8 Effective e-Commerce Marketing For Online e-Commerce Businesses.

In this blog edition, e-Commerce marketing and productive strategies for implementing an effective e-Commerce marketing campaign will be discussed. Owning and managing a business that deals with the sales of products requires skill and knowledge of the right practices for having a successful brand. Read on to learn about how important these eight strategies are!

What is e-Commerce Marketing?
E-Commerce Marketing is simply whatever type of marketing strategy is used in marketing an online business, on any channel that can be found online, e.g. search engines, social media platforms, paid advertisements, websites, and so on.
The significant difference between the strategies used in the implementation of e-Commerce Marketing and normal marketing strategies is that e-Commerce Marketing Strategies are strictly for online-based businesses, like online stores, that deal with trading physical products on an online platform. All the buying and shopping is done online.
E-Commerce Marketing is important to businesses because it helps in bringing their products to the presence of the right kind of audience they are trying to attract, while also bringing traffic to their website.
E-Commerce Marketing helps in creating a positive brand identity for businesses. It helps in molding an impressive value of products in such a way that potential buyers and target audiences will be convinced to become loyal customers.

E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

1. Paid Advertising for e-Commerce:

There are different types of paid advertising that a business can implement into their e-Commerce Marketing:

• Google Shopping Ads. This type of paid advertisement favors e-Commerce businesses the most because it allows you to showcase your products on Google shopping results. Google will determine if your product shows up for a particular search query based on the information and product details on your site. All you need to set up adverts on Google shopping ads is to ensure that you set up your product feed in Google Merchant Centre.
• YouTube ads. This involves advertisements that appear at the beginning or during YouTube videos, which are designed to make the most of conversions. They are very easy to manage and give the advertiser the advantage of reaching a large and diverse audience. It also allows the advertiser to add CTAs, headlines, and even descriptions in the ad. Apart from appearing on YouTube, these ads can also appear on any Google partner networks, giving advertisers good value for their money.
• Facebook ads. This allows advertisers to showcase their products on Facebook and Instagram to specific customers, or customers who have previously engaged their website.

2. Content Marketing for e-Commerce:

The process of creating content like blog posts, social media posts, video posts, and infographics to target specific online audiences is a marketing strategy for e-commerce. Aside from boosting SEO by organically helping to build search rankings, content marketing also helps boost brand recognition. It helps customers in building a relationship with brands thereby boosting brand awareness thereby making the brand a go-to whenever they need the kind of products the brand offers.
While creating content for e-commerce businesses, be sure to always create content directly or indirectly related to products that the brand offers. Be sure to include subtle and not-so-subtle CTAs. Also, engage your audiences regularly. Another good e-commerce content marketing strategy is making guest posts on other sites. This helps you reach across to the audience of the host site, thereby widening your reach.

3. Social Media Marketing for E-Commerce:

This is one of the top marketing strategies for online businesses to use. About 95% of the target audience is on at least one social media platform, making this one of the surest ways to market brands and the products they offer.
Most brands use Facebook and Instagram the most because they are both user-friendly for e-commerce. This is because they allow direct posting of products and are very good mediums for visual advertisements. They also allow delivering top-notch customer service easy.
For e-commerce social media marketing to be effective, make sure to always post regularly and connect with influencers. Social media users will most likely listen to the recommendations of social media influencers. It is important to use this as leverage for social media marketing for your e-commerce business.
Another thing to do is run contests. People love contests, especially when it involves little or no financial commitments from them. Contests also help in building your brand’s recognition. Popular contests like photo contests and the ‘like and share’ contests have been proven quite effective.

4. SEO for e-Commerce:

SEO allows brands to get their products to appear in several places on search engine results. E-Commerce businesses can have their products appear on result pages like Google search results, Google images, and Google shopping.

