Since ecommerce stores are much different from any physical store which people do not come across while crossing a street, it is most important to reach out to these people. That means, if you are an ecommerce stores owner, you will need to find other alternative ways to make your store more ‘visible’ and accessible to the people.
The only way to do that is, yes you have guessed it right, emphasizing on your marketing campaigns and making it more effective, aggressive and result driven. Since marketing and sales are intertwined, this is the most important area that you should focus on.
But how can you reach out to your customers when they cannot see you physically? Simple! You will have to make efforts and find effective ways to drive more organic traffic to your ecommerce stores. In addition to that you must also ensure that they:
- Remain with your site
- Listen to what you have to say and offer and
- In the end they make a buying decision.
That means you will have to convert the visitors into your prospective clients and customers. All these will depend on how you plan your digital marketing strategy and how much you can afford to spend on it.
Know Your Customer
It is said that your business will surely fail if you do not know your customer, their purchase history and behavior. Therefore, to make a proper marketing plan you will first need to know your customers inside out. For this you will need to find answers to typical questions such as:
- Who your targeted customers are?
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- What is the strength of your customer base?
- What is theeducation level of your customers?
- What are their pain points?
- What is their income level?
- What are their demands and needs?
- What are their likes and dislikes?
- How can you satisfy their needs in the best possible way?
Last but perhaps the most important question is which is the best channel for you and your business to reach your customer given that there are so many of them to choose from.
Once you know all these answers, you can then pretty much shift your focus to your marketing strategy according to your customer demographic?
Marketing Strategies To Choose
There are a few key marketing strategiesto choose from if you want to reach out to your customers in a better way and make your ecommerce stores success.
You can go through the paid marketing strategies that include:
- Payperclick or PPC that typically involves using the Google Shopping campaigns and managing the product data feed and
- Affiliate sale networks that allowother sites and blogs to sell your product on your behalf for a commission on the revenue.
You can also follow the in vogue organic marketing strategies that include:
- Social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and others to attract your followers there to your website
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO to create and promote wonderful content so that people can find your business and product more organically through research.
You will have to have a good content marketing strategy for this and come up with a roadmap. This must list all those articles that you want to be created along with the strategy to create these contents such as outsource or in-house. It must also include the ways in which you plan to persuade visitors to buy your product when they visit your eCommerce site.
Using the blogger networks is another useful way to go ahead and this can be done either through organic or paid affiliate sale programs. All you have to do is develop a clear and definite list of all the key bloggers that pertains to your product category.
To find the optimal mix of your marketing strategy using these advertising tools will need a little bit of research just as you do to find the highest debt consolidation ratings. However, you selection process and results will also depend on several other things such as:
- Your customer segment
- Your product type and
- How much you spend to obtain a customer.
This is not an easy process and needs further research to make it proper, effective, and result-oriented.
Lifetime Value of Customer
To choose the best marketing strategy for your eCommerce site you will first have to know the concept of Lifetime Value of Customer or LTV. This is actually a formula that will help you to understand better how much amount of money an average customer will spend over time.
If yours is a new business then you will not have a large amount of data regarding customer purchase history and habits to calculate customer LTV. In such cases you must be more traditional in your approach and your assumptions.
You will also need to choose the right technology to choose the right eCommerce platform for your business. This is another difficult process given the fact that there are so many Saas products and technology out there. It is therefore essential that you have a better understanding of the numerous diagrams and moving parts ad to ensure that all of these integrate well with one another.
There are a few different elements to include for this matter such as:
- The shopping cart
- A suitable payment processor
- A fulfillment center
- Proper social media planning tools
- Better accounting tools
- Use of newsletter
You will also need to come up with a better and more detailed customer loyalty program for the different types of products and services that you want to offer to your customers. You will need to consider the cost of each transaction as well as the monthly cost of each of these so that it has a positive impact on your profit margins.
Last but not least, the type of product or service you choose to offer will also affect your reach to the customers. Select products that will sell well such as a product that is trending up and developing a niche.