Creating an online store? Anyone can do that. Anyone can install an eCommerce platform, add products and upload product descriptions. Promoting it is an entirely different matter. In fact, this is where the frustrations of new eCommerce website owners begin. When they have finished setting up their website and found that they are hardly getting any traffic and sales, that’s where they give up. Don’t do that. You just need to learn your way to online success. Today, I’ll teach you the basics of eCommerce marketing as well as teach you some strategies on how to do it with success. At the end, I have also added some eCommerce marketing softwares so that you don’t have to do everything yourself.
What is Ecommerce Marketing?Ecommerce marketing pertains to any activity that promotes an online shop with the goal of getting a new visitor. The effectiveness of the marketing method depends on the conversion or how well the website is able to convert the visitor into a buyer. NOTE: Alternatively, it is also a process of getting the customer to come back to a website. With more and more people leaving their shopping carts and suddenly changing their minds while shopping online, there is now a form of eCommerce marketing that is designed to get people back to the page.
Why is it Important?Ecommerce is one of the fastest growing industries in the entire world. This may have something to do with the easy access to the Internet and the entrepreneurial spirit of millennials. And it is not just the stores that is growing. The number of people who are comfortable in shopping online has grown as well. In the US alone, online retail sales has grown to a whopping $327 billion in 2016. This is growing at a steady pace of more than $20 billion per year. Ecommerce marketing is important because it is your only means of getting people into your website. Think about it. Without marketing, your website will just take space on the Internet without anyone knowing about your product or your brand. It will not make you money and it will not help you tap the growing online market. This ultimately defeats the purpose of having an online store.
Before You Market: Two Things You Need to DoNow that you know how important eCommerce marketing is, you are probably excited to see the strategies. But before we get there, I have two things that I want you to do. This is important for it will help you increase your conversion rate – thus, helping you convert more visitors into buyers.
1. Market SegmentationYou need to divide your market into segments. This will depend on their interests and their persona. You need to do this so that you don’t send the same message to your entire market. Instead, you tailor your messages so that it fits your audience’s unique interest and needs. How Effective is Market Segmentation Market segmentation allows you to not only understand your target market but also respond to their evolving needs. If you’ll notice, markets are hardly stagnant. People’s preferences would often evolve depending on what’s happening around them. As a marketer, it is your responsibility to look at these trends and study it. This is the only way for you to send highly targeted messages to your audience.
2. CopywritingSending highly targeted messages to your audience will require a flair with words. You can only do this if you know basic copywriting. Copywriting refers to the process of tweaking your words in your content so that it becomes more appealing to your target audience. The goal is to get your prospects interested in your product and convince them to buy. Basic Copywriting Concepts Copywriting consists of a vast array of techniques used by writers and marketers alike. For this section, I will just discuss two of the most effective concepts that you can immediately apply for a more successful eCommerce marketing campaign. Benefit Driven It all starts with your headline. As Copyblogger Brian Clark said, 80% of your market will read your headline but they will often skip the rest of the article. You need to take this into account as you create your copy for your online store. You should ask yourself if it speaks to your customer’s needs. If not, you may want to alter the words to reflect that. For example, instead of saying that your online store has a money back guarantee, focus on the security that your customers will feel if they know that they can get their money back. Focus on the feeling and the experience and look at what they can get instead of what your product or website has. Now, writing benefits may take some practice. You may need to list the ‘feelings’ of your customers in order to understand them. Scarcity Driven On the other side, there is also a technique that is based on scarcity. Contrary to the benefit-driven technique, this technique focuses on eliciting fear in the minds of the customers. This can be done with the fear of missing out. For eCommerce websites, the best way to implement this is to offer some type of limited-time deal. This can be a limited-time discount or a limited-time freebie. As long as it is ‘limited’, it will continue to make the customer feel that they will miss out if they don’t act right away. In the similar way, you can also limit the number of your products. This way, your customers will know that once it is gone, it is gone forever. This would often be enough to get them to act. With the right copy and proper market segmentation, you are now on your way to a profitable eCommerce website. In the next section, you’ll learn about some of my best eCommerce marketing strategies.
