How Ecommerce Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business
Simply building a modern-looking website which is easy to navigate is only half the battle for a business owner who wants to compete with their competitors. You need to build awareness of who you are and what value you bring to your customers before you can expect people to come to your website.
This is where ecommerce marketing comes in. From purposely increasing your ranking on Google to intensive email campaigns, there is a world of possibilities to market your business on the internet. You can tweak your approach, gaining confidence as you drive customers to your site.
What Is Ecommerce Marketing?
Ecommerce marketing involves targeting customers on the internet and driving them to your site. It’s that simple, yet there are so many things that you could do that your head might be hurting. You have a shiny new website, but you know that you need content for it. Though the options may excite you, you need to stop and ask yourself what your goals are. For each specific goal that you have, different needs will need to be addressed.
Specific Ways Ecommerce Marketing Can Help Grow Your Small Business
If you’re thinking about planning a full e-commerce marketing plan, first ask yourself what major strategies you wish to use to grow your brand. Say that you sell shoes; consider a social media advertising platform, harnessing both paid ads and content posted to Instagram, to grow your brand.
If you’re a smaller retailer of handcrafted dresses, considered building on those customers who are interested in you by sending follow-up emails to them telling them about the promotions you have. In that same line of thinking, if you’re running the business out of your home creating masterpieces with your own hands, consider starting a YouTube course or Udemy course to build brand recognition. It won’t hurt you to have other people learning from you – in fact, you can link to your website to drive traffic from these videos.
Social Media Marketing
People are buying into you as a small business owner, and one key to this is having a social media marketing platform. Customers want to see you, hear from testimonials on how great your products are, and even see social media influencers using your product.
Facebook can help to drive traffic to your website, through both paid advertisements and posting online content. Facebook has its own online store platform which can integrate with Shopify, allowing you to bring in more people to buy. But Instagram, through both posts and stories, can help give your customers an insider perspective on you and your business. In an Instagram post you can even link to your website, and this gives a direct path to purchase for new customers.
Email Marketing
You’ve got people coming to your site and you see huge conversion success for the first month, but soon there’s a drop off in sales. You hit a hard month. What if you could continue to reach out to those customers who bought your product before? This is where email marketing strategies come into play.
When customers purchase through your website, place a link for them to click to sign up for exclusive promotions through your email newsletter. Sending out a monthly newsletter can drive customers to your website in two ways: first, thanking your highest value customers for patronizing your business, and secondly by providing them with exclusive promo codes and BOGO (buy-one-get-one) deals. These can help make those customers who bought on your website repeat customers.
These newsletter emails can be time consuming, but the return on investment is worth the time and effort you take to write up content. If you’re trying to grow your business, gain brand recognition, or advertise a new location you’ve moved to then a newsletter can be helpful to show those who have supported you where you are at, and where you plan on going. This can provide ownership to those frequenting your online store, providing an actual flesh and blood person to interact with. Selling is storytelling, and what better way to reach your customers than a personal message from you?
Alternatively, email marketing could be used to help to encourage customers to revisit your site if they left items in their cart but didn’t purchase. Sending a quick email to those customers who left an item in their cart can be extremely helpful. Maybe they decided they didn’t want the specific product they put in their cart; including other similar items in this follow up email can help them see that you offer more products. This can help encourage them to purchase something on your website.
Feedback emails can also be helpful in helping you to understand how people view your business. You can do this several ways. You can put a link on your website with a form asking your customers for their experiences when buying products on your website. It would surprise you what people will tell you, and, once you get over the initial shock of criticism, you can harness those criticisms into something useful. Establishing a feedback loop, where you learn from your mistakes and grow from them, can be one key for growth.
Creating Valuable Content for Your Website
One key strategy is to create a website that answers all the questions your customers could ask. You can do this by creating content that users will find helpful, and search engines that crawl your website will acknowledge the value of this content, allowing your site to rank better on sites like Google and Bing. This will drive organic visitors to your site and can make your small business a player across the world in your niche, and you an expert on your products. A win-win.
First, consider adding a chat feature to your website, or a FAQs page. Having a live chat or even an email form set up for those who visit your site can help them find exactly what they’re looking for. Frequently asked questions pages can be tailored to the most popular keywords for your business, and this page can allow you to rank higher in search engines because you can show your expertise. Using websites like Ahrefs Keyword search or Spyfu can help you find valuable keywords that many people have asked, or do a simple Google search about your products to see the questions people are asking.
Hosting a blog on your website can tie together email newsletters, social media marketing, and on-site search engine optimization strategies. You write a great piece detailing how your new beard wax can add major value to men with untameable beards. You feel this content is creative and decide to form an entire marketing campaign around it, including testimonials on your Instagram page, and providing links on your next email newsletter detailing how amazing this product is. You will see an increase in activity to your website, and, as a result, more sales too.
Major Benefits of Ecommerce Marketing
As outlined above, there is a major benefit to investing in ecommerce marketing strategies. Even pouring a tiny amount of time and effort into tweaking some of these strategies will cause a greater return on investment. Try creating a form on your website asking to send your customers email newsletters, try becoming more active on social media, and you will see a rise in people visiting your site. It takes time and effort, but it allows you to tell your story and sell both yourself and your product.
