to track your target audience’s behavior online. And then use this data to your advantage. 

Thanks to behavioral marketing, you can make every user experience unique. For instance, you can make recommendations based on their preferences. You can also use web analytics and customer search history to help potential customers through the buying process. 

Behavioral marketing allows you to convince indecisive customers, and it ensures a better engagement with your website. You can use behavioral marketing for your exit intent campaigns, location-based campaigns, and product upsell campaigns, to name a few. 

Cloud Marketing

As the name implies, Cloud eCommerce marketing uses cloud-based technology to handle data storage, hosting, payments, product data management, and more. Thus, it uses cloud-based systems to manage transactions and website traffic. Not surprisingly, this is great for security. 

You can enhance your online performance with the aid of cloud-based platforms. On top of that, cloud marketing is great for your business’s scalability, stability, security, speed, and more. The benefits are endless. 

Thanks to cloud marketing, you’ll be able to provide simple, secure, and streamlined transactions. This matters a lot since online users must trust you to convert. 

Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing refers to a type of inbound marketing that you can use to engage with your website visitors, convert leads, retarget old customers, and more. It consists of a dialogue-driven strategy that’s highly personalized.

You can leverage this type of eCommerce marketing to help users move down the sales funnel. Conversational marketing is real-time messaging. Not surprisingly, it can help you strengthen your relationship with your audience. 

Conversational marketing aims to identify individual user needs and build connections with your target audience. Conversational marketing can take place through live chats, WhatsApp messages, text messaging, Facebook messaging, and chatbots. It can be automated and personalized. 

Therefore, the benefits are endless. Among many others, it’s worth mentioning that thanks to conversational marketing, you’ll be able to improve customer satisfaction, generate leads, collect relevant information, save time and resources, and more. 

Augmented Marketing 

Augmented marketing is of vital importance for eCommerce businesses. Thanks to Augmented Reality (AR) technology, you’ll be able to provide a computer-generated image of what you’re selling. It can either be through static or interactive virtual assets. 

Interestingly, augmented marketing will help you personalize online shopping, improve conversions and reduce return rates. What’s more, eCommerce businesses that use AR will be able to provide virtual try-on solutions, interactive user manuals, preview placements, and more. 

Augmented marketing will help you increase customer engagement as well as reach new customers. The only downside is you’ll have to make an investment to offer this type of technology.

Buzz Marketing  

Buzz marketing strategy aims at augmenting the potential of a product or marketing campaign through word of mouth. Basically, the idea is to generate talking or conversations on social media platforms. And, by getting people talking about your products or services, you’ll boost brand awareness.

It can either be conversations between consumers’ friends and family members or discussions on social media networks. The idea is to catch your target audience’s attention and make your content go viral. 

More often than not, online buzz marketing is started by influencers since their opinions can get easily noticed, and they have large audiences who might share the message. However, you can also engage with influential bloggers, participate in niche forums or create customer communities. 

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Well, that’s all for the types of eCommerce marketing. Now you have extensive knowledge of the eCommerce marketing types available for your business. This will help you make better decisions and choose those that can work best for your enterprise. 

But don’t leave us that early! I still have lots of interesting information to share. In the next chapter, I’ll explain how to do eCommerce marketing. Stick with us to find out more!

Chapter 3

How to do eCommerce Marketing

Now that you’ve learned about the types of eCommerce marketing, it’s high time we talked about how to do eCommerce marketing. In this chapter, I’ll provide extended details as to how to implement eCommerce marketing.

Ready? Let’s get into the nitty-gritty!

Nowadays, it’s of vital importance that you create an eCommerce marketing plan and determine your marketing strategies. Lack of planning can end up being terrible for your business. 

Not to mention that well-planned eCommerce marketing is critical for sustainable growth. Creating an eCommerce plan is crucial to reach new customers, boost your sales, retain existing customers, and much more. 

Whatever your marketing objectives, it’s mandatory you define them. You’ll also need to have quantifiable KPIs and an integrated strategy. In other words, you need to create a road map that’s simple, achievable, clear, and concise. Otherwise, you might get lost.

Let’s delve a bit deeper into how to do eCommerce marketing!