Best Ecommerce Marketing StrategiesEcommerce marketing doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, I am ditching the traditional forms of marketing in this guide. In the traditional way of Internet marketing, they would often teach you to build links and do some onpage optimization on your website for the search engines. But you’ll find none of that here. Instead, I will focus on the six strategies that worked for me in the past so that you can use them to make money from your online store. These strategies are not geared towards ranking but for generating the most relevant traffic to your website.
Give the Best DealsDeals and discounts will often drive up sales in ecommerce marketing sphere. And if you’re selling the same thing – The battle all boils down to pricing. This means that if you sell lower, you’ll usually win. But does that mean that you should always aim to drive your prices down? No. It is better to give a discount instead. You see, customers rarely go from shop to shop to compare prices. They can sometimes choose an online shop simply because it has more reviews. It is all about trust. Now, if you don’t have the lowest prices, you can give away some limited-time deals. What this does is it creates a feeling of scarcity in your prospect’s mind. This would then encourage your prospect to buy with the fear of missing out. This psychological tactic has worked for different types of businesses and it can work for you too. It is about time you implement it in your ecommerce marketing strategy.
Use the Power of InfluencersAnother way to get your online store in front of your target market is to use the power of influencers in your niche. What this does is it allows you to tap into the existing market that the influencers have already created and make money off of that. Creating a brand is not easy. It doesn’t only require a website and a social media channel, it also requires constant engagement and content. When brands gain a considerable amount of followers, it reaches ‘influencer’ status. Now, as an eCommerce marketer, you’ll want to build your brand. But you don’t need to establish expertise in your field. You can do that but that will just take too much time when you should just focus on making money instead. So what can you do? Tap the influencer’s power. You can do this by doing one of the following. First, you can reach out and ask if you can advertise on their website. This is direct and will require some advertising budget from you. Second, you can give the influencer some free samples of your products and ask them to review it. This is prevalent in the beauty and food niches as it allows the influencers to have a detailed review of certain products. Tapping the influencers’ market is one of the easiest ways to get your foot inside the door if you have a new online store. But this can only happen if you have products that are worth commending and promoting.
Referral MarketingWonder how big brands like PayPal started their business? They started by paying their visitors to refer people to their site. For every successful signup, PayPal is willing to pay real money just to see their platform grew. True enough, the payment processor now have more than a million users. Such is the power of referral marketing. Implementing a referral marketing program in your website is easy. There are 4 steps.
First, you should think about the reward. What will you give away? A discount coupon? Cash? A free item? You should choose your reward in this step.
Then, you should choose who to give it to. Will you give it to the referrer or to the referral?
Third, you should choose a software that will help you to track the referrals made by your visitors. You’ll find some in the software section of this guide.
Then, you should promote your referral marketing program. It will not bear fruit unless you promote it. That’s it. Easy, right? The best part is it is the easiest way to drive massive traffic to your website.
Leverage User Generated ContentUser generated content is now one of the things that the search engines consider when ranking websites. It is important for a reason and it is because it contributes to social proof and encourages people to buy from a certain site more than others. Just look at how KFC is also using the marketing strategy. In its website is the experience of all the users who have bought their products. Because of this, it is very important to implement some form of user generated content in your site. This can come in the form of real-time ratings and reviews. Some eCommerce sites even go to the extent of featuring the social profiles of their users. This allows them to have a steady stream of user generated content that is based on hashtags. For eCommerce websites, reviews are very important. After all, an average user would often read reviews before taking out their wallets. So you should make it a point to have some reviews for your products if you want people to buy from you.
