Any business requires a development plan, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a young company or the one with rich experience and a wide client base. Today, thanks to internet technologies and ecommerce, even people with low budget can start a business, but without well-thought-out ecommerce marketing strategies, it’s unlikely to succeed.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing involves creating and distributing expert content that helps people make purchasing decisions. Furthermore, the content should have inherent value for the audience.
In other words, purely promotional content must not exceed 20% of your efforts. 80% of the content should contain useful or entertaining information, otherwise people will not visit your sites or groups in social media, because simple calls to purchase have no value.
Content marketing is based on two pillars – content and distribution (promotion) channels, i.e. what you show and where. Any ecommerce marketing strategy consists of these two elements or a combination of such.
Promotion channels
Search engine optimization
SEO is one of the basic promotion channels used by all internet sites. Not so long ago, companies working on the web used to focus on keywords in their text content and on increasing the link mass.
Today these methods are not so efficient, because ranking in modern search engines is based on too many factors, and predicting a result is impossible. Sometimes a website with no expert content gets to the top, but no SEO agency can guarantee the same outcome for another site with the same characteristics.
Remember this: modern search engine optimization is efficient if it is based on sought-after content and is used together with other promotion methods.
Paid search
Paid search is one of the forms of pay-per-click advertising. Whenever a user types a keyword in a search engine, it shows them your ad. If the user clicks on it, you must pay a certain sum of money.
While SEO results in abstract ranks in search engines, paid search advertising brings measurable effect that is guaranteed. Plus, this promotion method is very soft, as it is targeted on audience taking interest in the given theme or product.
If I search for a bike for triathlon to purchase and type ‘buy bike for triathlon’, I will probably click on the link because it’s exactly what I’m looking for. No wonder this promotion channel is considered one of the most efficient ones and must be used in all ecommerce marketing strategies.
Banner advertising
Despite the fact that most people hate banners and some don’t even notice them (banner blindness), these promotion methods still have some great potential. Banners combine both text and visual information which resonates with audience much faster than sole texts.
And again, its efficiency depends less on how it’s made and more on how it’s targeted. If a user sees a banner advertising something he or she has been looking for, it’ll work just fine.
Prices here are determined by the size of the banner, its place on the page and the website’s traffic.
Email marketing
Many people question the efficiency of emails as a promotion channel. However, mailing customers is widely used by lots of companies all over the globe, and many of them can boast amazing results. More than half of internet users committed purchases after they received emails. As usual, it’s not about what you do, but how.
Simple, straight-forward methods calling clients to buy something will not work. To make email marketing efficient, you’ll need a more sophisticated approach that should be combined with SMM and SEO.
Partnering with bloggers
Bloggers and influencers of all kinds sooner or later come to monetizing their blogs, and that’s when you can benefit from it.
The fans of such bloggers tend to trust their idols. Sometimes it’s because they blindly follow any advice they’re given; sometimes because a blogger is a pro in the given sphere and will not advertise something of low quality.
In any case, partnering with these people can bring amazing results, but there’s a restriction. It’ll only work if the blog is somehow related to your product. Advertising business consultations on a blog devoted to video games is waste of money.
Social media marketing
Another promotion method obligatory for almost any ecommerce marketing strategy is SMM. With due investment and efforts, the traffic from social media can substantially exceed the organic traffic.
In SMM, it’s important to choose the right platform (for example, Instagram is more suitable for visual content) and find your target audience.
Developing an ecommerce marketing strategy
It may seem that when developing a marketing strategy, one has to choose between these channels. But with enough money, there’s no point in making choices. The more channels you use, the better!
However, one should monitor each of the channels to find out which one works great and which one has no effect in order to correct the strategy. Experimenting and trying something new (new channels, new content, new audience segments) is a must for any ecommerce business.
