What is e-commerce marketing?
E-commerce marketing is the marketing process of your e-commerce business via inbound advertising, organic SEO, and other marketing tactics to increase website traffic, brand visibility, and sales. This includes raising public awareness using social networks, search engines, emails, and digital resources, as well as to stimulate actions on the website through conversion rate optimization.
E-commerce marketing uses numerous digital marketing strategies to convert visitors into customers.
To give you an idea of what an effective e-commerce marketing strategy involves, here are some common marketing channels to generate more sales for your online store.
What are the main e-commerce marketing strategies?
E-commerce marketing requires an omnichannel approach, with some channels being more efficient than others. For example, the Conversion rates vary considerably depending on the traffic source and the type of device:
- Average e-commerce conversion rate per device: desktop: 3.8%; tablet: 3.3%; smartphone: 1.3%
- Median conversion rate by traffic source: Direct: 2.2%; Email: 5.3%; Organic: 2.1%; Facebook: 0.9%; Paid Search (AdWords): 1.4%; SEO: 5.4%; Social: 0.7%.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO).
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term strategy aimed at increasing traffic to your e-commerce site by increasing your organic, or unpaid, search engine rankings.
For e-commerce sites, this includes optimizing your technical SEO and content strategy to succeed. Technical SEO includes on-site tactics such as mobile optimization, URL structure, keyword tags, internal links, site speed, and more.
In addition to technical SEO, quality content is a determining factor in generating organic e-commerce traffic. You need to have high-quality content on product and category pages, as well as a blog that is optimized for SEO and regularly updated.
2. Pay per click (PPC) advertising.
In addition to the organic traffic strategies above, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising includes using tools like Google AdWords and Bing Ads to pay for search engine placement.
Running an effective PPC campaign requires bidding on search terms related to your business in order to get more traffic and sales. These ads appear above and below organic search engine results and are a great way to quickly increase traffic to your site.
3. Email marketing.
The use of a email marketing software is one of the best ways to engage with potential customers and increase sales to current customers.
In terms of email marketing for e-commerce, there are numerous strategies. You can use automated emails, such as a series of welcome emails when a user signs up on your site, as well as abandoned cart emails, to remind users that an item is in their shopping cart.
In addition to automated emails, marketing emails and newsletters can inform subscribers about upcoming promotions, product news, and provide incentives to buy.
4. Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing consists of using an affiliate network to connect to other websites to promote your products.
These other website owners, or affiliates, promote your product through text links and banners, and an e-commerce retailer pays them a commission on the sales price after the purchase is made.
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that it's a form of performance marketing highly scalable and with a positive return on investment, as e-commerce advertisers set their own commission rates and are assured of a certain return on investment.
You can consult my guide to best affiliate programs for more information.
5. Social media marketing.
Everyone is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter every day, and so should your e-commerce brand.
By taking advantage of social media marketing, you can grow your audience, engage with current customers, manage your reputation, and personalize ads for users based on their interests.
Organic social networks include creating posts and updates on your brand's social media page so that users can connect with your brand in their news feed.
Paid social networks include creating personalized images or videos, and paying to promote them to a specific audience based on their interests, demographics, and buying behavior. It is a form of e-commerce marketing customer-focused and based on providing an excellent customer experience.
Social media management tools organic and paid ones should be used in tandem to have the maximum impact on your online business. It's a great way to increase brand awareness and highlight your brand personality.
6. Display advertising.
With the Google Display Network (GDN), e-commerce business owners can easily create banner ads and distribute them to people who browse the web.
This powerful network reaches over 2 million websites and 90% of Internet users. With all the different types of ad sizes and formats, GDN is a great way to reach people with banner ads that are targeted to their interests and online behaviors.
7. Retargeting.
Retargeting involves showing text ads, banners, and social ads to people who have visited your website or interacted with your products.
When users visit your e-commerce site, Google or Facebook can place a pixel on their browser and show them ads as they browse the web, reminding them of your business.
These ads are generally paid at cost per impression and are a great targeted digital marketing tactic because you know that users have already interacted with your website.
8. Influencer marketing.
When making online purchases, users rely heavily on the opinions of others to inform their buying decisions.
They seek online reviews and recommendations from peers and influencers to find out what to buy and what brands to interact with.
By joining an influencer marketing network, you can connect with micro-influencers in your niche to promote you.
An e-commerce store generally pays the influencer an initial amount (more followers = higher amount) and the influencer promotes its products on its blog, Instagram account, Facebook or YouTube channel.
How do you master the e-commerce conversion funnel?
Before you can optimize each of the above marketing tactics, you need to understand your business goals, marketing budget, and how these channels work together.
