No matter what type of products you are selling, eCommerce can be a crowded marketplace. If you don’t take advantage of all the marketing opportunities available to you, you’ll find it hard to keep your store operating.
There are many digital marketing tactics and tools you can use and each one can help your store in some way. With that in mind, here is how you can use these 5 digital marketing strategies for eCommerce success.
Email Marketing
The first strategy you’ll want to explore is email marketing. It basically revolves around collecting the email addresses of people interested in your products, then sending them targeted emails in an attempt to convert them into customers. Most people check their email inboxes daily, making this the ideal place to reach them.
Setting up this process is fairly easy. First, you need to have a spot on your website where users can submit their email address in exchange for some kind of benefit – like a discount. Once you start collecting email addresses, you can then use an outreach automation tool to automatically send them emails. You can even use advanced information about your customers to send them even more targeted emails. For example, you can promote products that are similar to ones they have purchased in the past.
Email marketing is not only a great way to bring back website visitors who didn’t complete a purchase but also generate more repeat customers.
Social Media
After email marketing, social media is another powerful tool. Millions of people use social media every day, sometimes multiple times throughout the day. By appearing regularly in your audience’s social media feeds, you keep your brand at the forefront of their mind and alert them when you are having new sales or a new product launch.
Even better, getting started with social media marketing is fairly simple. To start, create an account for your brand on the major social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
After that, add links to your social channels on your website so that people know where to follow you. Finally, give people a reason to follow you on social media. For example, you could host contests to give away free products to your followers or announce your latest sales on social media first.
Once you have your social media channels operating, you should look into getting some social media analytics tools. This will tell you more about your customer base and which social channels are performing the best. You can then use this information to tailor your messaging or decide which channels deserve more of your attention.
Search Engine Optimization
A big source of traffic for any website are search engines. Most people turn to search engines like Google to learn new information these days. When they are looking for the type of products you offer, you’ll want your items to appear as high in the results as possible. If you can rank higher than your competitors, you’ll bring in a larger portion of the traffic and hopefully convert more of them into customers. If you are not familiar with all these things then you may research to understand the facts. For example if you are using Twitter for your online marketing may try to optimize your products for search engines. If you are not aware of the fact, you may read more to understand. You may also read on how to buy real active Twitter followers to enhance your engagements.
Google has its own algorithm for determining how to rank websites and pages. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of adapting your website and online strategy to better suit this algorithm.
There’s a lot that goes into SEO, but there are a few basics you can start with.
For example, you can ensure that your website runs quickly and has a logical link structure. You can then also work to get other sites to link to your products, which will boost them in the results. Finally, you’ll want to learn about keyword research and include keywords in prominent places on each product page. To learn more about SEO for an eCommerce site, this guide is here to help.
Inbound Marketing
When people think of sales, they generally picture someone on the phone cold-calling potential customers. While this is one strategy, it doesn’t work well for eCommerce sites. A better option is to go with the opposite approach, which is known as inbound marketing.
With inbound marketing, you generate helpful content related to your niche. You then share this content online and wait for people to find it via search engines or social media.
Through this content, customers will not only learn the information they are seeking but will learn about your products as well.
For example, an eCommerce store selling skincare products may create a blog post about beauty tips. Inside this post, they mention how their own products can help and link to them. The customer will then come to you on their own, and if they are interested in your products, proceed to purchase. When done correctly, inbound marketing is a powerful tool for eCommerce sites.
Pay-Per-Click Ads
Finally, there are pay-per-click (PPC) ads. With PPC, you pay to run advertisements on sites like Twitter or Facebook, or on Google search results and you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. This means you only pay when a customer actually visits your site. The amount you pay depends on the keyword you’re targeting.
PPC is a good strategy to consider if you have room in your budget and want to try something new. It’s a good way to guarantee that your message gets in front of your targeted audience. If this is your first time running a PPC campaign, consider setting the budget low and testing it out until you learn more. You can always adjust your campaigns as you gain more information.
Each Part Works Together
While each of the digital marketing tactics above will help your eCommerce site, they work best when they are working together. For example, creating content for an inbound strategy will also help with your social media and SEO campaigns. So, once you implement one of the strategies above, move onto the next. You may not use all these strategies equally going forward, but it’s still a good idea to test them all out and use each one at least a little.