Determine your goals

Not surprisingly, you need to take some time and decide on what goals you want to accomplish. Afterward, you’ll have to think about how you can do so. In other words, you need to know what you must do to achieve your goals. 

Thus, you should outline your eCommerce marketing goals and understand your needs, wants, and expectations. Make sure you get SMART objectives.

Examples of eCommerce marketing goals are: build customer loyalty, reduce abandoned carts, optimize product pages for search engines, boost sales, collect email leads through sign-up forms, etc. 

eCommerce marketing goals might vary from one business to another. What’s more, you may have easy and attainable small goals that are key to your overall business goal. You must come up with the right goals to get results. 

Goals are a must-have for any eCommerce marketing enterprise. They’ll help you narrow your focus and create sustainable business growth.

Know your brand & brand story

Likewise, it’s key that you know your brand and tell your brand story. The latter refers to how your company began, what it does, and your mission, vision, and values, among many other things. Every brand has a unique brand story that can be shared with their target audience. 

Your brand story is about what makes you special. But you can also use it to share why your target audience should trust your products and services. However, make sure you are open, honest, consistent, and transparent with what you say. 

Keep it simple and create a key message to touch your audience. Besides, it’s pivotal you find your narrative and be human. You’re storytelling how it all started, your origins, and your mission but from a human perspective. Build a brand persona and a brand personality to better engage with your customers. 

Define your buyer personas

As important as determining your goals and sharing your brand story, it is to define your buyer personas. Not surprisingly, creating your buyer personas will help you come up with the right message to the right people at the right time. 

Instead of guessing who your buyer personas are, you can ask them about their problems, interests, and so on and so forth. It would be wise to survey them so as to gather information. However, you should give them something in exchange for their cooperation. 

A buyer persona is a fictional profile of your customers. Learning about your customers will not only help you to better understand your target audience, but it’ll also help you to create marketing campaigns that align with their needs and interests. 

Make sure you include quantitative and qualitative data. That’s to say, analytics, surveys, behavioral data, demographics, customer interviews, customer service inquiries, etc. 

This will help you create audience segments. Thus, you’ll be able to personalize your strategy and optimize your marketing efforts. So, creating buyer personas is not at all a waste of time but a necessity. 

Research your competitors

Competitor research can help you find great opportunities to grow your eCommerce business. Competitor analysis is a tremendously valuable technique you can use to gather information about other players in your industry.

For instance, you can research their websites, pricing, social media pages, marketing strategies, product pages, online reviews, and more. Such an analysis is vital to determine your strengths and weaknesses, but also theirs. 

Who knows? You might find potential opportunities where you can take advantage. Learning about your competitors is mandatory to make informed decisions. You’ll be able to create a more effective marketing approach. 

Not to mention that you might end up increasing your revenue. So, do not underestimate the power of competitor research and devote some of your time and budget to getting to know what other brands in your niche are doing. 

Carry out keyword research

SEO keyword research is of utmost importance for eCommerce marketing. Understanding the terminology your potential customers use to find your products/services on search engines matters way more than what you think. 

You must choose your keywords carefully so that your product pages appear on search results pages. In fact, you should aim at your website appearing on the first page, but you’ll also want it to rank in the top positions. 

Among the benefits of keyword research, it’s worth mentioning that it’s vital for creating relevant content. It’ll also help you get more website traffic and potential sales.

There are one thousand reasons why you should take keyword research seriously. As to eCommerce marketing, keyword research will allow you to build an effective SEO strategy for your online store. 

Create relevant content & promote it

Effective content marketing will help you attract new visitors and convert existing ones. All you have to do is create high-quality, valuable, and relevant content. Afterward, you’ll need to share it on several platforms and engage with potential customers. 

Whatever content you create – blogs, podcasts, webinars, videos, infographics, etc.- make sure it’s interesting and easy to understand for your audience. Content marketing not only promotes your website and increases your brand awareness. But it also strengthens your relationship with your target audience. 

What’s more, thanks to an effective content marketing strategy, you can get brand advocates who are vital for word-of-mouth. They’ll help your content to go viral. Still, make sure you create truly useful content that solves their pain points.