Tap into PPC (Pay-per-Click)What’s the easiest way to drive traffic to your site? Pay for it. You can do it by bidding on keywords that are relevant to your website and just weed out keywords that don’t work that well for you. Why does PPC work? Well, PPC allows you to bid on keywords so that you can fly to the front page without any SEO knowledge. Just look at how this ad is instantly on the front page. Of course, this is a process of trial and error. There are days where you’ll make money but other days, you’ll just break even. When you see that the campaign is no longer making you money, you have to stop it and look for other keywords you can invest in. Now, I will not go into a full discussion of PPC. After all, I am not a PPC expert. But if you plan to go this route, I suggest that you have a pretty hefty budget and patience. If you are one of those eCommerce marketers who are already making a ton of money, then this is a great way to widen your reach and get more sales.
Try Social Media AdvertisingIf PPC is too much for you, you can do social media advertising instead. This is often hyper-targeted and will allow you to get more leads for a smaller amount of money. The easiest place to promote on is Facebook. Creating an ad is easy. Just click on Create Ad and this will immediately take you to your Facebook ad manager. In here you, can start targeting your ad. It starts with choosing an objective. From here, you can alter the details of your target market. You can choose a specific location as well as their age and gender. Then, you can also choose their interests. NOTE: I suggest that you choose very specific topics so that your ads are highly targeted. It will cost lower and convert better that way. Then, set a budget and you’re ready to go. From here, you may be asking if you will lose money here. In my experience, it is very hard to lose money for the cost can be managed and it is quite low. But you should tweak your landing page so that it converts better. Facebook is only one social network that you can promote in. There is also Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. Be sure to explore these other networks as well. So that sums up my best eCommerce marketing strategies. Now that you have an idea on this, let’s proceed with some of the best ecommerce marketing software that you can use to automate your processes.
Best Ecommerce Marketing SoftwareWhether it is sending an email to your prospect list or just creating a campaign that will encourage people to buy from your site, you will need some ecommerce marketing software to automate some processes. Below are some of the best software that I have found.
OSI Affiliate is the best affiliate marketing software different from the pack in the sense that it gives you a means to create your own affiliate and referral program in your online store. As I have mentioned in the previous section, referral marketing is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your site. And it is not just about referrals. It also allows others to promote your website for you. When you allow affiliates, you power an army of people who will promote your site even if you don’t do anything.
Hubspot Inbound Marketing Software
Hubspot is known as a content site until it evolved and now has an inbound marketing software for its brand. This software allows you to do multiple things including creating web pages complete with designs and formatting and implementing so-called drip campaigns so that you can email your prospects in a natural and not-so-pushy manner. On top of these, the software also allows you to track all of your customers and traffic in one easy-to-analyze report helping to alter your strategy if needed.
Klaviyo
If you want to see the marriage of email marketing and ecommerce, the result would be Klaviyo. It has perfected the way it does email marketing allowing sellers to do customized campaigns dealing with cross-sells, exit intent and cart abandonment. The best part is that it has a set of built-in custom templates that you can just edit and launch. And you get to do all these while making sure that you send different information to different segments of your market.
Firecart
Want to have a place where you can catch, track and analyze your customers? Firecart provides that tool. Being a lead management system, it keeps track of gained and lost leads as well as introduce you to so-called marketing workflows. These can then help you track user behavior so that you can adjust your sales page for higher conversions. You’ll love this because of its versatility. It can do different forms of marketing including email marketing, referral marketing and SMS marketing. Having a chance to capture customer feedback and release birthday offers are also some of its exciting extra features.
Kevy
Segmentation is powerful in an eCommerce business. It allows you to show your products only to the people that needs it. When it does this, your conversion rates usually shoot up. Why? That’s because you are only showing your products to people who are already decided to buy it. With Kevy, you can easily do that. You can segment your market and design your messages according to those segments. Plus, it integrates with Google Analytics so that you can take your analysis into another level. So that sums up my list of eCommerce marketing tools. What did you like the most? Tell me all about it below.
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