Millions of searches are made on Google every day, and for every single search, there are tons of results.
The competition in the online/eCommerce market is extremely high. Starting an online business is not going to be a piece of cake when the Internet is already occupied with multiple businesses focused around a particular niche.
Well, setting up an eCommerce website is not a big deal, the challenge lies in growing your business. What you offer, many online businesses are probably leading in that niche.
When people type their search query, it is highly unlikely that you would appear on the top of the search results; not even close, let alone top.
To set yourself apart and go past your competitors, you need to focus on your eCommerce marketing strategies so that your brand becomes known to the netizens.
Ecommerce Marketing Strategies
From low-cost to high-cost, you will find various types of marketing strategies that would help you in boosting your business. However, in this write-up, I have put forward 6 best eCommerce marketing strategies.
1. Search Engine Optimization
SEO is an integral part of eCommerce marketing.
No matter how well-designed your website is, its existence does not even matter if it is not SEO optimized. How would the Internet users know that your brand exists unless it appears on the search results?
This is what SEO is for- to aware Google or other search engines about your business and its offerings so that when a user performs a search and the query relates to your business, the search engine displays your website under results.
Thus, the primary thing to perform when it comes to increasing the visibility of your brand is optimizing your website for SEO.
Do keyword research. List out the keywords that you want to rank for on the search engine and place them on your web pages. Avoid keyword stuffing; it can harm the performance of your website.
Keywords are to inform the search engine what your business is based on. When the bot crawls your website and identifies a few keywords that have been put more stress upon, it will suggest your website to the users for queries around those keywords.
2. Social Media
The second in my list of eCommerce marketing strategy is social media.
Today, nothing comes close to social media when we talk about marketing an eCommerce website. Social media networks like Facebook and Instagram, which were earlier meant for entertainment purpose only, have now turned into huge marketing platforms.
Why social media?
The primary reason why you should consider social media marketing is the audience base. Facebook and Instagram have nearly 2.6 billion and 1 billion active users worldwide, respectively. With such a huge user count, 90-95% of your target audience is likely to be present on these platforms.
Secondly, they are completely free. You can go and create your brand page right now, within a few minutes. Social media gives a wide organic reach to your brand and products, and you can acquire a lot of customers through the platform.
To boost your brand awareness, you can also spend a few bucks in paid promotion by taking the help of social media ads.
Just a suggestion- Do not use social media just for promotion. Use it to nurture the relationship with your followers. Build connection, answer their queries and engage with them.
Apart from Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter are also amongst the targeted platforms by Brands. It’s just up to you where you want to market your products and how much time you have to manage those accounts.
3. Reach out to Influencers
Adding to the eCommerce marketing strategy is Influencer Marketing.
Influencer marketing is the current trend. It is the form of marketing where you reach out to an influencer and ask him/her to promote your brand or products. You pay them a fee and they endorse your brand.
How much an influencer charge depends on their popularity. Someone popular among the netizens and with more followers will charge comparatively high than with those less popular.
As the term suggests, Influencer marketing influences the purchasing decision of the followers since they have a liking towards the influencer.
In other words, you can say Influencer marketing is like a small version of advertisements done on a larger scale such as Television advertisements.
4. Content Marketing and Guest Post
You simply cannot overlook Content Marketing when it comes to e-commerce marketing strategy.
Create a blog for your website and start writing. When you write, make sure you are providing some kind of value to your readers. It should not sound completely promotional.
I know you want to link your products but it should not be done in a way that disturbs the content flow. Identify topics around your niche, find out what people are searching and then write a blog post that revolves around it.
In this way, you will be able to promote your product besides helping your readers in getting the answers they were looking for.
Content marketing isn’t just about blogging. You can write a guide and provide an eBook to your users, and to promote that guide, you can make use of lead magnets.
For further marketing, you can reach out to other publications and do Guest posting, which not only gives you a backlink to your website but also provides you with the opportunity to present your brand in front of a new audience.
You can find many relevant Guest posting websites on the Internet. Contact them, follow their guidelines and submit your posts.
5. Testimonials
Nothing can match the happiness level of a brand when their clients or customers leave a positive remark about them, which we call as testimonials.
The purpose of any business is to provide quality products and services to their customers/clients. And when they feel satisfied with your brand, it’s a sign of loyalty and trust in your brand which is very crucial from a Brand’s point of view.
When a client gives positive feedback, highlight that testimonial on your website, primarily on the Home page. You can also promote the testimonials on social media platforms.
Testimonials are helpful to encourage new visitors to place trust in your brand and turn them into your loyal customers.
6. Referral Marketing
Referral Marketing is one of the popular eCommerce marketing strategies.
Whenever a brand is new in the market, marketers or business owners take the help of referral marketing to popularize it and acquire new customers.
No customers would be interested in a new brand. To evoke their interest, you can launch referral programs where you reward users with some incentives or commissions whenever they refer your brand/website to other people.
When people get benefits, one refers to another and a long chain is formed. This boosts your brand awareness.
Final Thoughts
I also wanted to include email marketing in this list of eCommerce marketing strategies. But it is a very basic one, and hence I avoided explaining it in brief.
The above-mentioned six strategies have proved to be extremely useful for many online businesses. Try them out and let me know how it worked out for you.
Also, feel free to comment if you have some more points to add.
