E-Commerce Marketing Tips 2021
The Top 4 Strategies to Utilize
E-commerce is digital marketing. This is because every aspect of online shopping needs creative visuals and copy to thrive in the competitive marketplace of e-commerce. Creative assets create impressions, and impressions lead to interest. Interest then leads to investigation, and investigation has the potential to lead to sales.
In this ever-developing era of digital dominance, virtually everything that comes across a consumers’ screen can be leveraged to sell a product or service. This is where knowledge, strategy, and budget come in. There are a plethora of tools and avenues through which a product or service can be advertised online. The question is, which ones should you use? How? When? Of course, there are no simple answers to these questions. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and every market is unique. However, we are confident that if you will focus on these strategies for your E-commerce marketing plan, you will be off to a successful start.
1. Market Research
Research accounts for over 50% of any successful marketing strategy. And yet, it is all too often overlooked and poorly executed.
While there are hundreds of varying formulas out there of how to conduct proper market research, there is ultimately one primary goal: Determine EXACTLY what your customers need/want from you.
To reach this conclusion, you must thoroughly understand three things:
- The Industry
- The Consumer
- The Competition
Analyze Your Industry
The industry market research should describe your industry’s current size, growth rate, and trends. When analyzing your industry, you will find information that adequately portrays the latest trends and provides insight on how to optimize your business to exceed the industry’s standards.
To get started on market research, here are some helpful resources that are updated annually:
- Nielsen
- Pew Research Center
- MarketResearch.com
- US Census Bureau
Understand Your Consumer
Once you have a firm grasp on the size, trends, and future of your industry, it’s time to get to know your consumer. This necessitates an understanding of the key demographics of the consumers in your market.
A word of caution: Be sure to pinpoint the correct market. Your specific niche matters. For example, researching the internal makeup of consumers buying “exercise equipment” will produce far different results than researching consumers buying “weightlifting equipment”. If you proceed with researching consumers of a different market, your research will be useless, and your marketing strategy will render ineffective. Identifying the correct market is key to identifying and understanding your consumer.
You must identify everything about the consumer in order to know how to best market to them. This includes their age, race, geographical location, socioeconomic standing, personal preferences, and even their past buying patterns.
Here’s are some ideas to gather this information:
- Consumer Surveys
- Consumer Reports
- Facebook Audience Insights & Other Platform Insights
Research Your Competition
There will always be competition. And that’s a good thing! When properly researched, your competition will provide insight into how your company can improve processes, enhance designs, and increase overall productivity. To properly research your competition, you must begin by asking yourself these 5 questions:
How many competitors are in my market?
Who is the clear leader in my market?
How is my product/company different from its competitors?
What are my competitors’ strengths?
What are my competitors’ weaknesses?
Based on your findings, brainstorm with your team a long list of product ideas that you think would 1) serve customers better than the current competition, and 2) compel customers to switch from top competitors to your product.
2. Customer Experience – Make them say “WOW!”
Online marketplaces are becoming exceedingly crowded. One key way brands can stand out is by building customer trust and confidence in your brand, while making their visit to your online store memorable.
Exceeding customer expectations is no longer negotiable. It is absolutely necessary to “wow” your customers for your business to survive in the competitive waters of ecommerce. But the “wow” of your website doesn’t come from content overload, 10-step checkout processes, or making promises you can’t keep. Instead, focus on your message, your presentation, and your offers – they need to be enticing! Ultimately, your customers can drive your business if you listen to what they want and let them take charge with their feedback.
Keep things clean, organized, and simple for your customer.
According to a survey conducted by Small Business Trends, 94% of consumers say easy navigation is the most useful website feature. SBT continues, “A site which is easy to navigate allows users to find the content they’re looking for much faster. This means having a clear menu structure and the ability to navigate between pages quickly and efficiently.”
In addition to making your online store easily navigable, the checkout process should be just as straightforward. According to a study, 46% of abandoned carts happen on the checkout page. Of that 46%:
- 56% said it was because of unexpected shipping costs.
- 25% said that navigating the website was too complicated and they didn’t know how to continue (or they no longer wanted to).
- 21% said the process was simply taking too long and they left in frustration.
These statistics shouldn’t be taken lightly. Be sure to simplify your customer’s UX experience. This will make your marketing assets more appealing and easier to grasp for the consumers
Quick response time is critical.
In today’s digital world of immediate search results and superspeed processing, it can be a major turn-off for consumers if they have to wait any more than 5 minutes for a response from customer service. There are all sorts of AI autoresponders out there to handle common support requests, and live chat add-ons that integrate with your website and social platforms. Find the software that works best for your company’s needs.
3. SEO
Thorough research and a user-friendly website are absolutely worthless if you aren’t getting any traffic.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is the practice of organically increasing traffic to your site through search engine results. The keyword here, of course, is “organically”. You don’t have to pay for SEO (like PPC). But instead, be clever with keywords to organically appear in searches. The most effective SEO tactics involve simply using the right words to promote your product or service. You can use analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Amazon Brand Analytics to find out which keywords are searched the most to find products in your market. Then, inject these keywords into your site or listing’s titles, product descriptions, photo captions, and URLs.
But don’t overdo it. Most online marketplaces will flag listings that appear to be fake or spammy.
4. Content Marketing
Nothing beats killer content. Especially well-produced videos.
According to a study conducted by Wyzowl, 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy. 86% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website. 78% say video has directly helped increase sales.
For brands selling physical products, we highly recommend putting together a well-illustrated “how-to” video. Unboxing videos are also effective in helping the viewer imagine what it would be like to acquire your product and make for good hype videos on social media.
For selling services, testimonials and step-by-step explainer videos are perfect for increasing consumer confidence.
Whatever videos you make sure, make sure to embed them in your product page, and take advantage of the power of social media.
But Video is only one type of content. There are all sorts of ways to convey your product or service to consumers. These include pictures, graphics, blogs, promotional ads and pop-ups, gift guides for the holidays, clear product descriptions, bulleted lists of features and benefits, comparative research of your product versus others like it, and more.
To Wrap up…
Every business has unique marketing strategies they must implement to be successful. There are dozens of tools out there to give your brand more exposure and drive traffic to your website. You just need to find what works best for your company. It will undoubtedly take some dedicated time, resources, and research. But this process will be made simpler if you will focus on these 4 basic topics for your ecommerce marketing plan. For a free consultation on which strategies would work best for your business, contact Elemerce!
Yours Truly,
The Elemerce Team