This article could be written in a thousand different ways, but I still would leave out countless things, because it is such a vast subject! Online stores must have a marketing strategy for eCommerce.
So, I’m going straight to the practical side of eCommerce marketing planning – Channels. We’ll be talking in terms of channels that can drive relevant traffic to your store.
After understanding the importance of these channels, businesses can decide how much money they can spend on each of these channels, and eventually, they’ll have a sorted eCommerce Marketing Plan.
As spending increases, it’s important for businesses to have an exact idea of how much they should invest in marketing.
You must first make sure that your product pages are ready before we move on to other channels. These pages must be flawless because marketing’s goal is to direct prospects to them and boost sales. If the marketing efforts are top-notch, but product pages are not user-centric, you’ll not be able to sell products.
Sincerity dictates that prospects will not care much about your marketing; instead, they are more interested in the product. If your product pages are creating troubles, it’s a big-fat full stop for you.
What to keep in mind when viewing product pages
● Make sure your pages are content rich and cover all the primary keywords.
● Customers should find all the necessary details covering all the attributes like color, size, brand name, manufacturer details, product variants, features, specifications, etc.
● Ensure all the product pages are properly indexed so that search engines can crawl them and give rankings accordingly.
● Add quality images and videos to give out more details about products.
● Check out the purchase process and make sure customers don’t face any roadblock.
eCommerce: The Three Channels
1.Search engines
2.Social Media
3. You can also find out more about the content on this page.
There are many marketing channels, but the top three are extremely effective and popular at this time.
Create an eCommerce Marketing Plan for 2022
1. Search engines
Google, Bing Yahoo DuckDuckGo Ask and Ask is the top search engine in the World right now. Google is the dominant search engine according to Statcounter. It has a market share of 92.85%. Search engines are a major source of traffic for your online store.
So, we just can’t ignore this!
You can get search engine traffic in two different ways.
● Organically
● Paid Visits
How to Get organic visits from Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows you to organically get traffic relevant from search engines. SEO is a series of tasks that shows search engines how your brand is better suited to the market than the competition.
The unique SEO process is to create engaging content, and to collect references in order to achieve a higher ranking on specific queries relating to your product.
Google has, as you can see from the picture, ranked relevant search results by analysing their content and references on other websites. Google has over 200 criteria to rank pages and judge them.
SEO has an enormous future if we consider it a distinct industry. SEO, even though Google started displaying “paid results” (we will discuss this in the following segment), is the method that every eCommerce site needs to establish a name. SEO must be included in the marketing budget of any eCommerce store that is growing.
How to get paid visits from search engines?
Each major search engine offers paid services whereby you pay for every click to achieve higher rankings.
Search engines have various ways to showcase your sponsored products where you can set up your budget and display your result without investing efforts in SEO (it’s a time-taking process.) Here’s an example:
The bid amount will determine whether your PPC result is displayed above organic results.
There are bids involved.
Due to the fact that many people are competing for similar products, all of them will bid differently on keywords. Your result in paid ads will be decided based on the competition and the amount you’re willing to spend on one click.
Search engines like Google and Bing offer similar services. To get the relevant traffic, it is important to target your audience with keywords and identify their needs.
It is important to adhere to the guidelines that apply for all paid advertising. You cannot sell certain products on this platform, such as tobacco, military gear, recreational drugs and so forth. There’s nothing to worry about unless your products are generic and approved by Google.
2. Social Media
If you market your social media channels correctly, they can provide a lot of traffic to your website. Facebook, Instagram LinkedIn and Snapchat platforms are great for increasing your audience.
● Facebook & Instagram
Regularly posting about your product on social media platforms will increase your following and increase your chances to sell your product. Facebook lets you create your shop on the site and send customers directly to your online shop.
Here’s an example of LG Electronics’ Facebook page where it posts about new products and spread awareness about its brand.
Here’s a great example of One Plus – One of the Top Mobile Manufacturers in the world. It has launched a Facebook Shop and displayed their main products.
Instagram is a powerful platform for spreading the word about your brand, and selling online. We’re taking an example of Converse – A legendary brand in Sneakers.
