eCommerce marketing works best for growth, sales, and exposure for well-known brands. It is becoming increasingly important for online businesses and people who are interested in buying things online.
But the competition in the eCommerce business sector is growing every day. Because of this, many marketers cannot do an excellent job of marketing themselves because they do not have a proper eCommerce marketing plan.
Additionally, some businesses need help regarding consumers’ shifting shopping habits, fixing pricing strategies and targeting the right demographic. There is no alternative to focusing on these things because the total value of online purchases in the seven countries responsible for half of global GDP increased from $2 trillion in 2019 to $2.9 trillion in 2021.
Moreover, Forbes claims Online shopping is projected to account for 24 percent of all retail sales by 2026.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of eCommerce marketing to make a strong ground in the online industry.
What Is Ecommerce Marketing?
Promoting a company’s products or services through electronic commerce is called “eCommerce marketing.” You must pay attention to eCommerce marketing if you are trying to sell products online.
Its primary goals are to increase website traffic, increase the percentage of site visitors who become paying customers, and maintain the loyalty of existing customers.
Shopify claims that only 17.8 percent of sales were online two years ago. In 2024, eCommerce is projected to account for 20.8% of all retail sales, an increase of 2% from 20.4% in 2024. By 2025, expansion is predicted to have reached 23%, representing a growth rate of 5.2%.
Strategies used in eCommerce marketing aim to increase sales and ROI while decreasing marketing costs for a business. Some are better at bringing in new customers, while others are better at keeping old ones or driving revenue growth. eCommerce.
Top eCommerce Marketing Types
Promoting and selling goods and services through electronic commerce is known as eCommerce marketing. It is risky, but the potential for global expansion and increased profits makes it well worth the effort.
Each method of promoting an online store has its own set of pros and cons. Among the most common types are:
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- SEO marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Type 1- Email Marketing
According to Campaign Monitor, companies see a return of $38 for every $1 spent. That is a higher rate of return than you would get from any other type of marketing.
Nowadays, consumers prefer to buy through email. As a result, email marketing has a high return on investment. An email is the starting point for almost all interactions with customers.
Additionally, Users can sign up for your email list through various channels, including text messages, Messenger interactions, lead magnets, popups, affiliate traffic, and influencer campaigns. Users anticipate receiving an email to complete their purchase after signing up for a promotion. Because of this, email has a 3x greater AOV than social media.
Type 2- Content Marketing
eCommerce websites can benefit from content marketing in three key ways: lead generation, brand building, and customer acquisition.
Businesses operating online can better communicate value to customers and meet their needs by providing individualized online experiences incorporating text, images, and video. The goal is to get folks interested and build trust so they will come back and buy more.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary for your website’s product and other category pages. Make a list of keywords, including the name of the product, that are relevant to your product pages.
You should also ensure that the title tag, headers, and picture alt text are focused on the appropriate keywords for search engines to display your online shop under the relevant search.
Blogs are an excellent tool for content generation. When creating blog posts, it is essential to keep your industry in mind and use keywords to help readers find what they want. Regular content updates keep readers returning and help spread positive word of mouth about your company.
Guest articles are a great way to advertise your business and get in front of new customers. Domain authority, a measure of how credible a website is in the eyes of search engines, rises when guest posts are published on your e-commerce website.
To reach more people, you should provide material outside of blogs. Videos, podcasts, and other forms of interactivity are all viable options for content creation. You can attract a wider audience by expanding your marketing efforts to include other channels like YouTube.
Type 3- Social Media Marketing
When expanding their marketing efforts beyond their website, online retailers must pay attention to the power of social media. E-commerce businesses on the cutting edge of their field use social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter for product promotion, customer service, and in-app purchases.
The success you have with social media depends on how well you employ appealing content to draw customers to your web business. To succeed at social media marketing, you must tailor each platform’s content and promotional efforts separately. Try varying your posts’ frequency, subject, and format to get the most out of each social media platform.
93% of marketers feel social media marketing is successful for their organization, while 77% of businesses utilize social media to contact customers.
Creating shoppable content, or information that allows viewers to make instant or direct purchases, can elevate your social media campaign to the next level. Tags that direct shoppers to the checkout page are one example, while ads embedded strategically in a news feed are another.
Using these methods makes it possible to eliminate any obstacles that may arise throughout the buying procedure. Another powerful SMM strategy is user-created content (UGC) that offers social proof. When people see that plenty of other people are buying, they are more likely to start buying themselves.
