Digital marketing is one of the best ways to increase the sales of your e-commerce website. A well-defined e-commerce digital marketing strategy will help you designate your budget and resources on the right channels that can further help generate more sales and revenue for your e-commerce business.
There are many challenges for e-commerce sites notwithstanding the fact we are living in a rapidly growing digital landscape, owing to the pandemic which has caused most businesses to have shifted their focus and resources to e-commerce or online platforms, which has in turn further increased the competition with billions of shopping options. Thanks to search engines like Google, people can check prices quickly, compare products with your competitors, and decide what to buy before they even reach your site.
Whether an e-commerce marketing strategy works for you depends on your context and your industry, what you sell, what your potential customers are used to, and in some cases, what regulations prevent you from marketing in a certain manner.
Despite the uncertainty, all hope isn’t lost. While it is true that you’ll have to experiment to find the right strategy for your business, certain strategies are what one would call “timeless”.
So before we get into the strategies, let’s start by understanding
What is e-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing is the process of promoting products or services of an e-commerce business to the right type of audience using one or more online marketing channels.
E-commerce marketers use different digital marketing techniques to drive traffic to a website and convert visitors into customers.
Here are 10 simple and effective ways to start driving more online sales across your e-commerce funnel:
1. Undertake SEO For Your Product Pages
Product SEO is a great way to get your products found on google without actually paying for advertising. SEO is a process that takes a while to come to fruition but when it does the benefits are endless.
If your e-commerce business is new, SEO cannot help you in the short term but in the long-term, it can guarantee your success.
When optimizing your product pages for SEO, you need to take into account several factors, the most important are:
- Optimizing the product URL
- Optimizing the meta title and description
- Optimizing images/ videos
- Optimizing content
2. Boost Product Visualization
Consumers have come to expect access to just about any kind of information at any time due to the rapid changes in the digital ecosystem but it’s not just that, they’ve also become very visual buyers. Using exceptional product visualization allows you to quickly and effortlessly show off your products so consumers can look at the details without necessarily having to read about them.
3. Invest in Content Marketing Activities
One of the ways to differentiate your e-commerce business from the rest is to invest in content marketing campaigns. Content marketing when done right can drive targeted traffic to a website that will lead to more sales.
The best ways to use content marketing for an e-commerce website are:
- Publish product reviews
- Publish product comparisons
- Include How-to posts
- Have a ‘Best of’ series
4. Reduce Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment is most likely to occur when a customer gets to check out and finds the delivery options do not suit their needs. Most of the time this is directly related to additional fees such as the shipping charges, overly-complicated checkout processes, need to set up an account, and poor website performance such as slow load speed and crashes.
One way to resolve this issue is to introduce an email recovery strategy. So basically when someone abandons a cart, you can send a series of emails encouraging customers to complete their transactions.
5. Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)
Nothing sells a product better than a happy customer. UGC provides hands-on experience from past customers who are living in and using your products. Customers are more likely to trust a fellow consumer over your own marketing.
Here are two of the easiest ways to leverage UGC:
- Using hashtags on all of your social
- Providing an easy way for customers to post reviews on your site
6. Referral Marketing
Referral Marketing is the practice of incentivizing your customers to tell others about how much they love your business or service (so it’s kind of like word of mouth marketing).
Basically, the power of referral marketing is to turn the enthusiasm of your most loyal customers into a steady stream of new business & income.
7. Email Marketing
Despite the popularity of social media and chat apps, email still remains the no. 1 communication channel for many. Nearly 90% of people check their email daily. Email marketing will not help you get more website visits but it can help you a lot in generating more conversions.
That means email can be your most profitable channel.
To use email marketing as a sales channel, you need to have a big list of subscribers and use automation and personalization in your emails.
8. Mobile Friendliness
Your website must be mobile-friendly as most online purchases come from mobile devices. Here are a few things to include to make your site more mobile-friendly:
- A shopping cart that scrolls with the customer, so they don’t have to scroll up to find it.
- Add-to-cart buttons that are easy to find so customers can instantly add items to their cart
According to several articles, Google found 73% of its consumers will leave an unfriendly mobile site to use a site optimized for mobile use.
This is not to say you need to develop an app for your e-commerce site, but being aware of how customers shop will help you provide the visuals they need to make purchases with ease.
9. Use Retargeting
Retargeting is fundamental to the success of any e-commerce site. It allows you to follow customers while they are online and to keep them aware of the presence of your products and services.
Once they visit your site, your ads can show them what they are missing out on with a quick link back to where they can complete their orders.
10. Up your cross-selling game with pop-ups
Another way to boost your e-commerce digital marketing strategy is with pop-ups: the windows that temporarily take over the site visitors screen to present them with an additional offer or coupon. You can use pop-ups to entice a prospective shopper with a discount offer or to add another product to his or her shopping cart.
Conclusion
No e-commerce business can succeed in an increasingly crowded landscape without a thoughtful, full-funnel marketing strategy.
E-commerce marketing strategies are essential to generating more traffic to your site and encourage purchases.
With these handfuls of tactics to try at each stage of the marketing funnel, you’ll be in great shape in no time.
Check out our other blogs to up your digital marketing game today:
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