Camilo Álvarez
Online Marketing Specialist
This post will break things down for you.
You’re about to learn how to select the best marketing strategies out there for your eCommerce store. Specifically, you’ll learn how to select them based on your store’s goals.
In addition, we’ll go over various examples for you to know how to implement them.
But before we dive into them, the fundamentals must be crystal clear…
Table of Contents
Let’s begin by clarifying what we’re talking about.
eCommerce marketing refers to all those actions we implement in order to promote our online store. Its end goal is to increase sales and/or a business’s profits.
Below, we’ll review some concrete actions you can undertake in this direction.
But first, let’s expand our knowledge about the benefits of implementing a marketing strategy in your eCommerce.
Well, all of these:
As you can see, marketing strategies are not optional for eCommerce stores; it’s a must-have for your store to keep on growing.
Having said that, it’s time to move onto a more practical concept; a marketing plan.
You need a direction to move forward.
If you want to maximize your strategies’ results, you must first define:
And then you must jot it all down into a marketing plan, a kind of ‘map’ of your eCommerce strategy that will set out the way, avoiding any detours from your goal.
To elaborate it:
Note: this is only a summary. To know how to elaborate your marketing plan in detail, here’s this free eBook.
Next, we’ll analyze different strategies you can include in your eCommerce marketing plan.
We’ve divided them into 3 categories according to their role:
Let’s see the first kind.
An eCommerce store runs on getting traffic.
The more visitors you get every day, the more chances you generate of making sales.
And if on top of that, such traffic is coming from many simultaneous channels, then all the better! That will allow you to have a more regular billing (should ads ever fail you, you’ll still be able to make sells on other channels).
There are many options, but these are some of the most interesting ones.
SEO positioning consists in optimizing your eCommerce store’s URLs (homepage, categories, and product cards) so they position on Google based on specific keywords.
Let’s see a specific case.
Imagine you own a pet store.
As the image shows, around 1,500 people per month search for puppy food on Google. That’s a lot of potential customers you could attract.
In order to do that, your website must come up among the first search results.
… and the thing is, there are other eCommerce stores already positioned there.
If you want to top them and make those customers buy from you, you need to work on your online store’s SEO strategy.
Can you imagine the amount of traffic you could attract if every single product card and category pages in your eCommerce were optimized for positioning?
Note: if interested, we offer this free course via email in which we teach SEO for eCommerce.
Now imagine a person who owns an older dog and doesn’t know what kid of food is best for their pet.
So they go on Google and type “how to feed an older dog”… and among the first results there’s a post from your blog explaining:
And in the same post you include links to dog food product cards on your store that match such features.
This way you won’t just answer people’s doubts (because of your post they will make now keep calm and know how to keep their pet healthy), you’re also making it very easy for them to find the right kind of food for their pet. And that…
Means it’s more likely that they end up buying from you.
This is a content marketing strategy, and thanks to it, you’ll be able to:
Is this clear?
Well then, let’s move on.
Online ads are another wat to attract potential customers to your store’s website.
There are many platforms you can use, but the two main ones are:
There are many benefits to online advertising, but one of the most interesting ones is paying for results only (for example, only in case someone clicks on your ad and visits your website).
The main goal of social media is to engage your audience.
You can use the content you publish on your social media to create a deeper link with your followers and make them feel more connected to your brand.
So, whenever they need to buy products like yours, you’ll be their first option.
But in order to get there, it’s not enough to upload photos of your products and wait for sales to rain down on you. You must give your followers actually interesting content.
Back to the pet store example, some ideas for posting content are:
You can also add other kind of posts, such as:
Remember: on social media, you first generate engagement and then you sell.
You can also reach agreements with other businesses for them to advertise your products among their audience.
This system works like this:
The best part of this system is that there is zero risk of financial loss.
In case your affiliate (or affiliates —because you can have more than one) doesn’t make any sales for you, you simply don’t pay them.
EXTRA TIP
You can apply this same strategy with your customers: for every new customer they bring, you offer them an incentive (typically a small discount).
This is what is known as ‘reference marketing’.
