eCommerce is the practice of electronically conducting commercial business through the internet. It is conducted through computers, smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other smart devices. Almost anything, be it a product or a service, can be bought or sold through eCommerce today. Which means that more and more companies – big or small – are taking the route of eCommerce to meet their revenue benchmarks.
But why is that? eCommerce has 2 primary advantages over traditional means of doing business. These are:
- Online Product Marketing
Having to market products through the use of physical stores is a thing of the past. Digital marketing has changed the way products and services can be presented to a customer base, by putting all of it online, removing all the money and effort required in maintaining a brick-and-mortar store.
- Reaching Millions in a Jiffy
Everyone is online! The speedy increase in internet availability and smartphones essentially means that your advertising has the potential to reach customers wherever in the globe you may please.
Digital Marketing is the procedure of marketing a brand through digital means, which means through digital ads, social media posts, or electronic mails, among others. Digital Marketing isn’t exclusive from eCommerce marketing; In fact, eCommerce absolutely depends on digital marketing to grow. Everyday, eCommerce companies make use of numerous digital marketing and eCommerce SEO services in order to keep themselves ahead of the competition. Since Digital Marketing is primarily focussed on two things – Reach and ROI – it channels all strategies to put a brand at the forefront of these fields.
Through the use of digital marketing, eCommerce makes a colossal income as it makes a different approach in procuring clients and building brand esteem. Analysis has shown that 37 million visits on social media had led to approximately 529,000 orders. Among such sites, Facebook seems to make the most difference in growing website activity and traffic, with upto 85% of the sales coming from it.
This proves that customers too are starting to choose eCommerce over traditional businesses when presented with the option. What digital marketing services essentially do is make sure these options reach potential customer bases, in the form of digital ads, social media posts, and others. Here are some techniques and services offered by digital marketing to ensure maximum reach to potential customers.
- Search Engine Optimization
The world of SEO is a true blessing for any eCommerce website. Search Engine Optimization is a procedure that uses organic search engine results to increase the quantity of traffic to the site. SEO services incorporate selected keywords into your webpage content, thereby making sure your webpage shows up near the top of the SERP when those words are searched.
- Search Engine Marketing
SEM has proven to be a perfect channel for quickly achieving short-term results. The purpose of Search Engine Marketing is to make sure Google advertises your website at the top of the Search Engine Results Page when certain specific keywords are searched. Google Ads is an effective and popular SEM platform, and a channel for “paid search” that eCommerce businesses should certainly focus on.
- Content Marketing
Both search engines as well as customers love new and interactive content, and there’s a huge variety of content to choose from, including written content, images, videos, and sometimes even audio content. Making and maintaining a relevant and regularly updated blog, and also writing guest blogs advertising your business on other host sites is a good way to not just begin content marketing, but also stay ahead in the SEO curve, using proper keywords and tags. You might even see an influx of business based on who is doing the writing.
Consider making a Youtube channel as well, given that it has over a billion active users, and chances are that somewhere in there you will find a target audience, and even a potential customer base. Tutorial videos, unboxing videos, and any number of videos following the new trends is bound to generate traffic from not just Youtube, but any number of other sites where videos are a popular way of interacting, such as Vimeo, Instagram, and Tumblr.
- Strategic Email Marketing
Email marketing is still alive and well, and remains one of the most effective channels that digital marketing services across the world insist on using. It has time again proven to be a perfectly viable way to reach past, as well as potential customers, and thus increase both website traffic as well as revenue.
Emailing newsletters attached with offers, or incentives to past customers can be a good way to gather interest in your website. Websites sometimes even send emails to remind customers of their abandoned shopping carts. Personalised emails certainly go a long way in helping customers connect with your business.
- Social Media Marketing
There is barely anyone left that is not active on some platform of social media, with Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, and innumerable others having pretty much become a regular habit. Therefore, it has become far simpler for brands to reach their customers using social media. As social media slowly but surely takes over the world, it has become imperative for digital marketing professionals and digital marketing services to use paid ads and sponsored posts on these sites to keep growing their customer base.
Upto 90% of marketers have said that social media marketing has proven beneficial for their business (socialmediaexaminer.com). This particular channel of digital marketing has proven to be especially helpful for new and small eCommerce businesses to grow. Since small businesses tend to be more community and individual focussed, they can provide personal attention over social media.
- Influencer Marketing & Affiliate Marketing
Social media influencers, essentially individuals or groups in social media with a high number of followers, can be a good way to bring awareness about your brand. Influencers have the ability to create communities of people that like and trust them. Through paid partnerships, it is possible to attract a huge customer influx through just a single influencer.
Affiliate marketing is a tactic used by over 81% of brands (webmarketsupport.com), and involves using the help of other eCommerce sites, or “affiliates”, to advertise and sell your products and services in exchange for a commission. While this is an old fashioned technique, it is still effective.
All of this will help create a better brand image. There are 2 important practices that will make sure that your digital marketing campaigns will be successful in the long run.
- Making A Good Website
Your website should always implement a responsive and well optimised design, meaning that it should be easily accessible and interactable through any computers as well as phones and tablets. The website should make use of chatbots to keep customers engaged, while also responding to their queries.
- Personalised Focus to Customers
Loyal customers tend to be long-time customers, and repeat business is always welcome. You could consider building a loyalty program for your customers, wherein repeat customers will get points, perks, or services based on the amount of business they’ve provided you. Also personalise your marketing to suit the needs of individual customers, which may range from sending mails to a customer addressing them by their name, to implementing a smart feed on your website so that individual customers may get to their chosen or required services and products easily.
Digital Marketing has made it significantly easier for eCommerce companies to grow in reach, sometimes within a very short span of time. Digital marketing professionals not only manage to grab maximum attention to a brand, but also convert that attention into sales. There is bound to be more digital marketing channels opening up in the near future, as technology grows and options keep getting numerous.
