Are you looking for the BEST eCommerce marketing strategies to generate new leads and drive more sales?
Digital marketing can be one of the toughest aspects of running an online business. But the good news is that once you master the marketing strategies in this post, everything gets infinitely easier.
That’s because, today, we’ll walk you through 9 eCommerce marketing strategies that actually work.
These battle-tested tips will help you get more conversions, grow your email list, and make MORE sales from your eCommerce site.
Ready to get started? Let’s dive into the list.
1. Responsive Web Design
Your eCommerce strategy must incorporate a mobile-friendly design. The rise of mobile shopping is showing no signs of slowing down. Statistics show 53.9 percent of users purchase online on their phones. Imagine their frustration when your site is too big for their screen size.
Making site elements mobile-friendly is integral to your eCommerce marketing plan. Google improves the rank of highly responsive websites and penalizes those that aren’t. Think of mobile-friendliness as a central element of your overall eCommerce SEO strategy.
2. eCommerce SEO
One of the most important eCommerce marketing tactics for boosting your sales is optimizing your website and products for search engines. You should implement the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices and fully optimize the exact keywords your audience is searching for.
To optimize your product pages for SEO:
- Determine your target keywords: To pull the right key phrases, you can count on the help of SEO tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz.
- Use your keywords appropriately: You should include your keywords in your products’ title tag, meta description, and short URL.
- Create unique product descriptions: Make sure you describe each product in terms of size, shape, color, and features to provide consumers with a pleasant shopping experience.
- Include customer reviews: Reviews are an excellent way to generate keywords naturally. Every next comment left by your clients will keep your content fresh.
3. Email Marketing
Using personalized eCommerce email marketing should be part of any digital marketing plan. Consider it a time-tested strategy providing a direct means to reach your ideal customers. Is it an intrusive way to market? Not really. Forty-nine percent of people actually prefer to receive emails from brands they like.
There are several types of emails that you can send:
• Birthday emails: help you keep in touch with current customers
• Welcome emails: for new and returning customers
• Shopping cart abandonment: BI Intelligence reports 68 percent are recoverable
• Newsletters: touch base with clients and increase website traffic
• Thank you emails: nurture customer relationships and product promotion
• Promotional emails: inform customers about discounts and increase sales volume
4. Paid Campaigns
Pay per click (PPC), is a three-fold campaign that combines ads, promotions, and landing pages. The ad must contain an enticing offer that leads a person to the specific landing page for further information.
The thing to remember about PPC is that you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad, hence why the platform is called “pay-per-click”. When you work on your eCommerce marketing strategy, be sure to budget for these ads. There are three types of ads that you’ll use most often: paid search ads, product listing ads, and display ads.
5. Content marketing
Content marketing turns content into a tool for attracting customers and selling your products. It is a story your business is trying to sell. When done right, content marketing attracts attention, creates interest and starts conversations. You’re not just creating content, but making sure it’s reaching the right people at the right time. It also creates sustainable communication between a business and its audiences.
The content you create could be of various types like blog posts, videos, newsletters, infographics, and more. Follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of the content you produce should focus on being informative, while the other 20% of the content is focused on promoting your ecommerce website. And don’t underestimate the power of user-generated content from loyal customers. You can utilize this unique content through social media platforms, on your blog, and more (with their permission of course)!
6. Social Media Marketing
Social media has changed the way we do business today. Social media marketing allows you to connect with your audience on a one-to-one basis and makes your communication with them more intimate. You can boost traffic to your website, engage with the audience, generate leads, and reach out to a large, dynamic customer base.
Social media platforms allow you to create consistency and build a brand that becomes recognizable over time. Know the latest social media trends and include them in your marketing initiatives.
7. Free Shipping
If your business doesn’t offer a free shipping option for your customers, it’s time to think about adding one.
Free shipping is a bit hit. In fact, many customers, influenced by the likes of Amazon, have come to expect it these days, even on lower-value items. The benefit to your business is clear: the potential to increase sales and revenue.
In a survey carried out by Ask your target market, 70 percent of respondents said that they have a higher opinion of brands offering free delivery and shipping, 84 percent are more likely to shop on sites with this service, and 75 percent said they are more likely to shop if there’s a free shipping promotion, rather than other types of promotions or discounts.
8. Live Chat
Live chat provides a way for customers to ask questions and express concerns before making buying decisions. It’s also an opportunity for your agents to share product information and knowledge base articles to help your customers make better-informed decisions. This helps iron out any uncertainties and so increases your conversion rate while improving the shopping experience for your customers.
Live chat can even be used strategically to target website visitors on certain pages, or when they’ve been on pages (such as product pages for example) for a certain amount of time, helping boost that all-important customer engagement.
9. Discount Sales
There are a number of ways to run discount pricing in your eCommerce store. Many brands go with seasonal sales, but there is also plenty of scopes to discount by volume, buy one get one free, or just plain simple promotional discounts like 60% off everything.
Whichever methods you employ, it helps to try and create a sense of urgency. It’s all about using the psychology of scarcity. Countdown clocks showing a limited time left in a sale are a good way of doing this. And make sure to prominently display the discounts you are offering so customers are left in no doubt of the deals they are getting.