Keyword research is crucial to getting started. But, internal links, as well as backlinks, matter too so as to get more exposure. Not to mention that links are detrimental to SEO. Influencer marketing can also help you boost your content reach. 

Build customer loyalty and advocacy

As I have already mentioned, you must do your best to build customer loyalty and advocacy. These can only be achieved through audience engagement. Your customers are far more than a source of revenue; they are somehow your marketing voice. 

What’s more, you can turn loyal customers into advocates. Worth-of-mouth advertising is highly profitable. Users trust more what others say than what you say. So, you’d better give loyal customers and advocates the importance they deserve. 

An eCommerce loyalty program consists of rewarding customers or individuals for engaging with your business. Moreover, you can encourage your best customers to become advocates. Besides, you can even build a loyal community.

A loyalty program can also help you to increase customer lifetime value since you’ll make them feel valued and appreciated. The benefits are endless. All you have to do is choose your rewards and let your audience know about it. You can even automate the process. 

Choose your key strategies

Not surprisingly, to choose your eCommerce marketing strategies, you must first know your goals and objectives as well as your mission. Besides, it’d be wise to consider previous experiences, your strengths, and weaknesses to better understand which areas need to be addressed first. 

eCommerce marketing strategies do not necessarily have to be the same for all enterprises. On the contrary, you should focus on those areas you need to improve to accomplish your goals.

Still, some strategies might work out for most eCommerce businesses, like improving your SMS and email marketing. These two are not only cost-effective, but they’ll also help you strengthen your relationship with your customers. 

A/B testing is of vital importance too. Whatever the strategies you pick, make sure you check their efficiency and make any necessary changes. You may even want to consider trying a new channel to attract a new audience segment, for instance. 

Not to mention that a content marketing strategy is mandatory. It’s important you generate and promote content regularly. You’ll have to engage with your audience too. But, not any kind of content works; it must be high-quality, relevant, interesting, etc.

Social media presence is crucial these days. You must come up with a well-based social media strategy. It’s necessary you target your audience where they enjoy spending some of their free time. Chances are they’re more receptive. 

Finally, you should be familiar with the latest eCommerce marketing trends and tactics. This will definitely help you decide which strategies are worth trying. You’ll also need to work with a diverse team of professionals. And it’s critical you track your progress. There’s no better way to discover whether your strategies are working or not. 

Define success metrics

Metrics and KPIs will help you understand whether your strategies are working or not. Thus, they are key to determining your level of success. Many people use the concepts “KPIs” and “metrics” interchangeably. However, they do not always refer to the same thing. 

An eCommerce metric is any source of information that’s quantifiable, measurable, and needs interpretation. On the other hand, KPIs are somehow more subjective. The latter is based on metrics, and it’s custom-tailored. But, it’s crucial you track them too. 

There are lots of eCommerce metrics you may want to consider tracking, such as conversion rate, customer acquisition, average order value, bounce rate, social media engagement, etc. 

Make sure you measure your performance across several eCommerce channels. Some metrics may need to be checked weekly, while others might require a monthly or quarterly check. 

Which eCommerce metrics you should evaluate will depend on factors like your business model, your marketing strategies, and your long-term business objectives. Still, it’s vital you take the time to track those eCommerce metrics that are relevant to your business. Chances are, they’ll help grow your online store. 

Decide on your timeframe and timeline

Last but not least, you’ll have to determine your timeframe and timeline to accomplish your goals. It can be three to six months, a year, or even five years. It depends on the objectives you settled on at the beginning. 

What I trying to explain is that you have to decide on a specific timeframe to put into place each tactic. And then check whether it was effective or not. Just setting objectives without checking the results as time goes by is useless. 

You must devote some of your time to analyzing the success of your marketing efforts. How much time you allow for each tactic will differ from other brands. There are lots of factors to consider. 

Evaluate your results and make any necessary changes

Once you’ve decided on the timeframe you’ll allow your marketing plan and strategies to give results; it’s key you evaluate their effectiveness. This will allow you to better manage your budget and resource allocation. 

It’s also fundamental so as to make any necessary changes. If something isn’t working, you might want to try a different tactic. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy that works for all enterprises. 

