A business’s success depends largely on its organizing activities. If a company is systematically following the strategic activities, it is bound to go great guns.

A well-built marketing plan can do a lot, but backing up with strategies can perform fantastically.

That’s what I intend to do here in this article, you get-

Why is E-commerce Marketing Important for Online Business?

E-commerce marketing is the activity of hooking top of the funnel clients to purchase. It has an enormous effect on e-businesses. It is a smart method to bring effective results. By implementing it, many brands have reached maximum audiences and fulfilled their targets.

Here the importance of e-commerce marketing has been pointed out.

• Requires no or minimum cost.
• Ensure an easier working process.
• Promotes your business.
• Easy access to clients everywhere.
• Creates revenue and increases sales.
• Ensures clients’ convenience.
• Helps economic development.

How To Structure an E-commerce Marketing Plan?

Marketing plan varies from business to business considering campaigns, process, target, and results. Therefore, it is customized whenever required, meaning every single marketing activity requires a separate plan and strategy.

There are some common steps more or less every online business marketing includes. Combining all those, we have finalized a ‘one for all’ plan. Remember, this is a basic format.

Step 1: Summarize Your Process

You want to sell products online with a distinctive purpose. Therefore, have a summary [aka executive summary] with marketing targets, mission, vision, metrics, future thoughts, and other contextual information.

Step 2: Set The Target

You have your specific target audience; make sure to know them well; these will pique their interest in you. Gender, age, locations they live, spending capacity- information like these are of great value while targeting them.

Step 3: Analyze Market and Competitors

Check out the market of your product, how this is performing, note down what approaches your competitors are taking. Also, have a simple SWOT analysis of your competitors. You will have something incredible.

Step 4: Strategize Workings

Time for actual work begins here. Now you have to come up with your strategy with which you want to approach first, who will be in charge, how to manage work and divide them if needed, product distribution, pricing strategy, and so on. In this sector, you can have a map to keep track of your ‘to-do list’.

Step 5: Test Before Launching

After you have come up with a strategy, go for a test before launching. This way, you will know what works well/is worse to make necessary amendments and ultimately curve the most suitable method to progress.

Step 6: Promote Your Product

Time for plan execution- now starts working. Promote your products with different marketing strategies (mentioned below). It will take some time to get a response.

Step 7: Keep Track of Reports

Keep track of your results for down the line comparison to know- the working progress, fields of improvements, and steps that are fine, etc.

Strategy to Follow for E-commerce Marketing

You don’t always need to spend thousands of dollars to marketize your products. The digital era has made it easier with the right eCommerce marketing strategies in place.

Some affordable strategies are listed here if you are looking for an e-commerce marketing strategy within a limited budget. Let’s unlock those.

Strategy 1: Optimize Your Product Pages

Optimize your website for search engines. This is an affordable way to promote your website’s existence and will help your site appear when anyone searches under a specific keyword.

The purpose of SEO is to drive traffic and increase conversion rates. To do that, the elements that web pages contain need to be optimized and updated when necessary.

These elements of a website require optimization-

• Image Optimization

Audiences who land on your page get a primary idea of your business through images. This is why your images should be high-quality. Assign a professional photographer who has ample knowledge in e-commerce product photography.

Your images should be well measured as well. Raw images have limitations, but edited images can match your requirements precisely. So, make sure to get this job done by professionals.

Also, research the difference among file formats, which one your website allows. However, JPEG, SVG, PNG, and GIF are considered the best file formats for websites.

• Content Optimization

Optimize your content for SEO. Contents that are of product/service page, product description, or blog, assign them under specific keywords for better finding on search results. Ensure solution with that content.

Crucial Bits

• Pay heed to organic activities; people prefer it that way instead of paid. Many people don’t even bother watching paid advertisements.
• SEO Optimization is targeted to ranking. However, this term is mingled with 200 ranking factors. It will take some time to work.

Strategy 2: Plan for Content Marketing

Contents have the complete reign on commercialization. Therefore, be selective and decide how to work with your content. Have separate contents for each purpose.