Getting a user to buy a product is a time-consuming task - sometimes you need to 7 to 13 contacts to achieve a qualified sale. A user will need to see your brand and products multiple times before their first purchase. For this reason, your approach should include multiple tactics in unison to reach buyers at different stages in their journey.
1. TOFU marketing “Top of the Funnel
Your marketing efforts at the top of the channel (or brand awareness) reach users who have never seen your products before.
They're probably not going to buy right away. Sales prospecting tactics include paid and organic social media posts and display advertising, with end goals such as impressions, email sign-ups, web traffic, and social media followers.
For example, you need to master your e-commerce SEO strategy and get traffic for terms related to your product offerings. If you sell camping equipment, you can write a long-term blog post about Top ten camping destinations in the United States, by attracting readers to build brand awareness and then retargeting them with ads. There are a multitude of e-commerce SEO agencies that can help you with your search engine strategies.
A user may see one of your Facebook image ads, visit your website, but not yet be ready to buy. These visitors help build your email list, become your social followers, and are great for retargeting campaigns.
Now, whenever a user at the top of the ladder visits a product page but isn't ready to convert into a customer, they can be added to the mailing list as a hot lead.
A good return on investment (ROI) for top-of-funnel marketing tactics is 2-2. 5:1.
2. Marketing BOFU “Bottom of the Funnel”
Once users get used to your brand, they're more likely to make a purchase, allowing you to implement marketing strategies at the bottom of the channel.
These include pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, retargeting campaigns, and abandoned cart emails. These footer tactics are for users who search for your brand on Google, who have already visited your site, or who have added a product to their shopping cart.
The end goal is to generate sales.
For example, see how Zoma Sleep uses both catchy animations and customer reviews to increase conversion rates on the product page of its mattresses.
In drawing users to your product and category pages, brand pay-per-click (PPC) advertising plays an important role. These Google ads target users who are looking for your brand name. They already know you and want to visit your site, which is great for potential sales.
Branded keywords will always have a better return on investment because the user knows you well enough to search for your brand name. You should own these brand terms and maintain position 1.0-1.5 on search engine marketing (SEM) tools.
Non-branded terms will always have a lower return on investment because those users are still looking for your products, may have never heard of your brand, or are shopping and seeing competitors.
It's important to bid on some of these terms if you're looking to be competitive in the market, but maintaining a 2.5 to 4.0 position may be a better strategy.
Make sure you're doing retargeting efforts on both Google and Facebook. Facebook retargeting can include dynamic product ads (DPAs) that advertise the exact products that users viewed on your site in a scrolling carousel, based on their browsing history.
In addition, by setting up different duration windows, you can target visitors who viewed your products 3, 7, 14, 30, or even 180 days after their consultation. With this strategy, you can bid more on your 3-day audience than on your 30-day audience and improve the return on investment of your campaign.
Using the Facebook Power Editor, bid more on short-lived windows and less on long-lived windows - a retargeted user who added a product to their cart three days ago is much more likely to buy than a user who visited your homepage 90 days ago.
The same is true with Google. Separate your retargeting audiences by duration window to improve your bidding strategies and the return on ad spend (ROAS).
Additionally, by implementing A/B testing and offering a discount for certain retargeting audiences, you can see if discount messages are giving you a better return on investment.
A good return on investment (ROI) for campaigns at the bottom of the funnel includes 3:1 for Google-branded keywords and 5+:1 for Facebook retargeting.
3. Upsell, cross-sell, and repeat buyers in e-commerce
Do you know your repurchase rate? The repeat purchase rate measures the percentage of customers who come back and make another purchase. To calculate it, simply divide the number of repeat customers by the total number of customers and multiply the result by 100.
You should also pay attention to the elements that kill your conversion rate silent such as the absence of discounts, hidden shipping costs, and limited payment options.
Second, how do you market to your current customers? He is 5 times more expensive to attract a new customer other than keeping an existing customer. Key marketing strategies for targeting your customer base include retargeting, email, and social media campaigns that only target past buyers.
Thanks to the Facebook Ads and email marketing options linked to your e-commerce platform, you can create specific campaigns for users who have already purchased from you.
They can be promotional in nature, offer VIP discounts, and make them feel special (because they are).
Summary.
There are more opportunities to make money with an online store than ever. However, your marketing tactics and your conversion funnel should be top-notch and meet the needs of a demanding and evolving consumer. Marketing your online store doesn't have to be shrouded in mystery.
By implementing some of the e-commerce marketing tactics above and getting a basic return on investment for each, you can afford to scale up, introduce your products to more people, and generate more revenue this year.