Type 4- SEO Marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) aims to increase the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines such as Google and Bing. Search engine optimization (SEO) for your website or sponsored adverts is critical to search engine marketing (SEM) for online stores.
Your target should be one of the top five results for the keywords that will bring in the most revenue for your company. Statistics show that users are most likely to interact with the first five ads or organic results on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Type 5-Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
PPC allows you to show adverts only to individuals likely to be interested in them. This increases the likelihood that potential customers will see your adverts and make a purchase. Pay-per-click (PPC) adverts can immediately begin bringing people to your site. This is excellent for online stores that need to generate immediate revenue.
According to Ruler Analytics, the average ROI for pay-per-click advertising is 2.9%.
PPC advertising lets you easily monitor your campaigns’ success through quantifiable metrics. You can use this data to fine-tune your efforts and get better outcomes.
Additionally, Pay-per-click marketing can be inexpensive to increase website traffic if you carefully target your adverts. You do not have to worry about wasting money on unproductive impressions because you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Type 6- Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing uses a group of people or a company with a large social media following to promote a brand or product. This can be a well-known individual, an influential Instagram account, or a popular social media community your target demographic frequents.
Working with famous figures on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter has proven successful for many online retailers. Influencers build fan bases composed of people who look up to, respect, and believe in them. They can easily promote your products through word-of-mouth and monetary compensation.
Hubpost reports that 89% of businesses using influencer marketing plan to grow or keep the same level of spending in 2024.
Influencer marketing platforms help you locate the most relevant influencers for your brand. Using filters for things like price, location, and interaction rate, you may find influencers on these platforms who are a good fit for your campaign.
In addition to tracking the progress of your campaign, they allow you to keep track of the influencers you have already worked with.
Moreover, Micro-influencers can be found by monitoring the responses to posts containing brand-related hashtags on social media. Someone who has between 10,000 and 100,000 followers is considered a micro-influencer.
Contact the people with the most influence and offer them money or other incentives to promote your business and products to their following.
Type 7- Affiliate Marketing
Using affiliate marketers will allow you to reach more people than you could. They can advertise your wares to their audiences via the web, social media, and email. More people who are not already familiar with your brand will be exposed to it thanks to this method.
Statista projected that by 2022’s conclusion, the US affiliate market would have spent $8.2 billion.
Affiliate marketers, who tend to be specialists in their field, can increase the percentage of highly targeted visitors to your site. They deeply understand their demographic and can customize content and offers to their tastes. You may reduce your advertising costs and increase your returns by doing this.
How to Plan a Successful eCommerce Marketing Plan
If you run an online store and want growth and success, you need a solid strategy for promoting your brand to customers.
Methods that have been carefully planned can help in the determination of your target demographic, the establishment of achievable goals, and the selection of appropriate marketing channels.
Here are some plans that can make a marketing plan successful for an eCommerce business:
- Make Use of Real-Time Customization
- Make a Profit from Discount
- Optimize your Site for Mobile Users
- Integrate Chat Bot and Maintain an Intellectual Tech Support Team
- Use Pop-Ups to Get People to Sign Up
- Give Away Free Shipping
- Lower Shopping Cart Abandonment
- Build Trust by Highlighting Customer Reviews
- Enhance Your Email Marketing Efforts
- Maintain a High Standard of Client Service
- Incentives for Repeat Customers
- Make a Creative Strategy
- Consider the End-User’s Perspective
- Products to be Upsell And Cross-Sell
- Make Use of Social Networking Sites
- Put your Focus on Content Promotion
- Usage of third-party applications
Plan 1- Make Use of Real-Time Customization
The ineffective pre-planned advertising era is over. Today’s consumers appreciate and demand individualized service at every point of their purchase journey. The greater the usefulness of the deals you advertise, the more likely they will buy.
In reality, 74% of internet users immediately leave boring or irrelevant websites.
Send targeted ads based on clients’ past purchases, likes, and dislikes. That way, you can make sure they reach the right people and receive a reaction.
Customers want a customized experience at every stage of their shopping process. This is possible with the support of an omnichannel strategy in retail. Customers can resume where they left off in the checkout process from their mobile device if they unexpectedly abandon their desktop computer.
However, be wary of going overboard with hyper-specific targeting in your marketing communications. After all, there is a fine line between using consumer data to serve specific customers better and crossing into privacy infringement.