These are the division where your contents perform-

• Website Content

Home page, service page, videos- all of these require content to fill up the gap. This helps bring more attention to sites.

• Product Description

A well-written product description can help you increase sales. After images, potential buyers will always read the product description to know more about it. So, if the description doesn’t work, you will lose them right then and there.

• Blog Contents

Many websites have their distinctive blog sites for the greater good of clients. These sites are filled with informative content like articles or affiliates and are optimized under keywords.

• Social Media Platforms

Social media contents help you engage. Such content can interact with clients and deliver the right message. Thus, you become able to ensure your influential presence.

Crucial Bits:

• Don’t create content that feels salsey. For promotional content, follow the 80/20 rule.
• Write content for the audience. Don’t just say what you need to say; rather, say what your audience wants to listen to.

Strategy 3: Eye on the Competitor

Keep track of your niche-related competitors’ activities; this will help you learn and notice different matters. Also, you will surmise which e-commerce marketing platforms or channels are in full swing and how your competitors are benefitting from them. To activate your e-commerce business plan, these might come in handy.

How do you track competitors? Sites like Similarweb can help you there. I wanted to see the activities of Amazon, and here it is-

Even the site showed me the breakdown of its traffic source.

There are a lot of details, and platforms like these are really advantageous and effective while planning for a better marketing plan.

Crucial Bits:

• Refrain from copying your competitors; you can follow them for having ideas to add value to your brands’ insightfulness.
• Also, take note of how your competitors address the pain point of their clients.

Strategy 4: Word of Mouth

Remember what Jeff Bezos said?

If you do build a great experience,
customers tell each other about that.
Word of mouth is very powerful.

When 92% of the world’s people trust word of mouth, how can we ignore this point?

This is a type of free-of-cost advertising where potential buyers learn (directly or indirectly) about the service or product from the actual buyers.

You can create other ways for generating words of mouth, such as-

• UGC Content
• Referral programs
• Connect with Influencers
• Online Community of users
• Customer reviews and ratings

Crucial Bits:

• Ensure that your prospective buyers get the best experience. Otherwise, the WOM may backbite.

Strategy 5: Activate Marketing on Online Platform

This reminds me of a quote by KB Marketing–

Ignoring online marketing is like
opening a business but not telling anyone.

In this day and age, if your business isn’t online, you aren’t getting customers to come to you anymore. Online marketing will maximize the number of targeted audiences within a balanced cost (in some cases for free).

There are a number of means for that. However, we are convinced of these 4 the most-

Activate Social Media Marketing;

4.48 billion people use social media! Therefore, targeting this sector to build your niche-specific clientele and connecting them will be easier.

As an e-commerce business owner, your primary activities include showing images of your products and informing how it benefits. Therefore, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest will do the job just fine. However, depending on your targeted audience, you may shuffle the platforms.

Crucial Bits:

• Have specific platform-based images, such as one for the Facebook post, another for the Instagram post. Using single-size images for all platforms isn’t a client-convincing idea.
• Also, distinguish the purpose of every platform to ensure your presence.

Go For Influencer Marketing;

Influencers are the people on social platforms having an influence on a broad number of audiences. Working with them is an effective strategy, as they have a trust-based follower, their posts get flooded with engagements.

Hiring influencers might be costly but worth it. Here’s a report of a single influencer marketing campaign-

$ 1 costing = $ 5.78 earning

So if you can inspire or hire your niche-related influencer to promote your product, there is a good prospect of this.

Crucial Bits:

• Don’t be hasty while searching, rather focus on finding the right influencer who understands your target audiences’ pain and delivers the solution in a smart way.
• Select active influencers. Having a large audience with irregular activities won’t bring positive results.

Email Marketing – Send personalized emails;

72% of clients consider email as the primary platform for business communication. Formal or business communication is effective and gets responses more through email. If you can have a customized copy, personalize the receiver, offer promotional gifts, chances are you might get more attention and additionally form connections.