5. Social Proof Marketing for e-Commerce:

It is general knowledge that a lot of people buy due to the influence of other people around them. Peer recommendation is a sure way of making people purchase a product, hence, making social proof marketing an effective marketing for e-commerce businesses.
Social Proof Marketing comes in the form of product reviews, feedback, or third parties whose job is to review products and post these reviews for the public. The best way to ensure customers leave a review is to ask for it because leaving reviews usually doesn’t come naturally to customers. Be sure to kindly ask them to leave reviews especially when you know they have had a good buying experience with your brand. Also, if you can get your products to be reviewed by third-party sites, do it. This can boost your company’s credibility.

6. Affiliate Marketing for e-Commerce:

This type of marketing involves leveraging other companies and people to promote your products for you. It is a very cost-friendly process that requires little effort on your part. Plus, when these affiliates lead a sale, they earn a commission which is usually 5-15% of the sale. This means that you do not pay your affiliates until after they have made a sale.
Getting high-quality affiliates is the key to a successful affiliate Marketing campaign. This gives your products a chance of getting across to a new and quality audience, thereby helping to grow your brand awareness also.
Regular communication with your affiliates about product updates and other important factors is a way to ensure a successful e-commerce affiliate program. Also make sure to leverage the power of advertisements, especially visual ads like flyers, banners, and so on.

7. Email Marketing for e-Commerce:

A lot of people pay more attention to direct messages in their inbox than ads they come across online. This is why email marketing is a very effective digital marketing strategy for e-commerce businesses. It helps you put messages and information directly in front of your audience, putting your brand at the front of their minds.
Emails can be automated, therefore making them easy to manage. All of these make emails great for communication, building good relationships with your target audience, and also for driving sales. Some of the types of emails e-commerce businesses can send are:

• Abandoned cart emails. Abandoned carts are very common in e-commerce and must be tackled. It is when a customer fails to purchase after adding items to their cart. Abandoned cart emails allow you to remarket to customers who abandoned their carts. You may even add the exact items still in their cart, plus incentives like discounts and promotional offers to make your emails more effective.
• Upsell and cross-sell emails. Upsell emails target customers who have purchased already by trying to make them spend more money. It does this by recommending similar and more expensive products and post-purchase add-ons and accessories. Cross-sell emails on the other hand recommend products based on what the customer has purchased in the past. For example, a customer who purchased a phone in the past can receive cross-sell emails to purchase a power bank.

8. Analytics for e-Commerce:

This is the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as the metrics to measure and track the success and progress of e-Commerce marketing strategies. Important KPIs used in tracking are:

• Customer lifetime value shows how effectively you were able to retain customers and make them come back for more purchases. It measures the average amount that customers spend over their lifetime.
• Conversion rate is the percentage of total users who interact with your site or perform a particular action on your site like making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, and so on. The conversion rate shows accurately how visitors turn into paying customers. An increase in conversion rate means growth for a business, making it a very important metric.
• Average order value refers to the amount customers spend per transaction.
• Gross merchandise volume is the total value of the product sold over a while. It shows how much sales revenue you accumulate over time.
• Cart abandonment rate shows the number of customers who abandon their carts after adding products to them. A lower cart abandonment rate means that conversions are being maximized and that the buying process is a smooth one.
• Customer acquisition cost is the average amount businesses spend to get new customers. It is one of the more important KPIs to measure at the start of a business as it gives an idea of how much is being spent on ads and how much profit is made.
• Return on ad spend refers to how much you make on every amount of money spent on advertisements. Knowing your return on ad spend helps in showing how effective your ads are.

To conclude, implementing these strategies will introduce e-commerce businesses to heights, where engaging the target audience is easy; and growing awareness and making sales becomes easier. Tracking the growth of the brand will be effortless too.

Editor’s note: If you need the professional services of a digital marketing agency to help in drawing out a plan for your online business, kindly book us right away at The Dik3n Team. We are ready to serve. Also, do feel free to go through a history of our previous works with known brands.
Till we meet again on another blog edition!