So, you’re already getting visitors on your website, but how do you turn them into customers?
Here are a few ideas.
Increase billing by simply sending more emails to your subscribers?
You certainly can.
That’s the reason we have emails that include:
Here’s a thorough guide on email marketing.
And if on top of that you add a strategy such as the one below… the result is fantastic.
Automated marketing consists in implementing various automated actions (executed without active intervention from you) to turn visitors into customers —and loyal customers.
How does this system work?
Let’s see an example from a photography store.
Let’s say two people land at the same time on their blog. We’ll call them Mary and John.
Once they sign up to the newsletter, they both start receiving an automated email sequence, but the content of such emails differs:
This way, each of them is getting the information they might be more interested in based on their needs.
And so, the possibilities of them buying multiply.
You may find it weird that we include internal search engines on this list, but think about it:
Your store’s search engine is the closest thing there is to your typical clerk.
When a person lands on your website and needs some help to find a specific product (among the dozens or even hundreds on your catalog), what do they do?
Frequently, they type the product they’re looking for on the search engine.
But there’s more to it.
The thing is that a good search engine (an advanced or ‘smart’, AI-powered one) doesn’t simply return customers’ searches but:
Thanks to all these features, you can make your sales increase.
So you get an idea: customers who use Doofinder have increased their eCommerce conversion up to 20%.
No way?
You only need to click here and have a free 30-day trial to verify it’s not.
(No need to worry, we do not ask for your banking details).
Chatbots are a kind of software capable of having conversations.
That’s to say, they are a kind of “robot” that help your customers and can solve their most frequent doubts.
By implementing them in your eCommerce store, you get to:
Also, there are many kinds of conversational bots.
Some of them (the most basic ones) work only with closed answers previously “taught” by you.
But the most advanced ones are capable of learning from every interaction with your customers, and of providing answers that get closer and closer to those a flesh-and-blood person would give. This kind of bots work with AI-powered systems and machine learning.
One more point to eCommerce automation. 😉
In general, gaining customer loyalty is more profitable than getting a new one.
The more frequently a person buys from you, the more their value as a customer increases (or CLV), and the more your initial investment (customer acquisition cost) pays off.
That’s why it’s so interesting to apply specific strategies to foster loyalty among your audience, such as the ones below.
One of the ways to improve your eCommerce store’s retention rate is to offer your customers some kind of benefit for their loyalty.
For example:
Who doesn’t like to feel special? 😉
The famous instant messaging apps can be strong allies when it comes to keeping customers.
Among other features, they allow you to:
All these features will allow you to improve the shopping experience in your store and to offer your customers a closer, high-quality treatment.
Of course… when it comes to customer loyalty on smartphones, we can’t leave behind the following strategy…
The good-old SMS text still has a lot to say.
Marketing campaigns via SMS are a trend that’s making quite the comeback. There are even special platforms that allow you to program and automate these messages.
Via them, you can inform your customers about:
And the benefit to all this?
There are few brands implementing this strategy to date (most brands still focus on Whatsapp and Telegram).
So, the messages you send your audience on this channel will have less competition.
Don’t miss out on this trend and give SMS a (new) opportunity.
A very useful strategy if you use consumable goods.
For example, if you own a cosmetics eCommerce store, there will be customers who always use the same brand of facial moisturizer who but it every so months.
In these cases, you can implement a subscription service for placing orders.
This way, every so often a new order is placed without the customer intervening.
The benefits of this systems are:
Large eCommerce stores such as Amazon have long implemented this service and more stores are taking the same route.
Don’t fall behind on this new trend!
A partner is a business you create a strategic alliance with so that you both mutually benefit from it.
For example, let’s suppose you own a bakery and start collaborating with a school that offers online cooking classes:
Win-win.
As you can see this strategy is similar to subscription marketing.
The only difference here is there’s no subscriber advertising your products in exchange for a commission. The goal is to offer an added value to your audience in order to increase sales for both businesses.
Now it’s your turn to put this marketing advice into practice in your eCommerce store.
Let’s get on it!