Crucial Bits:

• Be polite; mind your tone, speech, and formation. According to Neil Patel, you are a guest to their inbox, remember.
• If you are using an email list, don’t send the same copy to everyone. Subcategorize everyone’s preferences.

Implement Google Shopping Ads;

Google Shopping Ads/ Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) is one of the most effective B2C marketing strategies. After the listing is complete, Google will show the top search results under a certain keyword. The visibility in this section depends on the product feed (brand, quantity, color, size, etc.).

Crucial Bits:

• While listing your product on Google Shopping Ads, ensure following its’ guideline.

Strategy 6: Hire Freelancers To Complete the Job

Business owners get a lot on their plates; they can’t deal with every single matter. That’s where freelancers step in to assist. Considering time, money, resources, and energy, they work wonders for your business. Competent freelancers can help you unload your trouble with their skills. Thus you get quality work and firefighting down the line.

Crucial Bits:

• Do your fair share of research before hiring freelancers from different online marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, and so on. Visit those sites and check out freelancers’ profiles and work before hiring.
• Fraudulent people are out there to exploit your money. Be aware of that. Let’s say you need a photo editing service; if you go for a freelancer, make sure to know the things before hiring someone.

Strategy 7: Build Strategic Partnerships With Overlapping Companies

You can collaborate with overlapping companies. Those companies may not be your competitors, but their targeted audience is similar to yours. Such as-, Scarlett (pseudonym) has an online clothing store for wedding dresses. She collaborated with Benjamin (pseudonym), an online jewelry seller. Again, they aren’t apparent competitors, but they will be able to invite more clients.

Building strategic rapport with overlapping companies for commercial purposes would be like an added benefit. And you both can work together to serve the same type of customers.

Crucial Bits:

• Google search for overlapping companies in your area, you will find them.
• As it’s about collaboration, not necessarily it would be companies all the time; you can go for influencers as well.
• You can go for sponsorship too.

Strategy 8: Retarget Your Audiences

The study tells us that 97% of 1st-time-visitors leave a site without buying anything. Therefore, by retargeting them, we can increase the online sales percentage. Platforms like Facebook, Email, Google AdSense are great to do this job.

Consider this work as a campaign, where you send specific types of ads to those audiences (97%). These ads must address some solution they are looking for. So, when they see these ads, they are likely to click on your CTA button.

Crucial Bits:

• Try finding out the reason for their leaving; this will help you have an innovative solution to address their needs in an effective way.

Strategy 9: Have Incentives Customers Love

Everyone loves gifts. Why not have some incentives as part of the promotion? This is a great way to stimulate your targeted audiences to buy your products.

This tactic works really well during festivals. Sellers offer a wide range of offers like discounts, give-away, BOGO (Buy One Get One), Money-back guarantee, free shipping on those festivals. You can look for seasonal marketing ideas to understand which ones are trendy and thus connect your audience.

Crucial Bits:

• Don’t make the offer process too complicated in the name of interest. Make sure it is easy enough for participants to understand.

Strategy 10: Comment on Q&A Sites or Forums

Assume you’re in the health niche, a seller of protein shakes. On platforms like Quora or different forums, you can deliberately answer people’s questions on muscle building, share tips. Prepare your answer with relatable data and researched information to back you up. Your answer like this will be convincing enough to trust you.

Then, somewhere in your answer, you can tell about protein shake, benefits it brings, put your website address. This will instigate their urge to connect with you and increase the chance of clicking.

Crucial Bits:

• Be mindful and respectful of your word choices. For example, while promoting health clinics, address your clients as ‘patients’, while for e-commerce, they are ‘customers’.
• Be selective on which post to answer. You better answer the posts or questions where people are active.

FAQs about Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce

Final Verdict

The above-mentioned plan and strategies are proven to bring forth positive results. Hence, don’t just depend on any single plan or strategy; try out all we have mentioned, customize it in your own way. You can include more, but before that, analyze and tailor those from your and your target audiences’ perspectives.

The best online marketing strategies for e-commerce websites vary from business to business. One that didn’t affect your competitor may become your knock-out decision. We hope you can find the one that works best for you.