Each eCommerce business has its own objectives, tactics, products, budget, target audience, and so on and so forth. Thus, not all strategies will work for every eCommerce store. On the contrary, you’ll have to A/B test till you find out what works best for you. 

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And that’s all for now. In this chapter, you’ve learned how to do eCommerce marketing. There are lots of aspects you need to consider to implement eCommerce marketing. Here, we’ve covered those that are essential. However, you may need to put into practice extra strategies to succeed.  

Don’t leave us yet! In the next chapter, I’ll share some eCommerce marketing tips to help you beat your competitors. Carry on reading to find out more!

Chapter 4

eCommerce Marketing Tips

Now that you’re almost such an eCommerce marketing expert, I’d like to share some valuable tips with you. In this chapter, I’ll provide some advice based on extended research and years of experience in the field. I’ll talk about both classic and trendy ideas you might haven’t considered yet. Ready?

Here are some eCommerce marketing tips you can’t miss out on!

Up-selling and cross-selling with product recommendations

Up-selling and cross-selling can end up being more beneficial than getting a purchase from a new customer. Those who have already decided to purchase a product might end up buying a better version of the product they were about to buy. Besides, they may benefit from buying several products that are often sold together.

Customers might not know a premium version is available unless you tell them. Still, make sure you emphasize the difference. If they are about to pay more for a product, there must be a significant improvement. 

Not surprisingly, it is important to know when to offer an upsell. Be sure the product you offer as an improvement is related to the product your potential customers wanted to buy in the first place. Besides, be sensitive to any price range they might have selected in advance. 

Moreover, you might want to suggest items that are often bought together in carousel ads. This way, you’ll help customers to make the most out of their purchases. Sometimes you need to reach a specific price to get free shipping, for instance. Thus, buying more than one related item can benefit you both. 

Provide customers with a wish list

Even if your potential customers are not ready to buy certain products they may like, they can place them on a wish list so as to purchase them in the near future. This is an amazing strategy for eCommerce stores.

What’s more, you can make the wish list shareable so that they can send it to family and friends or even share it on social media. If not them, other people might end up buying the selected products. 

Not surprisingly, it’s advisable you get their email address to remind them about their wishes. You can also let them know when the products they like are about to be out of stock or when there’s been a reduction in the price. 

Improve customer experience

There are one thousand reasons why you should focus on providing a great customer experience. These days, customer experience has to be optimal. Otherwise, potential customers will go to another eCommerce website. 

Do your best to improve customer support. Respond to your customers promptly and help them with whatever issue they may be facing. This means you not only have to be available but also offer quick responses. 

Some queries might be automated. Use the technology you have at your disposal so as to make things easier. Another way to offer great customer support is to be available on social media. 

Still, you can also build a chatbot. The best part? You can create an integrated chat that’s available both on your website and social media platforms. This way, you’ll make things way easier for your customers in case they need to reach you. 

Design SEO-friendly product pages

More than a tip, this is a must for eCommerce brands. SEO is really important for digital marketing. So make sure your product pages have a title tag and a meta description in which you use relevant keywords. 

Not to mention that the product description and URL need to be rich in relevant keywords. Otherwise, you won’t be shown on search engine results pages. The structure of your website needs to be SEO-friendly too. And do not forget to index your product pages.

You’ll probably already know all this. Yet it’s worth mentioning it so that you become aware of its relevance. Your overall website’s architecture has to be optimized. All these factors are critical to improving your performance. 

Convince your target audience with product reviews

Product reviews can work wonders. It is a well-known fact that customer reviews help with conversion rates. You’ll also be able to increase sales and even customer loyalty. It’s a really good idea that people share their views about your products. So, do not hesitate to add some of these to your product pages. 

Nowadays, many online users read product reviews before making a purchase. You can make it easier for them to find others’ views on what you sell if you have product reviews on your website.

Otherwise, they might try to find reviews elsewhere and buy the same or similar product on another eCommerce website. So, it’s highly advisable that you include product reviews in your online store. 

Not to mention that it’s a brilliant way to get some feedback. Chances are, not all product reviews will be positive, which is great too. You can use what users say to make improvements. 