Plan 2- Make a Profit from Discount
Your online business can be set up in various ways that allow for discounted prices. Brands often hold seasonal promotions, but there is room for discounts such as buy two get one free or even 60% off sitewide.
No matter your chosen tactics, an immediate sense of urgency is essential. Essentially, you need to appeal to people’s fear of missing out. One effective method of achieving this is displaying countdown clocks indicating how much time remains in a deal. And put your discounts where clients can notice them, so they know they are getting a good bargain.
Offering discounts can increase sales volume and lower the average order value, so assessing each strategy’s pros and cons is vital.
Plan 3- Optimize your Site for Mobile Users
According to the data, mobile now has a larger market share than desktop does worldwide, at roughly 55% compared to 43%. Therefore, to succeed in today’s market, every company needs a website accessible through mobile devices. To increase sales on your eCommerce site, you must now prioritize a seamless mobile experience.
Several options are listed below.
- Update to a mobile-friendly layout
- Ensure a rapid page load time for your website
- Enhance your site’s search functionality and mobile optimization
- Make it easier to complete a purchase
- Make your buttons big and simple to use
Plan 4- Integrate Chat Bot and Maintain an Intellectual Tech Support Team
Customers can get answers to their inquiries and air their concerns in real time through live chat, which can influence their final purchasing decisions.
Share product information and knowledge base documentation with your customers so that they can gain knowledge about their product. Both your conversion rate and the satisfaction of your customers will increase.
A chatbot or support representatives can be set up to welcome clients as soon as they arrive on key pages like the product page or the shopping cart page. This approach increases customer engagement. Be sure to notify them at the appropriate moment. In some cases, this bot might serve as a call to action.
Plan 5- Use Pop-Ups to Get People to Sign Up
Remember to consider the value of opt-in offers to increase your conversion rates. Pop-ups increase the number of people who sign up for your email list, newsletter, or loyalty program. The result is a boost in revenue and a more extensive contact list, both useful for email marketing.
Collecting email addresses with a clean and straightforward pop-up can be very effective. A confused customer may be persuaded to purchase if offered a 10% discount and free shipping on orders over $100 in exchange for signing up for the newsletter. Even if they do not buy immediately after signing up, you still have another lead for future sales.
Pop-ups are most effective when displayed right before a visitor navigates away from your site. You should also put your opt-in offers through some testing and optimization processes. Your future sales are directly proportional to the email addresses you collect.
Plan 6 – Give Away Free Shipping
Businesses that do not provide clients with free shipping are missing out. Offering free shipping is popular. Many shoppers, driven by online retail giants like Amazon, expect it on cheaper items. The potential for increased sales and revenue is beneficial to your company.
According to a survey by Ask Your Target Market, consumers have a more favorable impression of companies that provide free shipping and delivery (84%) and are more likely to make purchases (75%).
Plan 7- Lower Shopping Cart Abandonment
For online stores, cart abandonment is more frustrating than anything. Customers are on the verge of purchasing your business when suddenly they back out. In addition, an estimated 88% of shoppers worldwide will abandon their carts before completing a purchase in 2020.
Customers abandon their carts for several reasons, including lengthy checkout processes and unexpected expenses. It is not all hopeless, though. Improving your shopping cart’s performance may be the answer to this issue.
One approach is to take measures to reduce student attrition. You can create a simple UI with an easy payment system. Displaying a current SSL certificate and other trust indicators can help build confidence in the procedure. Make a guest checkout possible.
There is always a chance that a left-behind cart can be recovered. Try a recovery email campaign to get people to return to your site and finish their purchases after abandoning your basket. According to Moosend, almost 40% of these emails are read.
Plan 8- Build Trust by Highlighting Customer Reviews
The way you promote your online store might benefit significantly from user-generated content. Customers today do not just have to take the company’s word, but also others who have already tried the product. Social proof of this sort is an effective method of psychological persuasion.
Prospective buyers’ confidence can be boosted by positive feedback from satisfied consumers. Negative feedback might help you pinpoint specific problems that need fixing inside your company.
These comments from satisfied customers have more impact than the most persuasive sales copy ever created. It is essential to have customers talking about their positive brand experiences anywhere they can, including your website, social media, and review sites.
Plan 9- Enhance Your Email Marketing Efforts
Email, as reported by Mailgen, is the primary channel for lead generation for 89% of marketers. To increase the number of people who sign up to receive your newsletters and other emails, you should highlight the places on your site where visitors can enter their email addresses.