You can see the pictures below to understand how Converse used Instagram’s product tags feature. The pictures can be viewed and the Converse shop directly accessed without the user leaving the app.
You can attract people to your Instagram account by using high-quality photos and hashtags.
Paid Advertisements On Facebook & Instagram
Facebook and Instagram have advertising options.
Facebook does not allow you to directly market your product. To attract new followers and to build brand awareness, you can produce engaging content.
Paid advertising can help you promote content as well as gather engagement. Here’s a good example of Patrick Adair Designs:
Instagram lets you promote products via paid advertisements and to target your most appropriate prospects according to their interests.
Instagram ads can be a very effective channel for your brand for both – building a huge audience and redirecting right prospect to your store. Here’s a great example of Myntra – An Online Apparel Store.
Talking about LinkedIn, it’s a professional network and can be an excellent channel for content promotion. LinkedIn was originally designed for B2B companies, but it is now expanding to include more industries. You can create a company profile on LinkedIn and post valuable updates as an online retailer.
LinkedIn Advertisement: Paid Advertising
LinkedIn has paid advertisement options where you can target potential customers in various ways such as through sponsored content or personalized ads. You can also place ads on your sidebar. This can be a great platform for promoting books, eBooks and other products like themes, plug-ins, graphics, graphic packages, plugins or add-ons.
PSDCenter is promoting one of their BigCommerce Themes through LinkedIn. Have a peek:
3. You can also find out more about the content on this page.
It is one of oldest methods to market your shop and attract readers. Content is a slower channel than other marketing channels to produce leads. It is important to build a brand and instill trust among the public.
Writing content may also attract potential customers. Contributing your content on other platforms can help you promote your product. This will increase your ranking on the search engines.
Here Mad Fish Digital shared some insights on creating an ecommerce content marketing strategy that drives ROI.
Ecommerce Conversion tips: Bonus
Here’s 9 ecommerce conversion tips that will help you increase those conversion rates.
1. Focus on What You Have to Offer
Showing your customers what you offer is the first thing that they should do when visiting your store. Display your products or categories on the homepage. Customers will be more likely to buy from you if you offer more.
2. Let Customers Know About You
Most companies don’t think their ‘about us’ page is important, but you’d be surprised. Tell the reader what you stand for, and what you’re all about. Most people are more likely to choose a retailer if they share their ethical values.
3. Trust Signals
Show customers that you’re a company you can trust. Use customer reviews to show prospective customers what they’ll be buying, and allow them to leave their own when they’ve bought from you.
4. Remind yourself to cross sell
You shouldn’t push a customer into buying another product, but it’s always a good idea to show them items they’d be interested in. If they’ve just bought something from you, they’re more likely to take a look at what you’re suggesting.
5. You can use the cart recovery on site
Carts are abandoned every day, but they can be saved. You can offer customers a discount if they finish the transaction on site.
6. Don’t Try And Convert Everyone
It sounds like a good idea to try and convert 100% of your traffic, but in reality it just won’t happen. Instead, look at converting the visitors who fit your buyer profiles, as they’re much more likely to buy.
7. Encourage social sharing
When someone has just bought from you, they’re feeling good about you and what you offer. It’s time to get them to post their purchases on social media. You can use it to spread the news about your store and even give them a discount if they share.
8. How to Write Excellent Product Descriptions
Content expert John Lane at Elite Assignment Help says, “A good product description will go a long way towards getting you that sale. Make sure you’re writing descriptions that highlight the product benefits to customers, and speak to them directly.”
9. Check Your SEO
SEO is important everywhere on your site, so look at how you’re targeting the right people with yours. If you’re bringing in a more interested audience, they’re much more likely to buy from you as a whole.
It is important to determine how much money you will spend in order to implement your eCommerce Marketing Plan for 2022. SEO is one of the most basic things you’ll need, so make sure to cover that. You can click on the link to find out more about SEO in USA.
The social media space is free unless you pay for advertisements. Talking about content, it’s a never-ending game. There are thousands of topics to choose from and you can spread the content through various marketing channels. You can find a writer who will write interesting content for digital marketing. Check out our list of the best ecommerce marketing companies.
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