Think about where you are in your current e-commerce adventure. Maybe you’ve just installed a nice little shop to sell your new running shoe models, or maybe your drop shipping business is building a solid customer base, and you need to engage some employees to handle all orders. Maybe you’ve just finished your time on Shark Tank, or Oprah talked about your product as one of her “favorite things”.
Regardless of your situation, everyone gets to that point where e-commerce marketing becomes a huge factor: see my other post with the best marketing tips from the best online stores 50 . How do you take a step back and evaluate your current marketing tactics? Are you doing everything right or can you implement other marketing campaigns to attract more devoted customers?
E-commerce marketing is a sensitive subject because it is difficult to find all the suggestions in one place. Fortunately, we have done the work for you, guiding you on the path to marketing success and providing a list for you to stick to the wall and tick off as you complete any e-commerce marketing method. Read on to learn more.
1. Create a content marketing strategy before starting
Nothing good starts without building a plan. Just as a film studio goes through the pre-production process, an e-commerce business needs a content marketing strategy. Write a list of all the methods you plan to use to reach customers, be it blog posts, videos or newsletters.
Make sure you check this strategy every week or month, evaluating how the content creation and distribution process is going.
2. Generate an email marketing campaign that is automated
Email marketing is the foundation of effective e-commerce marketing strategies because it is still one of the best ways to influence your customers and convince them to buy more.
Not to mention, consumers are known to open e-mails, even if they include simple advertisements. Use an email marketing campaign to stay in touch with your customers, send them useful information and sell your products.
3. With social media, consider the diversification of your platforms
Social media is always a difficult sale for e-commerce companies, as it is difficult to understand which platforms work best in certain markets. There is a simple solution to this. Diversify and finally cut off platforms that don’t work well.
It’s just like investing in stocks. Get rid of the risk and realize what options are making you the most money. Create Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus pages. Spread your content through these means and use social media analysis tools to understand which ones work best. Even if one works better than another, the spread of your presence on social media offers all your customers a way to get in touch with your company.
Who knows? You can only have 100 followers on Facebook, but one of them could be your best customer. If you remove that presence on Facebook you risk losing that person.
4. Put a personalization strategy into action
Personalization is the best new form of marketing since nobody wants to spend money on faceless companies. The idea is to mark your company with a person, using one or two people as “face” of your business.
Address people with their names in emails, send videos and pictures of your employees and show how your products are made. Every little detail of the customization makes your customers special and gives you a peek into the inner workings of your company.
CRM likes HubSpot are particularly useful for this, as they allow you to organize and track customer information so you can better customize interactions with them.
5. Create your original content
Nothing creates a strong connection with your customers like the original content. Link in your content marketing strategy from above, you have the unique opportunity to choose between non-original or original content.
Many companies use content taken from all over the Web in their e-commerce SEO strategies to free up time for other business activities. This, however, does not have the same effect as the original content. How would your customers react if they knew an original corporate podcast came out every week?
Original content such as videos, blog posts, audio segments and eBooks help you build your e-commerce site as a knowledge base for those interested in learning more about your market.
6. Hit it with contextual marketing
Contextual marketing has various meanings, but what we mean is to use your marketing in formats that connect with your demographic data, putting messages in the right places at the right time.
The perfect example of contextual marketing is the famous Oreos tweet Super Bowl, in which they played off the Super Bowl XLVII stadium lighting problem to show that “you can still crush in the dark.” It was the perfect combination of topicality and humor, for an audience that loves snacks during a game.
7. Opt for user-generated content
User-generated content is a wonderful way to create interaction with your customers, without having to invest a lot of money or time in the campaign. Doritos is known to have held a Super Bowl commercial presentation competition every year, which means they don’t have to pay for a production team to design a video.
This excites Doritos fans and Doritos ends with a commercial. It works well when you ask people to post photos, videos or even blog posts.
8. Implement a loyalty program
A solid loyalty program brings people back to your store and makes them feel appreciated for spending money on your business. Convince your loyal customers to spend a little more money and receive a reward for doing so.
9. Automate your social networks
Not all social content needs automation, but you’ll find that planning your social strategy frees up time for other activities in your company.
For example, when planning a month of posting on Facebook, you no longer have to think about it for the rest of the month. It is still necessary to moderate comments, but throwing down social posts in a day means not having to change gear every week or day to publish content on social networks.
