A Complete Overview Of E-commerce Marketing
Digital marketing or E-commerce marketing involves the promotion of one’s business place through different marketing tools like social media, blog content, search engine,email marketing, etc. E commerce websites these days make use of multiple or all of these digital channels to promote a product and reach out to a maximum number of people to grow their business online.
Broadly defined, E commerce marketing is the process of driving public awareness and action towards a business that sells its product or service electronically/online. E commerce marketers use the above mentioned strategies or tools to attract visitors/traffic on their websites and facilitate purchases online.
Are E Commerce Advertising and E commerce marketing same?
Though these terms may be interchangeably used, E-commerce advertising and E-commerce marketing differ in their prime motives. E commerce advertising is a sub category in E commerce marketing which follows it to effectively reach to the target audience and boost sales and brand awareness.
E commerce marketing drives awareness and attention towards a product or service, while, eCommerce advertising makes use of methods like display ads, banner ads, or social media ads to actually promote a specific product.
E commerce advertising can prove to be an effective method to implement while you develop an eCommerce marketing strategy to work in favor of your business.
Types of E commerce Marketing tools
As discussed above, eCommerce marketing is an all inclusive term which consists of all marketing channels and tools required to build and promote an online store. These include:
Every Brand or growing business makes use of popular social networking sites to launch a page by their name to post content and connect with their interested audience.
E commerce websites have high visual appeal so making use of images and content that are eye-catching will determine your success on social media. Facebook and Instagram are two top social media networks to expand your product's reach beyond your website’s purchase page. By including a direct shop button to redirect them to your cart page.
A social media platform also brings back feedback in the form of direct posted review comments, which can affect your sales. However, before running any campaign it is essential to know which platform works the best for you.
Content marketing includes writing content that helps to improve your website’s rank in the search engine page and provides information regarding your industry.
Content marketing makes use of:
Product driven keywords- That include name of product and compatible words with the recent searches
Relevant blogs- Writing general posts related directly to your business and indirectly towards your product.
Guest posts for external websites- To promote your products or services on someone else’s blog to reach a bigger audience
Product-related YouTube videos- To reach target audience through highly visual and detailed digital content
Keyword-driven FAQ section- Answering the commonly asked questions in detail by including the most searched keywords
The appropriate use of the specific keyword oriented content is done through Search engine marketing (SEM) which includes search engine optimisation (SEO) and paid advertising on the landing web page. SEO is directly related to one’s google ranking using Google ad words while paid advertising helps you get a top spot on search engine results to display your products.
Though sending an Email may sound like a redundant method of reaching people, it does hold importance in eCommerce marketing. It is an automated way of carrying out a campaign easily to reach millions of people. However, to make sure that your email doesn’t land up in the spam page, logical generation of leads from your website visitors is important and the subject line should be interesting enough to arouse a curiosity in your receiver to open your mail.
Email marketing can be used as:
A Post-Purchase Follow Up- With the user who has purchased something from your website and agreed to receive further electronic communication from you. A follow up with such a user will probably be more fruitful than just sending emails to random visitors of your site.
A Shopping Cart reminder- with the users who showed interest in buying your product, but abandoned their ready cart before processing to pay, due to some reason. A gentle reminder to them through email is likely to convert that potential buyer into an actual buyer.
One of the newest and upcoming trends in digital marketing, Influence marketing involves reaching out to people or brands that already hold an influence on your target market in terms of number of followers. Influence's include celebrities and communities that have followers that include your target audience. Since influence's hold a good amount of trust in the audience, they can easily bring attention to your product by recommending it on a sponsored post.
Affiliate Marketing
Most eCommerce websites today make use of affiliate marketing, by engaging other individuals or businesses to sell their products for a certain rate of commission. Affiliates differ from influence's in their techniques of generating interest in a product. They make use of traditional methods like paid advertising and content marketing to drive traffic that comes to their page, towards your product page.
How to make E commerce Marketing Successful for yourself
There are numerous eCommerce marketing tips that can make your eCommerce campaigns successful:
1. Personification- Using techniques that are tailor made according to specific needs of your consumer, like sending mailers regarding their choice of product line or using location mapping to advertise products in a certain area.
2. Sharing user reviews- Make use of testimonials (text and video) provided by real customers as a word of mouth marketing to highlight your product benefits and promote it to a larger audience for free and generate their trust in your products.
3. Providing Referral coupons- Use referral marketing with your current consumers by asking them to refer your website to friends and family and earn a discount/gift coupon for themselves and the one they send the referral to. This will not only bring repurchases from an existing customer but also bring in new customers through referrals and increase sales.
4. Give a live-chat option- Provide your first time as well as routine customers with all the help they need regarding anything on your website, through a live chat room where they can speak with real executives or chat bots. Live chat proves especially effective when people browsing your store get instant answers when they’re in the checkout process to reduce chances of dropping their cart.
5. Provide a user friendly return policy or exchange policy- Give your visitors a reason to buy from you by giving a simple and comprehensible return or exchange policy wherein you can highlight the benefits of buying from you in terms of exchange or money back guarantee for a wrongly delivered product. Also include a good shipping option and tracking for orders and an immediate customer support in return process.
All these methods will strengthen your stand in front of your consumers and increase their loyalty since they will get added benefits from you, which they might not get anywhere else. E commerce marketing has several available tools but using it the right way, can attract a lot of customers to your online store and aid in better growth of your business.