Boost conversions with promotions & discounts

Offering promotions and discounts is a great idea for eCommerce enterprises. You can use your email subscriber list and send promotions based on their preferences. What I mean is that you should segment your audience and offer promotions they might be interested in. 

You can use influencer promo codes, coupons, buy one get one free, etc. There are countless strategies you can put into place depending on your needs. Whatever tactic you choose, make sure you target potential buyers based on their needs. 

You might also want to reward returning customers with a special price or even encourage first-time buyers with a discount. You can use pop-up windows to let people know about your promotions. 

Still, social media is a really effective channel too. There are tools that can help you with this task, or you can manage strategies on your own. Honestly, it’s up to you!

Reward your loyal customers

There are many different customer loyalty programs you can choose from depending on your audience’s needs. Consider your budget and how you want to manage the rewards before making a decision. 

Interestingly, customer retention is an incredibly cost-effective strategy. Thus, you’d better devise a strategy to reward loyal customers. It could be anything from birthday discounts to free shipping or exclusive gifts. But make sure they feel valued and pleased. 

Another idea is to reward big spenders. Think of how frequently you want to reward them and what you want to give as a reward. It could be anything such as exclusive sales or free access to an event, to name a few. 

Lessen cart abandonment with email offers

Sometimes, website visitors add products they like into their carts but leave your website without purchasing them. This happens way more often than you may think. However, you can try to convince them to return and finish the purchase thanks to email offers. 

You can try to persuade them with a discount or free shipping, for example. Still, make sure the email headline is attention-grabbing and that you offer a discount they can’t miss out. Besides, you must remind them of why they were interested in your products in the first place. 

These emails must be somehow personalized. I mean, this is not a welcome email you send to all your subscribers when they join your email list. Abandoned carts emails have to be customized based on what potential buyers are about to buy. 

You need to remind them of the fact that they left something behind. Otherwise, they won’t return to your site. Make sure these emails call their attention with a great offer. Chances are, some of them end up returning and finishing the purchase. 

Start an affiliate marketing program 

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to generate extra revenue for eCommerce brands. As I mentioned earlier in this article, affiliate marketers get a commission for promoting your products or services. 

It is a win-win solution. They can also help you drive more traffic to your website. Since it isn’t you who is promoting your products, people will trust what they say more than if you said so.

Word-of-mouth is a fantastic tactic. Affiliate marketers can help you with content promotion, product reviews, social media, and so on and so forth. There’s a great variety of affiliate programs. All you have to do is to find one solution for the likes of you. 

Run an influencer marketing campaign

Likewise, influencer marketing is of vital importance. The average person admires and respects influencers. What’s more, they have a massive list of followers to convince. 

The key is to partner with influencers that are niche related and whose audience you may want to reach. The right influencers can help you promote your products on social media. Besides, they can bring lots of traffic to your website. They can even boost your sales thanks to promo codes. 

Most people use social media networks to discover and research products as well as engage with their family and friends. Influencers are people they trust and look up to. Therefore, you can significantly benefit from a partnership with them. 

Moreover, influencers can work as brand ambassadors and help you reach new audiences. You don’t need to partner with a celebrity to make the most out of influencer marketing. Micro-influencers have proved to be tremendously beneficial nowadays. 

Create a blog

Leverage the use of content marketing to generate buzz around your products, drive traffic to your website and boost sales. These days, content promotion is of utmost importance. You can launch a blog to provide your customers with valuable content.

Your content can be posted and shared on social media so as to increase brand awareness. The blog will also help you with brand loyalty and trust. All you have to do is post regularly. But what?

Well, you must create high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience. Otherwise, no one will read it. Try to post how-to guides and blog posts that answer those generally asked questions your customer service has again and again.

You can also create articles that provide tips or even tutorials that explain how to use your products. When brainstorming ideas, think about your customers. Consider their lifestyles, pain points, gender, interests, age, job, etc.

Make sure the content is easy to understand. And add some visuals so it’s more attention-grabbing. Videos, images, infographics, and links are part of content marketing. Don’t post long pieces of text-only since attention spans are everyday shorter, and your audience might lose interest.  

