Are you an e-commerce store owner? Would you like to skyrocket your sales?
The success of your e-commerce store depends on TWO VERY IMPORTANT elements.
- Marketing – Process of getting visitors to your e-commerce website.
- Website Optimisation – Providing a great website experience to the potential buyers to maximise their chances of buying your product.
Let me explain this a little more in detail.
Marketing for e-commerce websites
Setting up an e-commerce website is like building a store in the middle of a desert, no one knows you exist.
This is very different from a physical store which can be noticed by people moving around!
It doesn’t matter if you are selling the best product the world has ever seen! If nobody knows you exist, does your product matter?
This is why Marketing is CRITICAL for your success!
Marketing can be done in two ways.
You have traditional marketing via television, billboards, newspaper ads, magazine ads, etc.
Traditional marketing is good for your store brand to gain exposure by the masses.
BUT there is ONE BIG disadvantage to the traditional marketing model.
It can be very expensive.
But do not worry; you live at a time where technology has transformed our way of life – Especially with the rise of the internet.
More and more people are spending significant amounts of their day on the internet.
Did you know the average person spends up to 7.5 hours of their day on the internet?
It may be on their phones, tablets or computers.
This number is only set to rise even higher with passing time.
What does all this mean to YOU?
You have a marketing opportunity unlike any other traditional forms of marketing.
This is the realm of Digital Marketing.
Why Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing gives you total control!
What I mean is, you can choose to spend as little as you want on an advertisement or as much as you want. – YOU DECIDE.
And the best part – You can not only choose where you would like your advertisements to be shown.
You can specifically choose who sees your advertisement!
For example:
You can choose to advertise a women’s product only to women within a specific age bracket and who can afford to buy such a product.
Unlike traditional marketing advertisements, here you don’t waste money showing advertisements to anyone and everyone who aren’t even relevant to your product.
With all the digital marketing tools available today, you will know whether your advertisement is working or not within just 1-2 days!
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You need to find different ways to drive website traffic to your store.
There is no rule as to which is the best approach for your e-commerce store.
Every business is different. What works for one business, need not work for another business, as the variables involving the businesses are very different.
We have listed out some of the ways below.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM/PPC)
If your ecommerce store sells shoes, it is VERY IMPORTANT that shoes from your website show up as the first result when someone types “Running Shoes” on Google.
This would result in more people visiting your website, and more people would buy from you.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
As I just mentioned previously, the first result for the “Running Shoes” query is paid advertisement.
So what about the second search and below?
You’ll be happy to know these aren’t paid results. This happens because that particular website has been optimized for that query.
This is known as Search Engine Optimization
In my example these results have been optimized for the search query “Running Shoes”
It is SO IMPORTANT to get your ecommerce website to show up in the first few results.
Why?
It isn’t often that you click on a Google search result that comes 5th or 6th on the list.
And you can do this for FREE.
Get lots of FREE traffic sounds good, doesn’t it?
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- Social Media Handling
Would you ever buy something from a brand that you never heard of before?
Chances are that you won’t.
Consumers today have more options than ever before. You have to convince them to buy from you, and only you.
This is done with Social Media.
Every major store brand has a social media presence, either on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest.
This is the chance for you to showcase your brand’s personality to get potential customers to like your brand.
Your social media pages must be updated regularly and must provide content that your audience can consume.
This channel can also be used to announce sales, competitions, new products etc.
- Social Media Marketing
As more people are spending time more on the internet and social media, most of your target audience can be found on social media.
And this is a great place to advertise your brand, especially for e-commerce stores.
Facebook advertising has a track record of giving a very high return on investment, if done right.
All because you can choose whom to advertise to based on their age, gender, location, interests and much more!
Hence spending your money efficiently!
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- Google Display Ads
The advertisements you see when you are browsing a random website are from the Google Display Network.
These types of advertisements help people notice and remember your brand.
- Affiliate Marketing
Your customers are your best marketers. As they say, word of mouth is the best marketing your brand can ever get.
This strategy involves your customer promoting your product for you, and in return all you have to do is pay them a small reward per sale.
If you don’t get sales, you don’t pay anyone.
This strategy is essentially FREE!
Celebrity or Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has been around for thousands of years!
For one good reason!
It works!
Influencer is someone who can influence the thought process of their fans or followers.
Why else do you think Hyundai has invested Crores in getting Shah Rukh Khan to promote their car?
When people see others they admire, recommend your product, they are psychologically wired to try your product themselves!
You don’t need to pay a big movie star to get this done. On social media there are thousands of people who are influencers!
- Email Marketing
Everyone checks their email at least once a day.
There are so many benefits to email marketing. Once you have your customer’s email, you don’t have to pay a single rupee to send them an email again.
Emails are free!
This is one of the best ways to engage with previous customers for new products and sales, for free!
- Re-Marketing
Here is the uncomfortable truth.
There will be many instances, where a customer will visit your website, add your product to cart, but won’t finish the purchase!
They get distracted, and then they forget to come back.
The human attention span is getting shorter every day.
And this is only one of the scenarios.
Remarketing reminds your potential customer to complete your purchase.
Such remarketing campaigns are known to be very effective at acquiring sales for e-commerce stores.
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On-Site Optimization
Building a profitable online business isn’t just about setting it up well, making it look nice and then driving traffic to it.
Those are just the very first steps. There is a way of earning that sale or “conversion”.
Sadly, conversions don’t just happen.
You need to optimize your website so that the person who visits the website actually feels like buying and spending his money.
From the time a person comes to your website until they buy your product, we need to make their website experience pleasant, by:
- Enhancing the look of the website by updating the banners being displayed, with relevant products and offers
- Analyzing the customer interaction to determine how you can improve their website experienc
- Using various third-party analysis tools to understand and optimize the shopping process
- Ensuring your website loads quickly. Nobody likes waiting.
Did you know Amazon could lose 1.6 BILLION dollars if their website loaded one second slower?
Website speed and optimization is that important!
Your e-commerce store needs a manager
Just like a regular store, your e-commerce store needs a manager too.
The person who makes sure everything runs smoothly and everyone is doing their jobs right.
It is the manager’s job to know if the customer coming in is annoyed or unhappy, find out why and recommend changes to the management in order to make sure that customers feel safe and satisfied when they are in the store.
The work also involves arranging prominent items in the store to get most sales, display branding material where it’s most relevant to attract, inform and persuade the customers.
So as you can see, Marketing and Website optimization are vital to your store success.
In each area of marketing you need specific skills that will help you find success!
Without the right skills, you will only end up losing your hard earned money.
Luckily for you, there are various agencies who can take care of all these for you, so that your e-commerce business finds the success you deserve!
You can choose to work with a digital marketing agency that you are comfortable with or you can also choose to work with us.
If you are serious about taking your e-commerce business to the next level, click here.
We can talk and strategize about how we can make the internet work for you!
Get a Free Consultation with the Author (Lead Magnet)