E-commerce and digital marketing are two unique fields, that, when put together with the right strategic plan, only reinforces your vision.
Today, our topic of discussion is going to cover how E-commerce and Digital Marketing go hand in hand and help corroborate one another with its uniqueness.
Quite obviously, the E-commerce industry is an amalgam of humongous data of users, their demographics, their psycho-graphics, they interests etc.
However, are these data being properly used in the future expansion of your E-commerce website?
It’s quite astonishing to notice that not many E-commerce website owners are quite familiar with the nuances of applying digital marketing techniques for their brands.
Today, our blog is going to elaborate on how E-commerce and Digital marketing can go hand in hand.
E-commerce and Digital Marketing: What are the right Strategies?
The internet is currently booming with online retail ventures, providing consumers with products that are never imagined to have been sold online! Be it BigBasket, Pepperfry etc. most e-commerce brands today are selling what we once thought was impossible to be sold online!
However, interestingly, have you wondered how these unconventional items rose to popularity over a period of time?!
They implemented perfectly crafted, strategically, digital marketing tactics!
The most important facets of e-commerce platforms have chosen to remain the same over-time. These are: Discovery, User Engagement, and User retention.
Therefore, in our next part of the blog, we are going to discuss, how different digital marketing tactics and trends can help e-commerce business flourish!
Social Media Marketing
One of the most interesting ways, a consumer can discover your e-commerce business via digital marketing is by making use of social media.
Today, almost all brands falling under the e-commerce industry find this an imperative source of 'getting discovered'!
Colourful images, images with offers, product demo, product images, brand videos, advertisements etc. they are all synced into these platforms for the purpose of marketing and brand discovery.
Online Advertising (PPC Campaigns)
What’s more interesting that getting your Brand discovered in places that your target audience visit most of the time?!
Be it advertising on Youtube, Google (Search and Display Ads) or Facebook Ads – businesses are always given the chance to pick those platforms and target those audiences that value the most to them.
Brand Awareness is an immensely benefited metric when it comes to online advertising.
In the last one year, more emphasis has been placed on a singular marketing solution: Google Shopping. Most, E-commerce retailers are finding this a popular choice when it comes to increase user interaction and customer conversion.
Google Shopping stands tall as the platform consists of 'product listing' ads. They usually appear at the top centre or top right of results when people search for a product. The key to success with this strategy is to show up in the right searches to score in SEM clickthrough rates.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engines today, have become an important part of your consumer’s lifestyle. The ability to rank on top without the pressure of paid advertising is something that most brands look forward to. However, when it comes to Search engine marketing for E-commerce, there’s nothing really new except for the fact that your strategies have to be tweaked to suit some consumer needs!
While most e-commerce brands, draw up their SEM plan much before, some, do forget to make use of well-known SEO practices.
Email Marketing
Next best thing about e-commerce and digital marketing is the ability to connect with audiences via a very old digital medium called E-mail!
Off-late, email marketing has consistently developed into email automation with the later making a mark in retaining online users for your E-commerce website.
Did you know?
Industry benchmarks show that nearly 21% of people will open your email, with 2.56% of them will clicking through to your website.
Most brands today, ensure that they follow a comprehensive email automation strategy to establish user engagement and user retention to your website.
Email marketing metrics have even been categorically split into abandoned cart email, up-sell emails, cross-sell emails, promotional offer emails (like the image displayed below), customer loyalty, remarketing emails etc.
Mobile Marketing
Quite obviously, our mobile has more apps today than tabs on the web browser.
This means, having a mobile strategy is now more important than ever. Users behave differently on smartphone and digital marketers need to be there at the right time with the right message to increase their engagement.
Affiliate Marketing
How do you get websites talking about you? Work with affiliates by giving them an incentive for sales they bring to your online store.
Building an engaged affiliate network will certainly boost your overall marketing campaigns by helping spread the word online. Connect with Freelancers/Bloggers who can write about your business and pass it across to their audience network.
Analyzing your User Behaviour
Last but not least, Google analytics and observing the behaviour of users on your website plays an important role in forecasting the three main tactics: discovery, engagement and retention for your website.
Google Analytics plays a prominent role in understanding user metrics, their locations, their behaviour and response to your brand and carefully design a strategic plan to attract these users by making use of other forms of digital marketing tactics.
With the help of these metrics, you understand "what is working” and how to tweak things that don’t work to make it work.
Having relevant statistical data at your disposal helps you build a foundation for continuous experimentation on your website and other areas of your online presence.