Utilize PPC advertising 

PPC advertising is a great strategy for both large and small eCommerce enterprises. It offers a good return on investment, and you can spend the budget you want on each campaign you run. 

PPC ads tend to be displayed on search engines, social media platforms, and websites. You can use these targeted ads to convince those who are ready to buy your products. You can tremendously benefit from PPC retargeting adds. 

The latter are shown to users who have seen your product pages. Chances are they end up taking the desired action they were about to perform once they see your ad. It’s a fantastic strategy for eCommerce brands.

PPC advertising is cost-effective since you have to analyze whether your strategy works or not. You can check the effectiveness of your paid campaigns. This way, you make sure your budget is spent wisely to generate either more traffic or boost your sales. 

Get more email subscribers

More than a tip or advice, this is a must-have tactic. You have to do your best to get more subscribers. You can easily do so by including an email sign-up form on your website. Another way is to add a popup box that shows up when visitors reach a certain place. 

Email marketing is by far one of the most effective channels you have at your disposal. Thus, you can’t miss such an opportunity to reach your target audience and get results. 

Emails are more personalized than other channels. You can use them for several purposes like content promotion, sharing relevant information, offering discounts, letting subscribers know about a new product you have just launched, and more. 

You can automate your email campaigns. However, you shouldn’t send the same emails to all your subscriber lists. Email marketing has to be customized based on your target audience’s preferences. What’s more, you can even ask them what kind of email content they want to receive. 

Engage website visitors with a live chat

To begin with, you can use a live chat to engage with shoppers. Besides, you can also use it to solve their problems and offer any kind of digital assistance they may need. Some users don’t feel like making a phone call or taking part in a face-to-face meeting, but they are comfortable posting their questions on a live chat.

It’s just another way to reach them and ensure their user experience is as positive as they expected. Live chats enable direct conversations with your website users. These can either be automated, or you can hire someone or be available to solve their needs and offer support.

Optimize for mobile

Nowadays, optimizing your website for mobile is vital. Adapting your website so that it is mobile-friendly is no longer enough. You should design your website bearing mobile users in mind.

Therefore, buttons need to be bigger so that they can click without having to zoom in. Website speed needs to be optimized for mobile too. It cannot take ages to charge the page because they will close the window. 

Ideally, you should also present your product images in a different format so that mobile users can have a better experience. What I’m trying to point out is that you should consider all kinds of website visitors when designing your website, not only desktop users. 

Leverage local marketing

Unbelievable as it may seem, eCommerce brands can also benefit from local marketing. Thus, you’d better include it among your tactics. You can run promotions in locations where you have a lot of customers, for example. 

Depending on what you sell and your marketing approach, you might also want to organize local events to let them know about your products, brand story, when you launch a new product, etc. 

What’s more, you can offer free shipping or a discount to those who live nearby your warehouse. It’s a cost-effective strategy since you won’t need to spend a lot of money sending your products. They can even go to a specific location to pick them up. 

Whatever your strategy, local marketing is worth considering. It usually doesn’t cost much, and you will earn a lot of customers. Besides, local customers can become brand ambassadors and become returning customers in the near future. 

Make the most out of social media 

The advantages of social media marketing are countless for eCommerce stores. However, you must be careful with how you use these platforms. First of all, you must ensure you not only post content regularly, but you’ll also have to engage with your target audience.

It’s not necessary you have an account on all social media networks. But you have to be present in those used by your customers. Besides, social media platforms cannot be used for advertising alone.

Instead, you should post informative content and integrate it with occasional product and brand promotions. More often than not, this stands for 80% of industry-related content, trends, and relevant information. And only 20% of self-promoting your site and products. 

Last but not least, you can automate the posting of content thanks to the help of several apps. Still, engagement is not something you can automate. We strongly advise you to interact with other accounts and like and comment on their posts. 

Finally, you can share links to valuable content either on your website or other niche-related websites. And, do not forget to track your performance. This will help you better manage your time and resources. 

Well, that’s all, folks! In this chapter, I’ve shared lots of valuable tips and tricks to help you beat your competitors. Now you’re empowered to run your eCommerce website and leverage your marketing efforts.