Are you ready to take your eCommerce marketing strategy to the next level? If you want to drive more sales, read on. From knowing which people to target to identifying your conversion flow, this article will show you how to give your eCommerce marketing strategy a makeover.
Here are the six main elements of a successful eCommerce marketing strategy.
1. Knowing Your Target Market
A strong eCommerce strategy starts with knowing your target audience. If you can understand what your target market is looking for and the problems they are facing, you can address those issues in your campaigns.
Start by analyzing the demographics of your target market. If you already have an email list, website, social media following, or customer base, you can start from there. Otherwise, you can conduct market and competitor research.
Try to understand your average customer. Who are they? Are they married? Which age group are they in? What kind of income do they have? What kind of education do they have? Putting all of those together in one person will give you your customer persona, who you should be thinking of when releasing new products or writing sales copy.
You also need to know their preferred communication channels. If you are targeting millennials, they might be using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. If you are targeting Gen-Z, you might want to consider using Snapchat or TikTok. Alternatively, if your target audience is somewhat older, Facebook might still work, but you might want to spend more time on email marketing as well.
Do some research to see which platforms people in your target market’s age group (in your niche) use. You can also ask them! Send out a short survey to see how they would like you to communicate with them.
2. Using High-Quality Images and Product Descriptions
Your product descriptions matter, and the images you use in your descriptions matter even more. It’s critical to write factual and skimmable descriptions.
The descriptions must be factual — they should clearly explain what the product is about and focus on the benefits it will bring to the user.
You shouldn’t over-glorify your products. Otherwise, you will likely face a higher percentage of dissatisfied customers who feel let down. They might leave poor reviews, ask for refunds, and never buy from you again. Being accurate, on the other hand, will improve your customer retention rate, even if you make slightly fewer sales at the outset.
Your descriptions must also be skimmable, so people in a rush can read them. Use bullet points to break down product benefits and break up larger blocks of text into smaller paragraphs. Consider saving the more technical aspects for the end of the description, as many people just gloss over them.
In addition, make sure to include authentic and professional product shots. People are very visual in nature, and many shoppers look at the images more than the product descriptions themselves.
Including generic images from the manufacturer can work, but it’s better to hire a professional photographer to take authentic product shots. That way, your images will be unique, and you can do a better job of displaying your product, honing in on its good parts, and showcasing it in a positive light.
Take images from several angles, and consider adding a human aspect: A real person wearing, using, or enjoying the product.
3. Optimizing Your Shop
The next element is optimizing your entire store. Start by making sure your online shop has a professional look to it. Use a premium theme that makes your site easy to navigate. You should be categorizing products appropriately and using a menu that makes it easy for customers to find what they are looking for. Add a search bar, so customers can search your entire site for a product.
The shopping cart and checkout process should be simple and easy to use, but you still want to offer extensive shopping cart functionality. For example, customers should be able to do things like:
- Delete products from the shopping cart
- Change the quantity of each item in their cart
- Save products in their cart for later
- Save their shopping cart for later
Checkout should be simple and safe yet provide a lot of functionality as well. For example, customers should be able to select from different payment options, such as credit card, debit card, PayPal, and even Bitcoin. Consider offering payment plans, so customers can pay in installments.
Needless to say, your entire site should be mobile-friendly. The menu and search bar must work well on mobile devices. Avoid drop-down menus that are hard to use on mobile, and make sure the shopping cart page is mobile optimized, too. The checkout process shouldn’t have too many steps or redirects, as that makes checkout harder to complete and increases cart abandonment rates.
4. Trying Different Marketing Strategies
Taking a multichannel approach will increase your chances of success. Over time, if you see one strategy consistently outperforming the others, you can start investing more time and money into it. However, by trying different strategies, you will reach more people and ensure you aren’t leaving any money on the table.
Let’s talk about four different marketing strategies you should be using:
- Content marketing
- PPC
- SEO
- Social media marketing
Content marketing generally refers to blogging, but email marketing may also be included. If you want people to land on your site from Google, you need to be publishing quality blog posts regularly. Those blog posts should be targeting high-value, high-volume, low-competition keywords. A blog also adds to your authority, allows you to connect with customers, and gives you a way to promote your products more subtly.
Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing. However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore outbound marketing. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, but it generally refers to running ads on Google. It allows you to buy your way into the top search results, as opposed to relying on the mercy of the search engine algorithm Gods.
SEO goes beyond content marketing and allows you to drive free traffic, as opposed to PPC. Blogging is a big part of SEO, but SEO is more than that. For example, you must optimize your product pages for SEO, too. A good SEO strategy also involves backlink outreach or other forms of backlink building, such as local citations.
Social media marketing is critical, too. It allows you to build social proof, drive additional traffic to your blog, build long-lasting relationships with customers, answer questions from potential customers, offer customer service quickly, and more! Not only that, but you can sell products directly on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (the availability of selling features on those platforms depends on the size of your following).
5. Identifying the Flow of Conversions
By identifying the flow of conversions, you can optimize your campaigns and get more conversions.
Start by learning how customers found your shop. Is your traffic coming from social media, Google, or paid ads? If it’s the latter, are they finding you from search engine ads, social media ads, or other ads? Once you know which marketing strategies and platforms are driving the most traffic and customers, you can spend more time on them.
For example, if social media seems to be working, invest more money into building your social channels. If your PPC ads are paying off and driving conversions, don’t be afraid to spend more money on them.
You also need to learn which calls-to-action are most effective. Using A/B split testing, you can compare different calls-to-action, whether in a social media post or search engine ad, to see which ones drive more click-throughs and sales.
Which landing pages are working? That’s something else to consider. It’s not just how popular each landing page is, but how effective they are at driving conversions. A/B split testing can come in handy here too (set up similar landing pages to see which one converts more).
Finally, which products are the most popular? If a product is doing well, and people are going for it, start promoting it more. If a product isn’t converting well, consider slowly phasing it out and spending less money promoting it.
6. Getting the Help of Professionals
Finally, it’s worth getting the help of a professional to guide you in your strategy. Even if you’ve been in the eCommerce game for a while, it is very possible you are missing some things — important factors that can drastically alter your success rate.
A professional eCommerce marketing agency or strategist will be able to take the burden off you, help you determine which strategies are working, and help you get a better ROI by avoiding marketing traps and investing in the most effective strategies.
Final Thoughts
Your eCommerce marketing strategy should always be evolving and improving. While you want to stick to your plan, you also need to be flexible. Set some KPIs to see whether you are reaching your goals. Don’t be afraid to try out new things and stop doing something if it isn’t working for you.
