E-commerce Marketing Guide for Small Businesses: 2019 Updated

According to a leading U.S. Business Journal, e-commerce business is one of the fastest growing sectors. E-commerce sales are expected to touch the bar of $4.18 trillion in the year 2021.

Every e-commerce owner wants to derive more users and conversions to his e-commerce store. Despite having an e-commerce marketing plan and marketing strategy, achieving desired results seem unattainable.

In our E-commerce Marketing Guide for Small Businesses: 2019 we have covered everything, from planning to strategizing, about e-commerce marketing.

Things you will learn in this article:

• About E-commerce Marketing
• Various E-commerce Marketing Channels
• E-commerce Marketing Plan
• E-commerce Marketing Strategy
• E-commerce Marketing Tactics to boost up your sales

What is E-commerce Marketing?

Most of us often get confused between e-commerce marketing and digital marketing. E-commerce marketing is part of Digital marketing only. Promoting or creating awareness among users, of your business, established online, is known as e-commerce marketing.

E-commerce marketing uses principles of Digital marketing to convert people visiting ion their e-store into consumers. However, an e-commerce marketer would not use exact same channels and techniques used for digital or content marketing as a whole.

E-commerce Marketing Plan

You should always make a plan before starting out anything. Your plan should cover all aspects from goals to strategizing to marketing channels. You e-commerce marketing plan should cover the following aspects:

Summary: You should have a brief idea of “what to do” and “how to do.” Always look out for references either for internet or by looking at your competitors. This will always give you a brief idea, to begin with.

 Set Goals: You should always set your goals and objectives correct. This is the foundation of your e-commerce marketing plan. Once started, you can always amend your goals and objectives. Always remember to create realistic goals and achievable target for yourself.

Purpose: You should always know the purpose of what you are planning to do. Make few checkpoints like what is your company about, what does it offers, what all things you do not deal with.

Target Market: You should have a very clear perspective of your target market and audience. You should know your buyer’s persona. You should have a deep understanding of people you are targeting, their choices, demand, where are they located. This helps you to understand and easily target in your niche.

Pricing: Always do thorough market research and then price your products. Pricing plays a major role in sales. Always understand what your buyer can afford and what your competitors are offering.

E-commerce Marketing Channels

There are various channels, which an e-commerce marketer should use to derive more user engagement and traffic upon his website.

1. Social Media Marketing

Social Media is the strongest platform to connect to your consumers. According to a leading source, more than 43% of people spent their average time of 2 hours on social media.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube are few social media networks which have proven themselves as top to generate sales. All these platforms regularly roll out updates to make things work more efficiently. For instance, Facebook has a feature called Dynamic Ads, wherein any you can upload your complete brand catalogue to engage your users.

Social media advertising is a great way to reach your target audience. Each social media platforms allow you to create a tailored ad campaign according to your business type and target audience. As e-commerce marketers, you should be aware of the best practices and create strategic ad campaigns. There are numerous tools available, which can ease out your task.

2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the best way to make your product visible to your users. According to the statistics, Google contributes 60% in the number of click for any e-commerce website if they are using PPC. In case you are not aware of PPC, you pay to any search engine like the one Google based on the number of clicks your ad has received.

Search Engines offers you to have various types of paid ads. For ecommerce below mentioned are the best to use.

Search Ads: In this, your website appears on top of your search engine result but does not include any image.

Display Ads: Display advertisement often known as banner ads, which appears on various other websites, app, and games while surfing your internet. These ads are based on the subject matter of the article or website, which the user is using. For example, if someone is using a beauty related website or reading an article related to beauty, there is a high chance that your ad related to this category will pop up.

Shopping Ads: Shopping ads are the best way to display your products to your users. In this, your product directly displays to the user, searching for your category. For example, if a user is looking for red lipstick than bunch of images with pricing and website name will appear before any text based ads on your search engine.

There are many tools available for marketers like Google Merchant Center, Amazon Advertising, and Bing Ads, which can be used to create effective ad campaigns.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine Optimization (SEO) is the best way to get users that are more organic on your website without paying anything. Creating a good amount of quality backlinks and local listings will help your e-commerce website rank on search engines. Keyword research is equally important. Keywords are the most used words to search for your product. You should know the keywords to target among your users. This will help you to get more visibility as 77% of users buy from websites appearing among the first ten websites on search engines.

There are plenty of tools available like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahref’s, MOZ and many more, which can help you analyze your website, find keywords, and help you optimize it efficiently.

5. Content Marketing

Content Marketing is the key to your success. For not only blogs and articles but also e-commerce websites must optimize their content to rank better.

Optimizing your product page copy is the most important thing to do. A title, description, and images alt text of your products should include the keywords, which your users generally use to search for your products. For example, if you are someone selling mobile phones than “best mobile phones” or “android phones” are a few keywords, which you can target.

Writing blog posts relevant to your products and promote them on various platforms will help you gain more users.

6. Influencer Marketing

An influencer is a person who has a large fan following among the target users. For example, a YouTuber or Instagrammer having a large number of subscribers or followers are influencers. People know them, like them and trust them. Influencer Marketing is a great way to introduce a new product in the market.

You can reach that person of your niche and ask them to promote your brand via recommendation or any sponsored ads, as they can reach to a large number of people at a time.

7. Email Marketing

Email Marketing is one of the most used techniques used by e-commerce marketers across the globe. Through email, you can create customized email campaigns and send them to your target audience.

The best part of email marketing is that it is an automated process. You do not have to invest your a lot of time. All you need to do is strategically design a campaign and send it to your users. There are various tools like MailChimp, Litmus, Drip, Mail Jet, etc are available to ease your work.

You can send email as a follow up of any purchase, to send any special coupons or discounts or you may also send email as a reminder for an abandoned shopping cart.

E-commerce Marketing Tips and Tactics to Outstrip Your Competitor

1. Using Latest technologies

Using the latest technologies like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, etc. will not only attract more users but will make their shopping experience better.

2. Chatbots

Using chatbots can improve your customer service. You can use chatbots to instantly communicate with your users and resolve their issues. A chatbot is an advanced computer programming feature which will initiate conversation with a human user and will automatically reply to their general queries.

3. Delivery Options

To make your e-commerce business successful, delivery has to be fast, timely, convenient, and successful. By providing more delivery options, you can cover the number of users. Try expanding your area of delivery, concert your standard shipping to expedite, use more payment options.

4. Advanced Filters

Nowadays, people do not have enough time to scroll through all your products. You should incorporate some advanced features in your cart so that they can directly jump to what they want. This improves the shopping experience for your user keeping them content and happy.

5. User Generated Content (UGC)   

What a better way of promotion other than users themselves promoting it. In User Generated Content your user market for you in free. Create campaigns as “share it with a friend” so that users can themselves promote your site.

6. Creating Loyalty Programs

A loyalty customer is someone who is shopping with you for a long time. You could give discounts, coupons, and membership deal to celebrate your long-term association with your consumer. You could diversify the loyalty based on the number of purchased made, sharing on social media, or commenting on your social media platforms.

7. Launch Facebook Store

You can also launch your Facebook store and let your consumers buy from there. This is an addition to your revenue. You can also run various campaigns and offers just for your Facebook store users.

Conclusion

E-commerce marketing is a great way of promoting your products through various channels and generates traffic and revenue for your website. If you are unsure of handling all this by yourself, you also have an option of hiring any good E-commerce Marketing Agency. These agencies have their team of experts known as E-commerce Marketers, which can help you making your e-commerce strategy and implementing it efficiently. With a proper marketing plan and strategy, you can never go wrong.