5 eCommerce Marketing Ideas to Improve Sales and Product Awareness
eCommerce began in 1984 and has grown by an average rate of 20 percent per year every year since. Some experts expect this $461 million industry to expand by 48 percent over the next five years. With those kinds of numbers and a proven history of growth, it’s no wonder why so many people decide to go into online business.
Online storefronts face some challenges over traditional storefronts, however. People won’t notice you in passing when they happen to be in the area. They can’t come in to browse your selection and get to know you. You’re going to have to reach out to your market base where they are if you are going to get any visitors at all. Once you have them, you’ve got to keep their attention and earn their trust.
With that in mind, it is clear why eCommerce marketing is so important. The question is: how do you market effectively to drive sales and awareness? Here are five proven methods you can use right now
1. Optimize Your Website for eCommerce
People who shop online tend to have short attention spans. They are not going to be patient with pages that load slowly or layouts that are not user-friendly. They don’t want to spend a lot of time finding the product they need. Invest the time and resources needed to make your eCommerce site fast, functional and attractive.
Related post: 5 Easy Steps to Optimize Your eCommerce Checkout Page
2. Embrace SEO and Fill Your Site with Content
If you think products will just sell themselves on their own merit, you are mistaken. Even if they would, Google isn’t going to recognize your site as relevant if there isn’t any content to analyze. At the very least, you need to craft comprehensive product descriptions that speak to both the consumer and the search engines. Incorporate relevant keywords in these descriptions and find ways to add some to your site as a whole.
Another effective way to tap the power of SEO is through adding a blog to your site. This gives you a platform to build trust with your customers by offering relevant and useful information for free. It also gives search engines more content to analyze. So it’s an excellent place to work in keywords that you might have trouble with through product descriptions alone.
3. Take Advantage of Social Media Platforms
Social media is an inexpensive yet powerful outlet for eCommerce marketing. If you like to do things yourself and can build your own following, it can even be free. There are billions of social media users online every day. Creating a presence on any one of the more popular platforms has the potential to drive people to your site in droves.
The trick here is to be consistent. Don’t go through the trouble to establish yourself on social media and then abandon your following. People need to hear from you consistently or they will soon forget about you. If you’re having trouble coming up with new things to post, consider hiring a specialist or a ghostwriter to keep your profile fresh.\
Related article: How to Grow and Expand Your eCommerce Store: 7 Marketing Tips
4. Establish an Email Marketing Strategy
You don’t even have to purchase a list of email addresses if you don’t want to. Your eCommerce site is already collecting information on your customers. The best customers are repeat customers, so reach out to them. Take advantage of the information you already have to engineer a custom-tailored campaign to bring consumers back.
You can offer exclusive sales or discounts to your loyal customers just for coming back. You can also encourage them to share your store with others in exchange for some special deals. Sometimes you don’t need to try to sell at all. Just send them a note of thanks, holiday greetings, birthday wishes or some useful information. They will appreciate the gesture and want to come back because you’ve shown you care about more than their money.
See also: 9 Marketing Strategies to Boost Your eCommerce Site
5. Invest in Targeted Ads
Have you ever casually discussed interest in a product with a friend? And then the very next time you got online you saw an ad for that exact product? Google can do some amazing things these days in figuring out exactly what people are looking for.
Targeted ads can bring you traffic that is almost guaranteed to convert to sales. At the very least, it puts your name in front of qualified buyers, building awareness of your brand. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to make this method effective, either. Just a few dollars a day can net some amazing results.
eCommerce marketing works best when you use several strategies together, so don’t feel like you have to choose just one of these ideas. Pick two or three that you know you can handle right now and get started. You’ll soon see the benefit of your labor.
See article: How to Grow and Expand Your eCommerce Store: 7 Marketing Tips