The time it takes to send emails manually is so great that it will hinder you from expanding your firm. As a result, automating your email marketing is a crucial step in growing your company. The potential applications of automated email marketing are vast.
For instance, as we have discussed, a recovery email can be sent to remind the consumer to return to the site and finish the purchase after abandoning it.
Sending messages based on predetermined triggers ensures that they are always hyper-relevant and timely, resulting in click-through rates that are 119% greater than those for broadcast emails.
Plan 10- Maintain a High Standard of Client Service
There is more to the e-commerce sector than popular styles and high-quality goods. This aid, but providing exceptional support, will set you apart.
And these days, that means adopting an omnichannel strategy, wherein prospects and customers are supported across numerous channels, and all touchpoints (e.g., SMS, chatbots, live chat) are treated as seamless extensions of one another.
Using a customer experience platform to fuel a single customer view and centralize all relevant customer contact data is an excellent method for reaching this goal.
Plan 11- Incentives for Repeat Customers
Customers that buy from you repeatedly are the lifeblood of your business. And loyalty programs are an excellent incentive for existing customers to stick around.
It is up to you to choose the nature and motivation of any customer rewards you offer. You may give them points that they can use to buy stuff, save money, or get free shipping. Additionally, it is beneficial to tailor your loyalty program to each consumer.
Your company and its clients will both benefit from this. According to White House Office of Consumer Affairs data, repeat consumers are worth up to 10 times as much as first-time buyers.
Compared to the likelihood of selling to existing customers, which is between 60 and 70 percent, the possibility of selling to new consumers is extremely low, at around 2 to 20 percent.
Plan 12- Make a Creative Strategy
Most people who want to make a splash in the world of e-commerce invest time and energy into coming up with novel products and services, only to discover that they have already been commercialized. If they are not already, someone else will start doing it soon.
Focusing on new ways to promote a product or service is more productive. The largest online retailers, such as Amazon and eBay, do not carry unique items. However, they are marketing these items differently.
Plan 13- Consider the End-User’s Perspective
Customers are frustrated by nothing more than an unattractive and poorly functioning website. To begin with, it undermines consumer confidence in your brand. And then there are the more tangible consequences, like making it hard to use and, by extension, hard to sell. The poor choice of colors or font size can have a significant impact.
Product presentation, categorization, and other factors contribute to the shopping experience. User testing is necessary if you want your website to bring people joy instead of frustration.
Plan 14- Products to be Upsell And Cross-Sell
Upselling and cross-selling are two ways to boost a company’s revenue. There are times when letting customers know about an upgraded product option or providing further justification for a premium price point is necessary.
A seller may need to be updated on similar products that would make a good pair to offer their customer.
Plan 15- Make Use of Social Networking Sites
Including social media in your eCommerce advertising strategy is a smart move. A new, more direct avenue to sales can be unlocked by including products in Instagram postings and using the appropriate hashtags.
In addition to traditional eCommerce websites, you can set up a Facebook store to sell your products. Simple integration with other platforms, such as Shopify, eliminates the need for stock management.
Plan 16- Put your Focus on Content Promotion
content is what people care about. Evercontent facilitates the success of enterprises through content production. Blogging regularly, topically, is an excellent approach to connecting with clients on a more personal level and improving your site’s search engine rankings. It is a fantastic tool for enhancing your online advertising strategy.
However, articles on a blog are not the only form of material. Guides and other documents of longer-form material can enhance the customer experience and ensure that readers make the most of your offerings. You could also consider guest posting on other sites.
Podcasts have recently risen in popularity due to the opportunities they present for cultivating communities and showcasing specialized knowledge.
Plan 17- Usage of Third-Party Applications
If you run an eCommerce business like Shopify, you can use third-party applications according to your business needs and requirements. For instance, if you have a store where you sell products in bulk with a third-party app that gives extra perks to your customers, that is not available in Shopify by default.
The fact is that how you will market your store and how you will let your customers know about the product is part of the marketing strategy. To simplify this task, you can use additional marketing tools in your store to market your shop and products. In Shopify, there are bunches of marketing automation tools available.https://shopify.pxf.io/215eYa
Bottom Line
Search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing (SMM), electronic mail marketing (EBM), and content marketing are just a few of the many channels you may use to promote your business online. Pick the appropriate eCommerce marketing plant that goes well with your business strategy.