10. Reach customers in their native languages
It is common for e-commerce stores to sell items to people around the world. Just because you speak English doesn’t mean you can’t sell a hat to someone who speaks Portuguese.
Reach foreign customers by providing translation capabilities to your online store. Most e-commerce platforms, Ecommerce WordPress themes, and WooCommerce models provide translation settings so as not to exclude people in other countries that do not understand your language.
11. A / B Test your checkout procedure
The people behind SimCity are famous for testing their checkout process on a constant basis, leading to improved sales, because they know exactly what types of buttons and words convince people to buy.
An e-commerce marketing plan without A / B testing is navigating blindly, so it is essential to perform tests during the entire checkout procedure. This helps you see where people leave their carts or find it difficult to pay you.
12. Optimize for the mobile world
This has nothing to do with creating an app or a mobile site. Nowadays your customers crave mobile responsiveness. They don’t want to open a completely different mobile site to see an interface optimized for mobile devices.
Consider implementing a reactive interface so that your e-commerce site turns into devices like tablets and smartphones.
13. Think about advertising on mobile devices
Mobile advertising combines geolocation and mobile ads to connect customers to your store while sitting on a train or in a doctor’s waiting room.
14. Start to target wearable technology
All the big technology companies are releasing wearable technologies like watches and even glasses. How can you connect with these customers who always have the technology at their fingertips? These interfaces look different than the average smartphone, so your company has to adapt.
15. Hire someone to create long content
The long content of the forms is a good way to emerge from all the normal blog posts. Long content takes a long time, so it may be necessary to hire someone, but it plunges deep into topics (sometimes boring), making them engaging and useful for the most interested users.
16. Use social media for the ideal rehearsal atmosphere
Social ads are interesting because you rarely have to spend a penny to test them. For example, Facebook lets you send all the messages you want on your business page. Once one of the posts receives a group of likes and comments, you know it’s something that customers are interested in.
Once you’ve identified successful posts, you can spend some money and use the same ad posts.
17. Brand yourself with your personal taste
Making a face for your business is one thing, but customers want to be told by the people who run the show. If you hire fewer writers or content designers, it becomes difficult to maintain a standard voice.
Develop a guide for these people so that they know you want a voice that communicates something fun or more professional.
18. Reveal the identities of your authors
One way to get around the “one voice” dilemma is to reveal the identities of your authors. Branding under a name is fine, but visitors to your site like to see all the faces and names that contribute to your blog or video channel.
This develops your personalization strategy and reveals who is at work behind the scenes.
19. Create a face (possibly fictitious) for your company
We talked about creating a face for your business above, but what about using a fictional character? The Geico gecko is an ideal example because everyone associates the brand with the little green guy.
20. Build authority with online discussion areas
A forum is the most common way to create a community in your e-commerce store, and that’s because people are familiar with the format.
Notice boards, forums and even chat areas create your e-commerce store as an authoritative discussion platform, using a unique form of user-generated content to guide your store.
22. Make your delivery options better than the rest
Zappos has a reputation for fast delivery and quick occasional delivery for casual customers. This makes people special. Does your company stand out in terms of delivery? Think about how to speed up the delivery process for a simple way to stand out from your competitors.
23. Focus on the local brand and marketing
Not all e-commerce marketing plans require this, but if you have a connection with a brick and mortar store you can focus on the local brand and marketing. Reach customers near your store with geolocation tools and targeting with local search engines.
24. Search for alternative automated marketing techniques
Do you send birthday or anniversary messages to your customers? What about automatic messages when people sign up for your email campaigns or buy a product in your store?
Free your time and give your customers a reason to come back with automated email campaigns.
25. Make instructional videos to create a connection and show products
YouTube channels are always a fun way to get in touch with customers, but what about focusing on tutorial tutorials? If you sell something like gardening tools, customers may not know the best ways to use the things they buy. The videos bring them back to your store and ensure they feel ready to buy from you.
26. Get creative with your frequently asked questions
The FAQ page is an area that receives many visits to e-commerce stores, but shows the culture of your company? Think about whether or not you want to reveal a silly or professional culture and let it shine in the frequently asked questions.
27. Compress the photos into all your content
People are more likely to click on links and read content if they include photos. Avoid archive photos and consider taking personal photos to keep people interested in your content.
28. Turn your company into its own multimedia outlet
Creating a magazine or TV channel sounds like a trait, but many companies are making the leap to share their original content on various different media.
