01 logo

Tips to Market Your eCommerce Business Online

Ecommerce Marketing

By TigranPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
Like

You want to get the word out about your eCommerce business. You want more visits to your online store. You understand the more eyeballs that hit your offerings, the higher the chances of making a sale.

But the problem is, you don’t exactly know how to go about this. Perhaps, you’ve already put together a basic marketing strategy; even checked out some eCommerce services; yet you’re stuck with deciding which tactical approach is best suited for you.

That’s why we scoured the internet for time-tested, practical eCommerce marketing tips, dug into our strategy books to come up with plans we use ourselves; plus, even included tools in some cases, to help you have a diverse marketing arsenal to grow your online store.

Start by creating a content strategy

You need a content marketing strategy period. If you’re in the game for the long-haul, then before you do anything else, sit down and draw up a plan for how you are going to create content, distribute that content, and promote and track each piece you put out.

Here’s the thing, content marketing is an effective and relatively inexpensive way to reach out to your customers early in the buying process.

With an effective strategy; plus, valuable content, you can nurture, build brand awareness, and get your customers to a point where they would always turn to you whenever they are ready to buy.

The key, however, to successful content marketing is creating content your audience cares about.

Use these free tools such as HubSpot’s make my persona, BuzzSumo, and Ask the Public to research your audience, and to generate content ideas.

Create and set up your autoresponder

For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you are likely to get back $44. Now, that’s a high return on investment. Unfortunately, most eCommerce site owners ignore this goldmine.

From the word go, set up your website to capture the email addresses of visitors to your site. Thankfully, there are several email opt-ins tools you can use for this; for instance, SumoMe has a free version you can use to create your sign-up forms.

Offer discounts, gifts, or coupons to entice customers to give you their email.

Once, they are inside your funnel, you can then lead them on through a series of automated emails until they are ready to make a purchase—MailChimp is a great platform to start.

Localize the content on your website

E-commerce has gone beyond just selling to people in your country. In fact, according to a recent Shopify report, more and more consumers are looking beyond their borderlines to make a purchase online.

According to the report, 57 percent of online shoppers purchased from overseas retailers.

However, to tap into this growing trend, your customers must understand the content on your website when they land on it. Here’s where localization comes in.

Think of it for a moment, will you be willing to buy from a retailer whose product listing is, say, French.

The thing is, since you can’t read the product descriptions, nor see if the retailer is offering any warranty, or even check if there’s free shipping. You are likely to hit the return button and leave the site—that’s exactly what your foreign customers will do when they land on your website and can’t read anything on it.

Optimize your website for mobile

More internet users are accessing the web via the mobile device than ever before. And what’s more significant is that most online purchases are made from smartphones.

76 percent of smartphone users said they had made a purchase using their device in the last six months. And in 2018 alone, nearly 40 percent of online purchases during the holidays were made from a smartphone.

According to Statista, e-commerce growth is primarily driven by consumers using their mobile devices. And this growth is estimated to crack the $1.4 trillion in sales for e-retailers by 2021 with mobile eCommerce raking in as much as $3.5 trillion.

On the flip side though, you could lose out on this largesse if you don’t have a mobile-friendly online store as 61 percent of customers say they will go to a competitors’ website if your eCommerce site is not mobile friendly.

Leverage the far-reaching impact of social media

Your customers are on social media. Their friends are there too. And social media has a built-in viral feature that, once you hit the right cord, can bring thousands of eyeballs to your website.

Granted, it can be a tough call to decide which platform gives you the highest value for your efforts. The trick is to start on most of the major social media sites think Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and so on.

Then, consistently post on these platforms, monitor your analytics to see which site is referring more traffic to your store, and double down on those.

Also, pay attention to the kind of content that resonates with your audience, and produce more of that too.

Finally, think of social media as an opportunity to communicate with your audience; rather than to sell. See social media as a way to connect, nurture, and listen to your audience, rather than being pushy.

Marketing your eCommerce business, in theory, shouldn’t be hard, unfortunately, it’s a different kettle of fish in reality.

The key though, to seeing massive results with any of the tips above, is to stay focused on one strategy, track the results, and optimize where necessary.

Then, when you’ve mastered one tip and you’re comfortable, move to the next one to implement.

Author

Tigran is a marketing and creative content specialist at Smarketa.com with a primary focus on SEO, PPC, and customer satisfaction for eCommerce businesses. Being a true humanist, she draws inspiration from the simple things in everyday life, and the matters one comes across on a daily basis, doing her best and above to help everyone around.

how to
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.