29. Stay up to date on industry news
Industry news offers powerful content ideas to share with your customers. Some of these contents may seem a little complicated for consumers, so it’s up to you to break down and make digestion easier.
30. Welcome Controversial topics to generate discussions
Do you sell holsters for guns on your e-commerce site? Are you always creating blog posts that promote the freedom to carry weapons? It’s too one-dimensional. Customers are smart and want to hear arguments from all sides. Think about creating content content that makes people burst.
31. Forget about catering to search engines
One of the best ways to creep into search engine rankings and create social media shares is to completely forget about keyword optimization. Not only does this often seem unnatural, but you can distinguish yourself with titles and creative content.
32. Use Pay Per Click Marketing wisely
Pay per click marketing is extremely cheap if used correctly. Perform numerous campaigns and test all of them until you find the ideal options.
33. Dip in the pool of Reddit
Reddit is a huge forum with discussions for everything from bicycles to romantic fiction. Did you know that the platform offers advertising opportunities? Find the subreddits suitable for your sector and include them in your e-commerce marketing strategy.
34. Upsell your products without pushing too much
Hit your visitors with relevant product links, but stay away from constant upsells. VistaPrint is a good example of what not to do on your e-commerce site. They affect customers with upsells, many of which are not related to the shopping cart.
35. Activate Image Boosters with Instagram
Instagram is a closed community for people who love images. If you can take pictures of your products, Instagram is perfect for sharing product previews, your articles in action and content posted by users.
36. Use tools to reduce abandoned carts
A / B tests and tools to test the user experience put you in the minds of your customers. Implement some of these tools to find exactly why your customers leave your store.
37. Start stores on multiple platforms (Ebay and Facebook)
You can sell your items on platforms like eBay, Amazon , Etsy and Facebook. All of these have new opportunities for revenue streams, so give them the chance to find more customers.
38. Optimize your email acquisition forms
Does your email catching the popup area turn off customers? Do you offer a promotion or a free eBook for registration? Use of the A / B test to improve e-mail capture modules and involve multiple subscribers.
39. Go crazy with the newsletter
The newsletter is a message that comes out every week or month and is completely non-automated. This is an opportunity to share unusual content and personal messages.
40. Remind people of their wish lists
Wish lists are often forgotten, but they show you the items that people have thought of buying. Consider sending messages to convince your customers to complete the purchase process.
41. Try to make sure you have the least amount of steps for people to get what they want
The best way to do this is to have actual customers go through the checkout process and send feedback on how fast it was. Could you remove a passage completely? Only the tests reveal the answer.
42. Push your customers to product reviews
Product reviews provide the social credibility par excellence, convincing other customers to buy products based on user feedback. How many times have you bought something online because of its ratings and reviews?
43. Focus on free marketing options
The assignment of an article in a very successful magazine requires a lot of work and, sometimes, money. Why not switch to blogs with a huge following in your market? Almost every company can locate a blog that writes about its products.
Even better, if you approach smaller blogs, your presentation usually takes only a few minutes and doesn’t end up in a huge stack of other presentations.
44. Talk to your visitors
Do you have a live chat module on your e-commerce site? Do you constantly respond to comments on your social pages? Visitors like to talk to the people in your company, so give them the attention they crave.
45. Allow evaluations in the discussion areas
Forums and customer discussion areas work well, but what if you added an extra element to the community? Some companies allow ratings in forums or you can earn badges when commenting a number of times.
46. Generate reports to anticipate future sales
Use your reports to think about how you can change your e-commerce marketing strategy in the future. Without these relationships, it is not possible to identify less performing aspects of your company.
47. Implement a plan for monthly market research
Are you dating a new product? Do you have any idea how your customers will respond? Market research puts the product in the hands of the customers, giving you a taste of how they will see the new object.
48. Donate products for others to review
You have a much better chance of receiving a review or a story from a magazine if you send a product to writers and publishers to test. This not only helps with their review, but works as a small gift for them to publish your article faster.
49. Set up a plan for SEO on the site
Even if your content strategy should focus on helping users and not on search engines, your SEO e-commerce needs keywords to help search engines identify you as a store that sells certain products.
50. Find something exceptional to distribute
Can you buzz about your business with a lottery or a free gift? Ask people to share your company on social media for more voices. This also works on email registration forms or simply to engage customers with interesting contests.
I hope this list helps you in your ecommerce marketing journey. Let me know in the comments if you have any additions or questions.